The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Fools just never seem to learn, do they? In Psalm 14, David is surrounded by fools who say, "There is no God." Today on the Bible Study Hour with Dr. James Boice, we'll listen to what David thinks about such fools and, more importantly, what God thinks of them.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Psalm 14 opens with the statement, "The fool says in his heart, there is no God." Listen along with us today to hear what God thinks of foolish men, because as Dr. Boice rightly reminds us, it's not man's view of God that matters, it's God's view of man. If you have your Bible, turn to Psalm 14, verses 1 through 7.

Dr. James Boice: The Bible is a pretty big book. In my edition, it has 1500 pages, there are 66 separate parts, and it's so big in some ways that I suspect even in Christian circles there are lots of Christians who have never read it all. Perhaps you've noticed something about the Bible. Although it's that big and although it's really giving us the same message from beginning to end—the message of our need and God's provision for that need in Jesus Christ—if you think about it, there are very few things in the Bible that are repeated word-for-word more than once.

There are a few things that are repeated, and when they are, it's obviously because they're important. They're to demand our very special attention. What if something is repeated more than once? What if it's repeated three times word-for-word? In that case, it obviously deserves our very, very, very special attention. Now, that's the case with Psalm 14. Psalm 14 is a Psalm which is repeated almost word-for-word another time even in the Psalter. The 53rd Psalm is almost an identical repetition of Psalm 14. There are a few variations, but for the most part, it's the same.

And then, the most important part of these two Psalms is picked up by the Apostle Paul and quoted at a very significant place in the early chapters of the book of Romans in Romans 3 verses 10 through 12. Anything God says once demands our attention. Anything he says twice demands our most intent attention. If he says it three times, those words are obviously demanding our keenest concentration, contemplation, assimilation, and even memorization. Or to use the words of that well-known English collect from the Book of Common Prayer, they are things we are to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.

Now, with that in mind, it's somewhat of a surprise to find that what this Psalm is about is atheism—atheism of a certain kind. The Psalm begins by saying, "The fool says in his heart, there is no God." In the Hebrew, the words "there is" are not present. So what the text actually says is, "The fool says in his heart, no God." That is, no God for me. What that means is that this is not only a theoretical atheism, the kind of atheism that might be expressed by someone in our time who would sit down and say, "You know, as I think about it and reason it all out, it seems to me that the evidence for the existence of a personal God is lacking." That's a theological or theoretical atheism.

But this is the kind of person who says, "No God there and no God for me. I'm going to live as if there isn't one." And of course, at that point, we begin to see that this Psalm is speaking not about some small subspecies of the human race which is, even as we might say, foolish enough to deny the existence of a personal creator God, but actually speaking of humanity in general apart from God's saving work in Jesus Christ. Because apart from God's work in our hearts, all of us in one way or another act like atheists.

Now, that's why this Psalm is so important and it's why it's repeated so often in the Bible. The question to begin with, I think, as we turn to this Psalm is this: Why is the person who has this atheistic philosophy of life termed a fool? Why isn't this just a case of a person being quite mistaken? You see, if a person merely looked upon the evidence and said, no doubt wrongly—and we would say wrongly from a Christian point of view—"I don't see any evidence for God," we would say he's mistaken, but you wouldn't say he's foolish. You'd say he's just made a mistake.

Or if a person is soundly convinced on the basis of the evidence that there really is no God and is courageous enough to say so against the prevailing notions of the human race, we would say not that he is even mistaken or a fool. We'd say perhaps a person like that's even courageous. He has courage enough to say what he thinks. And if he would say, "Well, I just don't see the evidence for God, but there may be one," we would say he's at least an honest agnostic or a skeptic. That isn't what the text says. The text calls him a fool, and for that reason, the place to begin is by asking why.

Now, it doesn't answer that question in the Psalm. In order to get the answer for that, you have to go to what Paul says in Romans. And I suppose even in that there is some lesson for us. The lesson being, I suppose, that as the human race has gone on and on through history, it has become not wiser in the things of God as we might intend to think, but actually more foolish. The reason I say that is David didn't think he had to explain it. David lived in a day when people believed there was a God. Anybody who would be stupid enough to say there is no God is an obvious fool. You don't have to explain that.

