Psalm 14

Fools Don’t Know

Big Idea: Fools in their corruption don’t understand that God defends the godly and will restore their fortunes.

Intro

There is a scene in the movie Avengers where Loki is in Germany. He has stolen the Tesseract from Asgard and is using it to terrorize people. He commands everyone to kneel and goes on a long monologue about how this is the natural state of humans to kneel before the gods. But then in the middle of his speech, an old man stands up and says, “Not to men like you.” Loki responds, “There are no men like me.” To which the old man says, “There are always men like you.” Loki then fires up his weapon to blast the old man, when Captain America shows up and blocks the blast with His shield, saving the old man.

This trope is very common in stories. The bully picks on someone weaker than him, only to find someone much stronger step in to rescue them. That is a little of what is going on in Psalm 14. But the Psalmist takes a circuitous route to get there by noting the universal condition of man as radically corrupt. With God’s assessment of mankind, the Psalmist descends into the particulars to lament the fact that this corruption is seen within the covenant community. So corrupt fools eat up the godly and humiliate the poor. The problem is fools don’t understand that the LORD stands behind the godly and will defend them and restore their fortunes. Singing Psalm 14 has the intended effect of building our confidence in the LORD who is with us, who is our refuge. It also gives us a telling portrait of the corruption of mankind, which serves as an opportunity for us to give thanks for the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in cleansing our corrupt hearts and enabling us to seek Him and to do good.

Psalm 14

Total Depravity

What does it mean to be “good?” “And Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.’” (Mk 10:18). When we measure against each-other, man to man, we may, in some sense, be able to say, this person is good, and that person is not. But when measured against the standard of righteous we, none of us, come out looking good.

The reformers’ favorite flower, the TULIP, is the acronym used to counter the Arminian Remonstrants. The “T” stands for Total Depravity. Total means that every aspect of man’s nature is corrupt, dead in sin. But what is sin?

What is sin? Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, any law of God, given as a rule to the reasonable creature. (WLC#24)

I am constantly surprised when I talk with Christians that they don’t really understand what sin is. This is partly because biblical literacy even among Christians in the west, is at an all-time low. Sin is anything that is out of conformity with, or a transgression of, the law of God. Meaning there is a positive aspect and a negative aspect. Sin is not only killing your neighbor but also not loving them properly as God has commanded. Which is why I often commend the Larger Catechism’s exposition of the law in questions 103-148. There they give helpful guidance both on what the law requires and what it forbids that will guide your practice and confession.

But where did sin come from, and how does it spread? The Catechism teaches:

Q. 21. Did man continue in that estate wherein God at first created him?

A. Our first parents being left to the freedom of their own will, through the temptation of Satan, transgressed the commandment of God in eating the forbidden fruit; and thereby fell from the estate of innocency wherein they were created.

Q. 22. Did all mankind fall in that first transgression?

A. The covenant being made with Adam as a public person, not for himself only, but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him in that first transgression.

Q. 23. Into what estate did the fall bring mankind?

A. The fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery.

While this psalm doesn’t give us the origin story of sin, its helpful to have that in the background. Every covenant member singing Psalm 14 would have the story of the fall in his mind as he reflected on the pervasive corruption of mankind in vv. 1-3. As Paul said in Romans 5:12: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—” (Ro 5:12).

Sin spreads through ordinary generation, that is, covenantally. Since you were in Adam when he sinned, it was as if you personally sinned. So from him you inherited a corrupt nature, and from that corruption come the “abominable deeds” of v. 1.

Some in the church have taught otherwise, denying the covenantal nature of sin, and stating that we are not sinners until we sin. Usually these will maintain that there is some arbitrary age in your life when you reach the age of accountability and are then responsible for your sins. But that is not what Scripture teaches. For it teaches that you sin because you are a born sinner. “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Ps 51:5). Paul, paraphrasing v. 1, says, “None is righteous, no not one” (Rom. 3:10).

Indeed, v. 3 could be a summary of our collective fall in Adam, for “all have turned aside” and “become corrupt.” For it can be rightly said of Adam that when he listened to the lie of the serpent over against listening to the word of God, he was the fool saying in his heart, “There is no God.” That is not a skeptical statement about the existence of God. The fool knows perfectly well there is a God, only he refuses to acknowledge Him and submit to His will. “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” (Ro 1:21). So the fools inner dialogue leads him to morally reject God, and go His own way–the way of the corrupt heart which is towards “abominable deeds.”

So when God looks and sees mankind, he sees no one understands, no one seeks after Him, arising chiefly from their inability because of their being dead in sin. John Murray puts it this way in his commentary on Romans 3:

In the noetic sphere there is no understanding; in the conative there is no movement towards God. With reference to God all men are noetically blind and in respect of Godward aspiration they are dead.1

Noetic means simply thinking, in our thoughts, all of us are born blind. Such that we are incapable of seeking God. It’s the noetic effect of sin that darkens the understanding and leads “fools” to “eat up” the people of God “as they eat up bread” and “not call upon the Lord.” Fools simply don’t know.

