2 Men (Psalm 13&14) Chapel

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Intro:

There are many people in this world but in reality there are only two kinds of people and they are both described in the Psalms that we are going to cover today, Psalm 13 & 14. As we take some time to study the characteristics of these two types of people we are also going to be reminded of the most important truth of all as we hold them side by side!
Before we do that though lets take a moment to pray.

PRAY

Psalm 13

So now lets take up the first man.
READ
Psalm 13 is a Psalm of distress.
We read “How long” 4 times. As with many of the Psalms we don't know what circumstances in David’s life occasioned this ; we do know from reading about David’s life that there were ample opportunities for him to feel this way.
He feels as though God has forgotten him. Why would God allow these kinds of things to happen, surely God has hidden His face from David and his affairs. David feels as though he is left with only the council of his own soul and sorrow filled heart. He has acted righteously and yet his enemies seem to have the upper hand. How could this be.
There is a great comfort in Psalms like this. They show us that someone who is a child of God and who is living a righteous life can also cry out to God in deep and earnest distress.
Being righteous does not mean that life is going to be all sunshine and roses. It is so very tempting to buy into the logic that if there is a God and He is all powerful and that if we could just live our lives as good as possible in line with what He wants then everything would go well for us.
IMPORTANT POINT: One of the defining marks of a child of God is how we react in times of distress, difficulty, and disappointment! Do we trust God, do we cling to Him in faith and trust, or do we turn and seek to sort things out our own way, do we try and grab a hold of life's proverbial lemons and in our own feeble power try and squeeze out a little lemonade? (EXAMPLES: Work, Parenting, Marriage, even just church attendance)
Lets see what David does!
David then turns to God in petition after expressing his deep distress.

Consider and answer me, O LORD my God;

light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,

This is not as presumptuous as it sounds in English, David is not demanding a response from God here. David is asking God to closely observe his situation and then in light of what God observes to respond.
Far from presumption David is actually showing his faith in God! He is trusting that though he feels as though God has turned his face that God does indeed see and know completely the circumstances that face David at the moment and He is casting His hopes and confidence on God’s response to these things.
David is doing exactly what Hebrews 11:6 instructs us:

And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. 7

I love what Spurgeon says here about Davids plea to “the Lord, his God”

Note the cry of faith, “O Lord MY God!” Is it not a very glorious fact that our interest in our God is not destroyed by all our trials and sorrows? We may lose our gourds, but not our God. The title-deed of heaven is not written in the sand, but in eternal brass.

David asks that his eyes be lightened, the imagery isn't hard to grasp. David is in deep distress and he is asking that God step in and intervene in his situation in such a way that his spirits might be lifted and that his eye might sparkle again. If God does not step in David fears that his death may shortly follow which would seem to result in the triumph of his enemies:

lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”

lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

Again I love what Spurgeon has to say here:

It is not the Lord’s will that the great enemy of our souls should overcome his children. This would dishonour God, and cause the evil one to boast. It is well for us that our salvation and God’s honour are so intimately connected, that they stand or fall together.

Finally we see David close this prayer by noting his absolute, and I mean absolute trust in God!

But I have trusted in your steadfast love;

my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

6  I will sing to the LORD,

because he has dealt bountifully with me.

David looks both reward and forward in the same sentence. David has cast his lot fully with God, David has trusted in the past in God’s steadfast love. There is also a sense of His present trust, I have trusted and continue to trust, he says. As a result he notes that he trusts that God’s deliverance will come. “My heart shall rejoice in your salvation!” Shall! This hasn't happened yet! David has the faith that Sprugeon described that knows that it is not his own righteousness that will ultimately move God to act on his behalf but rather the glorious consistency in God Himself and that for His own glory He will not allow a child of His to be trodden under the foot of the evil man forever.
As we glance forward to our next Psalm we might note that due to his circumstances, from a wordly point of view, David would have had every right to call into question the existence of God. Sure, David had experienced some wonderful times and acts in His life that could possibility be ascribed to a God. However, in light of present circumstances maybe those things were just the luck of the draw and now the curtain of this vast lie that we tell ourselves, that there is some sort of benevolent higher being, this lie is being exposed as that supposed being suddenly becomes silent at the moment he is needed most. David could well have thought that and been so moved to deny that such a being, that God even existed at all.
But David does not! Here in these last verses we see David’s gaze not fixed on his circumstances but rather fixed on his God, “Your steadfast love” “Your salvation” “I will sing to the Lord” “He” David says, “has dealt bountifully with me.”
Has dealt not will deal!!!
How is it that David could say bountifully? Look at the circumstances of David’s life, what ever they were they were certainly agonizing. Bountifully? How!?!
One answer is found in II Corinthians 4:17
2 Corinthians 4:17 ESV
For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,
Paul tells us in this verse that God has prepared for us a future that is so abounding in wonder and glory that it will make all of our sufferings and enduring for God’s sake in this world feel light and momentary in comparison.
This was the very experience of Christ at the cross where as He suffered in our place and bore the just penalty for our sins He looked forward to see the results of that work and He was satisfied.
Isaiah 53:11 tells us:

Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;

by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,

make many to be accounted righteous,

and he shall bear their iniquities.