But you see, by the time Paul came to write the book of Romans, people didn't understand why that was foolish, and so he had to explain it. He had to spell it out at some length. In Romans 1, Paul says the person is a fool because in spite of what he may say, he actually knows there is a God. Why does he know there is a God? How does he know there is a God? Paul says it's because God has revealed himself in nature. The revelation in nature's a limited revelation. We've seen that. It's not a revelation that tells anything about the mercy of God or the way of salvation or what God is doing to call forth a people to himself, but God has revealed that he exists and that he's powerful. Obviously.

Of all that we say came into being, it came into being somehow. It didn't create itself because for it to create itself, it had to be there in order to create itself, didn't it? And if it was there in order to create itself, how did it get there in order to do it? Obviously, if something exists, something like God had to exist prior to that to bring it into being. Anybody can see that. And so when you look at nature, nature itself literally screams out, "There is a God." What Paul says in Romans 1 is that this revelation is a revelation of God's power and his divine nature. When you express that in philosophical terms, it's the revelation of a supreme being.

Now, there's another question that comes in at that point and it's this: If this revelation of God in nature is so clear that a person is a fool to disregard it or deny it, why in the world would any sane person do that? If the revelation is clear, clear enough for God himself to be able to call a denier of the revelation the height of folly, why would anybody do it? Well, the answer as Paul explains it in Romans is because of the hidden motives of the one who is denying God's existence. What Paul says there is that we are godless and wicked.

Godless because we're opposed to God. We don't like him. And wicked because what we prefer is our own evil conduct. We want to do what we want to do and we don't care whether it violates the law of God or not. So if there is a God and if the law of God stands there to tell us that what we want to do is wrong, what we try to do is everything in our power to suppress the knowledge of that God. And one of the easiest ways of doing it is to say God doesn't exist because if God doesn't exist, his law doesn't exist. If his law doesn't exist, I'm a law unto myself, and what that means is I can do anything I jolly well please. And basically, that's what we all want in our fallen state.

And so what we do, Paul says it very clearly, is suppress the knowledge of God in nature or hold it down. And that is the point, you see, at which David is speaking as he writes the Psalm. It's the fool, the fool who says in his heart or demonstrates by his conduct that as far as he is concerned, there is no God at all. Now, what's the result of that? David also talks about it in the very first verse. The result is corruption. You see, even though David, existing further back in the history of revelation, didn't have to spell out certain things that had to be spelled out later on, it is nevertheless the same theology.

Because what Paul says in Romans 1 is that when they reject God—God's the source of all good—they inevitably become corrupt. Indeed, they become increasingly corrupt. And so he talks in Romans 1 of that downhill path. They wouldn't have God, so God gave them up to all these different kinds of perversions till at the end they come to the point where they call that which is good evil and that which is evil good. In other words, they get their whole moral universe turned upside down. Now, that's corruption. And what David says here in the very first verse of the 14th Psalm, written hundreds and hundreds of years before Paul wrote Romans, is this: "They are corrupt, their deeds are vile, and there is no one who does good."

That's a good point to reflect on the word "fool." You know, in the Hebrew language, just like in English, there are all kinds of words that are associated with ideas of some kind of mental deficiency or moral deficiency. We have words like simple or simpleton or madman, crazy, mad, foolish—all of that. And the same thing exists in Hebrew, and the word that is used here is the word "Nabal," and it has a very special meaning. It's not only a person who is foolish enough to deny something that is obvious—we'd say a person like that is just not quite in his or her right mind—but it is a person who in doing that is perversely wicked.

In other words, they're obnoxious people. They're wicked people. It is the moral quality which follows upon the nature of this particular kind of folly. It is significant that in the Bible there is an individual who actually bore this name, Nabal. He was the husband of Abigail, who was a very good woman and recognized the folly of her husband. He acted very foolishly toward David and his army on one occasion and David was going to kill him. And Abigail, his wife, intervened and got his life spared. She said of her husband honestly in the presence of David, "The man is just like his name. His name is Fool and that's the way he acts. He is perverse in all he does."

And of course, she was right. David spared him because of Abigail's intercession, but God himself judged Nabal. He perished foolishly ten days or two weeks later. And that's the way it is. You see, this kind of folly, atheistic folly, always, as one commentator says, bears its fruit in rotten conduct. And that's what David is saying. Now, all of that is really an introduction. That is, verse 1 introduces the theme. What do you have in verse 1? In verse 1, you have the idea of the fool concerning God. Verse 1 you read what the fool has to say about God, and he says there is no God.

Now, you come to verses 2 and 3, the second stanza of the poem, and what you have there is God's words about the fool. I'm going to listen. If anything, I think it's the latter that I want to hear. All sorts of fools can say all sorts of foolish things about God, but it's not man's view of God that matters; it's God's view of man. And that's what we find here. Notice a few things about it. It's significant, I think. First of all, the Lord looks down from heaven on the sons of men. That describes the way in which God actually—to do it as literally as the Hebrew would allow us to do—leans over from heaven. Bending over is the meaning of the Hebrew word in order that he can look down and see what these fools on Earth are doing.

It's a kind of word that carries us back to several things in the Old Testament, and commentators think that there probably is a direct reflection of that. You know, when the Tower of Babel was being constructed in the 11th chapter of Genesis, it says there that God had a little conference in heaven and he said, "Let's go down and see what they're doing." That was significant because they were trying to build a tower to reach to heaven. They were trying to get up to him, but when God went to look at it, he actually had to go down to find that puny little thing that they were building. And in the 6th chapter of the book of Genesis, you find the same thing, that God came down to see the wickedness of men, and what he found in that day was that all the thoughts and inclinations of their hearts were only evil all the time.

Now, that's what David describes the Lord is doing here. The Lord is actually looking down to see what foolish human beings are doing and what they're saying. Here's the second thing to notice about this and this is even more important. When you look at verse 1 and you read, "The fool says in his heart, there is no God," your natural instinct is to say, "Well yes, anybody who would say that is foolish, but of course, I'm not one of them." Now, those are the atheists, right? They may be foolish, but there aren't many atheists around. There may be a lot of people who don't have a very strong faith, but there aren't many. And I am certainly not one. But look, you come to these verses and you find that what God is saying here is that when he looks down upon not just the atheists but the sons of men—it's a way of saying all humanity—he lumps them all together.

And you see, if you miss it in terms of that phrase "sons of men," you find it there in the all-inclusive terminology that's used. Look, to see if there are any who understand, any who seek after God. On the contrary, all have turned aside, they have altogether become corrupt. There is no one who does good, not even one. Any, any, all, altogether, none, no one, and so on. You just can't miss what he's saying. When God looks down from heaven, he doesn't say, "Ah, there's a little class of people that are foolish enough to deny my existence." He looks down on the race and he says, "They all deny it." They're all together gone out of the way. They are all equally foolish.

You say, "Well, how can that be? How can that be? After all, there are some of us who at least profess to believe in God." You see, here's a point where we learn something about God's way of thinking that is quite different from our own. We are so impressed with words because words are what we hear and we use words to project images of ourselves—often images that are false. And we use words to cover up. We use words to lie. God, you see, doesn't merely judge by the words; he judges by the actions. God judges reality. And what God is saying in these verses here is, "I'm not so concerned whether the human race says they believe in me or not. What I'm concerned with is how they act."

What difference does it make whether they deny me and act as if they denied me, or say they believe in me but nevertheless act as if they denied me? It's all the same thing as far as any real relationship to myself is concerned. And that's why, you see, when the Apostle Paul begins to develop the same idea in Romans 1, leading up to that all-inclusive language you find in chapter 3, he's not distinguishing between classes of people except to the extent that he says all classes of people—no matter how you divide up the human race—all fall into the same category. They are all trying to suppress the knowledge of God in order that they can go on and do whatever they jolly well please.