Hebrews adds that we ought to run our own races here in this world with this forward facing gaze:

looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

For the great joy set before Him, He endured. We endure for the great joy set before us! That’s the point, Jesus did it, we ought to do it as well!
However, it isn't just about the future! We tend to focus on that aspect of enduring sufferings but that isn't all that David points us to in this Psalm.
When we focus solely on gritting our teeth and bearing up under the burdens of this life we can wind up with the view that while righteousness holds out great rewards for the future it leads only to misery and drudgery in this life!
That isn't what David expresses here! David’s circumstances are bleak, hard, pressing, in his agony he has cried out to God. But look what he finds, not just future deliverance but a vast treasure of hope, assurance, and peace now!
“My heart shall REJOICE” and “I will sing”
I am reminded of Paul and Silas singing there in the Philippian jail! (Acts 16) Beaten and bruised and in chains for Christ yet they are filled with joy and in turn fill those dark halls of the prison with songs of joy in God!
This is the true and lasting lot of the righteous, this is the man of Psalm 13, the man who has faith in God and is filled with joy at all that God is and all that God is for him. A joy that accompanies us through this world and will remain for all of eternity!

Psalm 14

Lets turn now and take a look at the man of Psalm 14.
READ
For those with some familiarity with scripture and theology you will well notice that this Psalm is where Paul gets his doctrine of man, or more specifically of the effect of Adam’s fall on mankind as we were plunged into sin.
In this Psalm David describes what we will see is the whole mass of humanity outside of the people of God. There is a vast generality to what David has to say, we see that in this Psalm as the Lord looks down on the children of men (v.2) that they all have turned aside (v.3) there is none (v.3) who does good, not even one.
As with Paul in Romans 1 and so here many have made efforts to say that this is not a general description of all of humanity outside of the people of God but it really stretches the bounds of language and sentence structure to say, apply this only to a smaller group of people, say the localized enemies of Israel or even of David himself. Obviously this is being applied at the time David wrote it to these groups but the clear implication of the text is that these people are acting the way that they do in their opposition to God’s people because of their natural state as part of the fallen family of Adam.

Fools

David calls these people fools. This is not name calling! No, David is making an honest statement about their state of being. To be a fool is to lack sense or sound judgement and David calls these people fools for a specific reason.
Paul will argue in the book of Romans that to say there is no God is utterly foolish because God has made himself manifest through His world and through writing His law on the hearts of even wicked men. There is no one, Paul, tells us who will be able to raise an excuse on judgement day and say that there was no way that they could have know that God existed, none of the haughty atheist arguments against the existence of God will stand on that day when all of sinful humanity stands before their maker! Those arguments will melt like wax beneath a flame!
Now we also need to understand two additional faucets of this statement, “There is no God.”
The first is that one might argue that there are plenty of lost people who none the less claim in actuality to believe in a god or in many gods. How can this Psalm be correct in stating that they say there is no God when indeed many say quite the opposite.
We need to understand something of our doctrine of God. We understand that there is only one God and that He is eternal and triune in nature and that from Him came all things that were created and that all things continue to remain in existence because He upholds them by His own power.
Many Christian philosophers and apologist have exhausted much ink arguing far more effectively that I can do myself for the fact that the Biblical understanding of who God is is the only understanding of God that comports with the reality that we see around us. No other claim to deity by any other religion has the capacity to put forth a deity that has explanatory power for the world that we live in. Therefore any other claim to deity is in fact a claim to be that which is not in fact God. There is only one God who comports with the reality of the world that we see around us; and any claim to a God different in nature and substance than the Biblical God is, in reality, a claim to there being no God, or not God. So even those who claim to follow a different God are in actuality claiming that there is no God, there is no such God as our God, the only God that comports with the world in which we live, the world that He created.