There's one other way in which these words are all-inclusive. Not only are they including all people under this judgment of God against humanity, they are also including all parts of man's makeup. They're saying the human race is not merely atheistic in its intellect or mind, it's also atheistic in its conduct and in its understanding. That's the way Paul picks it up and quotes it in Romans 3. You see, he says there's none that do good, no not one—that's the moral conduct. There are none that understand—that's the intellect. There are none that seek after God—that's the volitional part of our being. Anything you can say about a man is hostile so far as God is concerned. That is the teaching of the Old Testament and the New, unless by the grace of God he breaks into that hostility, casting down those walls that we throw up to keep him out and reveals himself to us in Jesus Christ by the power of his spirit. That's the only way salvation and right thinking ever comes to anyone.

Now, in the first verses, as I say, we have the words of the fool about God. In the second stanza, verses 2 and 3, we have the words of God about the fool. What do you find in the third stanza, verses 4 through 6? What you find in the third stanza, verses 4 through 6, is the way of the fool. You see, you've heard what he thinks. You've seen God's judgment. Now you see the way this man or woman actually lives. What does the Psalm say about him? The first thing, verse 4, is that he never seems to learn. You'd say, well, given enough time, he ought to learn. And the response to that is, yes indeed he ought to, but time doesn't seem to help. People are as foolish today in this respect as they were in the time of the Apostle Paul or the time of David before that or even in the earliest moments of the human race.

I came across an interesting illustration of this recently and one you may have heard because I heard it on the radio. Joel Nederhood is the radio pastor of the Christian Reformed Church and he was talking once about changes that are taking place in the Soviet Union today. We know about them because some of them are reflected even in the secular media. And he was relating a personal story. He had been in Moscow for a booksellers' convention. I didn't know they had those in Moscow, but they did and he was there for it. And he said one of the publishing companies that was invited recently to this great book-selling convention in Moscow was the American Bible Society. They were there and they had Bibles and they were giving away Bibles.

And there was a long, long line of people at this bookseller's convention in the capital of the Soviet Union lined up to receive a free Bible. The line went on for hundreds of feet out through the display area, passing all of the other booths until part of the way down the line, it went by the booth that was occupied by Madalyn Murray O'Hair, one of this country's most famous atheists. And nobody was at her booth and there she was sitting, glowering at all the Russians who were going by to get Bibles. Now, Nederhood didn't say what was in her mind, but you can imagine what was in her mind. This famous atheist is sitting there, angry with these Russians, saying to herself, "What fools these Russians are to be lined up in that long line to go and get Bibles when what they ought to be doing is buying books on atheism from me."

But who was the fool? The fool was Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who is 70 years old, has lived almost as long as the Russian revolution, but has not learned a thing in seven decades. And the Russian people who have tried it, who have tried atheism, have found it wanting and now are ready for something else. Perhaps by the grace of God, it's going to be a time of great spiritual awakening in the Soviet Union. It already is, I believe, in some of the other Iron Curtain countries. Here's another story. This one is of a classical nature. Joseph Addison was one of the great essayists in English literature in the 18th century and he wrote essays, some of which have been collected in a volume called The Tatler. Perhaps you've heard of it.

They're witty sort of things and at one point he tells of an experience he had had. He had been on shipboard as a passenger traveling to England from another country, and there was on board with him a particularly vile and obnoxious passenger. They got into a storm. The storm was a rather violent one and this passenger was the only one who was really afraid. But he was terrified of the storm. Apparently, he had never gone through anything quite like this before. And in a fit of terror, he made his way up onto the deck to find the chaplain, before whom, when he found him, he fell upon his knees and confessed his sins, acknowledging that he had been an outspoken atheist ever since he had come of age.

Well, that word got around the ship and down below some of the sailors were told that there was an atheist up on the deck. Addison said they didn't all know what an atheist was. Some of them had never heard the word. They thought it was a strange kind of fish. And then eventually someone explained to them that an atheist is a person who doesn't believe in God. At which point they got very concerned and they suggested, not really silently, that it would be a great favor to the universe if they would just heave the atheist overboard before they got home. Anyway, they didn't do that. They kept sailing and pretty soon the ship came in sight of land and then it got into the harbor and they were protected from the wind.

Now, as soon as this atheist discovered that he was not going to perish at sea, he repented of his repentance. And he said to the other passengers, "Now promise that when we get ashore, you're never going to mention this. Don't mention it at all. I don't want anybody to know what happened to me there in the deck of the ship." Now, that alone would prove the point that I'm making, namely that atheists never learn. But there's more to the story. This man when he got on shore soon went back to his wicked ways, and several days later in one part of the city of London, he bumped into one of the other passengers that had been on the ship. The passenger was startled. He knew what had happened there in the ship, how he'd repented of his sin and confessed that he was wrong about denying God. Here he was living in a vile way again.

So the passenger began to reprove him from it and reminded him of his repentance. And the atheist didn't want to be reminded of that and he denied it vehemently and the argument got so intense that they actually had a duel to settle it, each one calling the other one a liar. In the duel, the atheist was run through by his opponent's sword. At which point he became, I want to quote exactly what Addison says, "He became as good a Christian as he was at sea," until he found that his wound was not mortal. At which point he relapsed again, and the last Addison heard of him, he had become what in those days was called a free thinker and he was writing foolish books about religion. You see the point. It is exactly what David is saying in the Psalm. "Evil doers never learn. They devour my people as men eat bread."

It means they're materialist. If they will not have God, what else is there but matter? If there's not an afterlife to worry about, get everything you can here. If there's no soul, make as much money as possible. That's what he's saying. And they do not call on the Lord. They don't pray. Obviously, there's no one to pray to. The only God they have is themselves. That's the first thing. Now, there's something else that's said here about the way of the atheist and that is verse 5: "They are overwhelmed with dread." Now, it's an interesting way of expressing that. The text really does it very well. It says just what the Hebrew says: "There, there they are, overwhelmed with dread." The fact it says "there they are" has made commentators wonder what that "there" is referring to.

There, where? Isn't that what you want to say whenever you read a word like that? Where are they overwhelmed with dread? Is this referring to the final judgment when the wrath of God is revealed and as even Jesus said, "In that day, they call upon the hills and the mountains to fall on them and cover them from the wrath of Almighty God"? Is that the "there" that the Psalmist is speaking of? Is it the kind of thing that sometimes comes into our lives when we think we're going to die through illness or some such thing? Is it what happened to the atheist on shipboard or when he was run through with the sword and he thought his life was over? Is that the "there" in the final extremity? I don't think so.

I think what this is talking about is a psychological dread. And in proof of that, I want you to look at Psalm 53. Now, Psalm 53 is the Psalm I said earlier is almost an exact duplication of Psalm 14. But at this particular point, there's something else added. There's an addition that you don't find in the first Psalm. Verse 5 of Psalm 53 begins the same: "There they were"—now instead of "are," slight change in tense—"overwhelmed with dread." And here's the line that's added: "where there was nothing to dread." Now, of course, there is the dread of the final judgment, but that's not what it's saying. It's saying when you look at their life, there's nothing visible to cause their dread. And yet, there they are, at certain moments in their lives, literally trembling with fear.

Well, what that must be, you see, is a psychological fear of what's coming. I think that is probably true of everyone who doesn't know the Lord Jesus Christ at some moments, in some places, at some times. You see, there are times in our lives when we are able to fill them with such activity that we don't give a thought to God or the final judgment at all. But then there are times—sometimes unexpected moments—when suddenly the realization that this must be a moral universe comes crashing in. If this is a moral universe, there must be a moral being who stands behind it. And if there is a moral being who stands behind it, this is one before whom someday you and I are going to have to give account. There is going to be something like a final judgment. The Judge of all the Earth will do right.

And it's the realization, the surmise, the anticipation, the concern about something like that that causes people in honest quiet moments literally to tremble with psychological fear. And that's what the Psalm is saying. "God is in the company of the righteous." And the evildoers are frustrating the plans of the righteous, particularly the righteous poor, whom they can abuse and take advantage of and oppress. And God is going to judge them for it. There's one person who's not trembling, and that's the Psalmist. Because when you come to the very end, you find, as you do in many of the Psalms, the response of the writer to what's been said. He's spoken of the words of the fool about God. He has let us look in on God's words about the fool. He has laid out the way of the fool before us.