The Heart of a Fool

The second faucet of this claim that we need to see, and I believe that this is much more important for us today, is the source of the statement “there is no God.” Notice David doesn’t say that these people say this with their mouths, no, they say in their hearts there is no God.
Now there are plenty of atheist who are willing to say with their mouth that there is no God. Matthew 12 tells us that it is out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks and so it is not odd to assume that those who say with their hearts that there is no God would sooner or later say that with their lips.
However, the point that I am driving us toward is that there may be those who are willing to say with their mouth that God exists, yes that even the God of the Bible exists; and yet by their lives, by their lack of faith and trust in Him, by their refusal to submit to His law, ways, and purposes, they proclaim no less loudly before God Himself, the one who sees and knows the heart of every man, that their is no God.
This category of people I believe encompasses a far larger group of people than the militant atheist group. Our society, indeed often our churches are full of people willing to say there is a God with their mouths but who say in their hearts, by the way that they live their lives, the places where they place their hopes and longings, that there is no God.
This is tragic but it highlights perfectly the difference between the man of Psalm 13 and his relation to God and the man of this Psalm and his. The man of the last Psalm so loves God, has such faith in God, such hope and trust, that not only is he willing to submit to God but He is willing to even endure tribulation and trials and yet not allow those dark times to cause him to falter in his belief in and obedience to God. Oh yes, from a wordly point of view David had every right to deny that God even existed and yet he did not, he cast his hopes and confidence ever more readily upon his God as the times got ever more bleak.
The man of this Psalm though does no such thing. He desires to live as he wishes to live, to be as Eve wanted to be in the garden, as the serpent had tempted her, to be a god unto herself, determining for herself what was right and good and choosing to pursue that which was pleasing to her eye.
This is why David and later Paul could say that these people don't do anything good. The objection is raised that people often do seemingly good things, and yet we know that they don't do them out of service to God but rather out of service, ultimately, and I will stake it all on this, that ultimately any act done by a person outside of service to God, is done in service to their own self, no matter how selfless the act may seem. This is the point of the text, they say there is no God that they might become a god unto themselves.
We see though the result of this way of life in verse 5:

There they are in great terror,

for God is with the generation of the righteous.

I would like to read what Spurgeon said about these verses because I cant even get close to articulating it this well.
Speaking first of this fear of the ungodly Spurgeon says:

“there were they in great fear.” A panic terror seized them: “they feared a fear,” as the Hebrew puts it; an undefinable, horrible, mysterious dread crept over them. The most hardened of men have their periods when conscience casts them into a cold sweat of alarm. As cowards are cruel, so all cruel men are at heart cowards. The ghost of past sin is a terrible spectre to haunt any man, and though unbelievers may boast as loudly as they will, a sound is in their ears which makes them ill at ease

Then he takes up the second line and says of God’s being with the generation of the righteous:

“For God is in the generation of the righteous.” This makes the company of godly men so irksome to the wicked because they perceive that God is with them. Shut their eyes as they may, they cannot but perceive the image of God in the character of his truly gracious people, nor can they fail to see that he works for their deliverance. Like Haman, they instinctively feel a trembling when they see God’s Mordecais. Even though the saint may be in a mean position, mourning at the gate where the persecutor rejoices in state, the sinner feels the influence of the believer’s true nobility and quails before it, for God is there. Let scoffers beware, for they persecute the Lord Jesus when they molest his people; the union is very close between God and his people, it amounts to a mysterious indwelling, for God is in the generation of the righteous.

There us an unnerving disquiet that haunts those who say there is no God. A specter of their own sins and the knowledge that they are actually unable to deny as Paul tells us, that there truly is a God, the God of sacred scripture, and though they seek to bury this truth under a heap of unrighteous self righteousness, yet they can not.

Gospel

Now as we close for today I want us to see what is the most amazing thing about these two Psalms set side by side!
You see as we have placed these two people side by side today we must realize, as we have already noted that all of us are born into the second group, born as men and women of Psalm 14. In the book of Romans Paul labors to show us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is not a man or woman or child for that matter in this world who is not born with the innate desire to be the god of their own lives. Humanity cherishes and almost worships autonomy.
What are we to do then if as a result of our sin nature we are all enemies of God and can be said to not even seek for Him? How is it that from this mass of Adams there arises a David? Where do righteous men come from in this world of sin?
Romans Chapter 5 starting in verse 6 tells us:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

All those apart from Christ are enemies of God, destined for judgement and the fierce wrath of the God who will rightly judge the world and all the wickedness of sinful people.
But God has not left us there, has not left us without hope. For those who will hear this call of the gospel, of the good news about Jesus Christ, and will confess their sinfulness to God, relinquish control of their own lives back into His almighty hands, and by faith submit to Him as their savior and Lord they will find that God has sent His Son Jesus to die on the cross to take upon Himself their sin and its penalty so that they can be made righteous, made into the man of Psalm 13 and we see here that this man who has come to Christ in Romans 5 has found as the man of Palm 13 did, a vast and unending joy, “more than that” Paul says, “we rejoice in God.”

But I have trusted in your steadfast love;

my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

6  I will sing to the LORD,

because he has dealt bountifully with me.

Or as Paul says later on in Romans 8:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Does that describe you today? I hope and pray that it does and that if it does not, if you are perhaps one who yet says either in your heart, or with your heart and mouth that there is no God, I pray that today might be the day when you fall to your knees and submit yourself to Him and find salvation for your soul.
For those who have done so, I pray that we might be often reminded of the treasure of the assurance, peace, and joy that is ours because of what Christ has done, that we might, as David did, even in the midst of unimaginably difficult, painful, and trying circumstances, know the joy that comes from being His.
I am reminded of the words of a familiar hymn,
Wonderful grace of Jesus reaching the most defiled
by its transforming power making me God’s dear child
Purchasing peace and heaven for all eternity
for the wonderful grace of Jesus, reaches me.
​
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