Now, at the end, he says in what becomes a quiet sigh of confidence in God, "Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion." It's going to someday. I'm anticipating it. I'm waiting for it. When God will judge the wicked, when the Lord restores the fortune of his people, that day is coming. "Then let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad." I want to say one final thing, and that is that that kind of quiet trust and confidence is not something that you and I are ever going to find in ourselves. We don't get to this point by getting ourselves off in a corner, practicing some kind of mind control, disciplining our thoughts and saying, "Look, just settle down here. Things are going to be all right. Don't follow that gloomy line of reasoning anymore." That doesn't work.

These thoughts keep coming back. There's no way of escaping them because it's not our world, it's God's world, and God is there whether we deny him or not. The only way we come to this kind of quiet trust and confidence is when God himself provides it. And that is what he does. It's what he did in the Old Testament times as he worked in the hearts and the minds of his people and as he gave them understanding, pointed them forward to the redeemer who should come, Jesus Christ. They looked forward to their Messiah, though at that time they didn't know his name. And it's what God does with us as he works in our hearts and minds today and causes us to look back so that we might see him and recognize him as our Savior and our Lord, the one who has become to us salvation.

You know how Paul talks about it in 1 Corinthians, the first chapter? He's talking about wisdom there because he's writing to a Greek city, and the Greeks were very proud of their wisdom. He's saying God has made a contrast between his wisdom—the wisdom of the cross—and the wisdom of the philosophers, the wisdom of your Greek world. And he says what God has done is made foolish your wisdom because your wisdom has not led to peace or tranquility or blessing or any such thing. And what God has done is established what you call foolishness to be the wisdom of the universe. And then he talks about Jesus and what he says is this: "It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus." That is, it is because of God that you are in him who has become for us wisdom from God. That is to say, our righteousness, our holiness, and our redemption.

The only time any member of the human race ceases to become a fool is when he finds the wisdom of God, the only true wisdom, in Jesus Christ. So you see, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference whether you're a theoretical atheist and say there is no God, or whether you're merely a practical atheist and say there is God but you act as if there isn't one. All of that is the same. What matters is whether you find salvation in Christ and begin to live for him. If you live for yourself, what is it? It's foolishness. If you live for the moment, if you say to yourself, "Well, you only go around once, let's get all we can now, forget about the future," what is it? It's foolishness.

If you say to yourself, "All that matters is money," what is it? It's foolishness. Jesus said, "What does it profit a person if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?" If you think you're just a creature of a day, if you're here for so many years and after that it doesn't matter, you are the most foolish of fools. But if by the grace of God you understand that you're made to last for all eternity, that you're a spirit, you're going to exist in one form or another forever and ever and ever and ever, then you see the path of wisdom is to come to God in Christ and begin to enter into that new and blessed life that he has provided for those who know him. Jesus, our wisdom. And we can say, "Oh, how great is the wisdom of our God."

Let us pray. Our Father, it's easy for us—we do it all the time—to say we're wise and others are foolish simply because we know something or we have an opinion that they don't share. And our Father, if we deny you, whether by words or merely by our actions, it is we who are the fools. Do by grace disabuse us of that folly and grant that if there are those here, as there undoubtedly are, who are living for self rather than for you, living for the moment rather than for eternity, show them that wisdom which is in the cross of Jesus Christ so that they might turn from their folly and their sin and become followers of the Lord. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to this message from the Bible Study Hour, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the reformed faith and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a reformed awakening in today's church. To learn more about the Alliance, visit AllianceNet.org. And while you're there, visit our online store, Reformed Resources, where you can find messages and books from Dr. Boice and other outstanding teachers and theologians. Or ask for a free Reformed Resources catalogue by calling 1-800-488-1888.

Please take the time to write to us and share how the Bible Study Hour has impacted you. We'd love to hear from you and pray for you. Our address is 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. Please consider giving financially to help keep the Bible Study Hour impacting people for decades to come. You can do so at our website, AllianceNet.org, over the phone at 1-800-488-1888, or send a check to 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. For Canadian gifts, mail those to 237 Rouge Hills Drive, Scarborough, Ontario, M1C 2Y9. Thanks for your continued prayer and support and for listening to the Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.