Fools Don’t Know

What don’t fools know? A lot, but with Psalm 14, primarily that God is with the generation of the righteous, that he is their refuge. In v. 4, the psalmist has moved from singing about the universal plight of mankind to speaking about its particular manifestation within the covenant community. We notice this not only in his reference to “my people” but also the use of God’s covenant name. Fools only know God, Elohim, but they do not know the covenant LORD Yahweh.

Because they are corrupt, one of their abominable deeds is to devour the godly. This means that for their benefit they abuse God’s people. The fall of man into sin, and God’s subsequent plan to save man from this sin introduced an enmity between what the Lord defines as the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”” (Ge 3:15).

So sin introduced enmity. Where there was once harmony, now some will hate others. We see the effects of this immediately in the story of Cain and Able. Cain, representing the seed of the serpent, devours his brother Able because he allowed sin to rule over him. Part of this story is to highlight that there is a godly line and there is a wicked line. The trouble is the wicked don’t know that what stands behind the godly line is the LORD.

V. 5 might sound strange given that this Psalm is a lament that the wicked are devouring the godly. What the psalmist is doing is anticipating (by faith) what the wicked will discover when God pulls back the curtain and reveals that He defends the godly. You could translate v. 5 as the NET Bible does, this way: “They are absolutely terrified, for God defends the godly.” (Ps 14:5). For that is what it means when God is “with” the generation of the righteous. There, “generation” does not mean only those then living, but in Hebrew it can also mean a whole class of people. So it may be better translated as the godly, or the righteous. And if God is with them, then he defends them. So the Psalmist imagines the fear that will seize the wicked when they discover the truth.

“It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”” (Jude 14–15).

God defends the godly. In ignorance, the wicked persecute the godly, just as God had made clear in Genesis 3, but that’s not the whole story. For it’s not the one who can destroy the body that we are to fear, but him who can throw body and soul into hell (Mt. 10:28). The wicked seek to shame, or humiliate the plans of the righteous, not knowing that God is their refuge. What a huge mistake to make to underestimate your enemy. That God fights for the godly is a terrifying prospect for fools.

But for you, it is the source of the greatest comfort. And this is what I am at pains to show you; why we must sing the song of Psalm 14. So that we will always be reminded that God is with you, that he will defend you, that he is a place of refuge in time of need. Yes the wicked my be devouring you, yes it may even feel like God is not there, as if he has abandoned you and you are alone, but that’s only because you have forgotten the truth–that God is with you. He is with the godly and will, sometimes in this life, but always in the life that is to come, terrify the wicked with His righteous judgments. When in that day he brings to light what was always true–the LORD is with you.

But singing Psalm 14 is not just a reminder for the godly to wait on the LORD, it is also a warning to the wicked. If you continue to devour the godly, God will terrify you in His wrath. So turn and repent, who knows whether the LORD might relent, and turn and be gracious to you. The classic example of this is the Apostle Paul. He serves as a cautionary tale, for there are many who, in their zeal for the Lord, are actually devouring God’s people. We see this when Jesus confronted Saul on the road to Damascus.

“But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” (Ac 9:1–5).

Why are you persecuting me, here displayed is the truth we sing in Psalm 14. That God is with the godly. He is so identified with His people that what happens to them can be said to happen to Him. They are one, as a head is one with its body. In Saul’s case, God had plans to turn him from devouring the godly to giving his life for them. So it is when we sing Psalm 14, we do so with the prayer that God would use it to subdue those wicked who currently persecute the godly by opening their eyes to see the truth–God is with the godly.

I wonder if we stop to consider this when we slander someone who professes faith in Christ, especially online. We are so sure we are fighting for the right cause that we will persecute those in the church who do not align with our vision for the shape and nature of Christendom. But be careful, for if you speak against someone for whom Christ died to save, you are speaking against the LORD himself. If we internalized the message of Phil. 2 and evidenced much more humility in our conversations, even our conversations that take place online, we would be far less culpable for devouring the godly.

Now, this doesn’t mean we need to agree with everyone, or be theological pushovers as many “nice guys” are. Paul himself disagreed with Barnabas so sharply that they separated and no longer ministered together, at least for a time. But there is no evidence whatsoever that either slandered the other. There is evidence, however, that later on, they reconciled (cf. Col 4:10; Phm 24; 2 Tim 4:11). In our fractious age, we are too prone to declare quickly that one is an enemy when in reality there may only be subtle differences between us. Be careful that you do not join the ranks of the wicked by devouring the godly in your pursuit of guarding the truth. Especially online.

There is much the wicked don’t know, but you, if indeed you belong to Christ, must know that God is with the godly, and you must be reminded that He will restore the fortunes of His people.

God Will Restore

Most of the lament Psalms end with a confident confession of Faith and Psalm 14 is no exception. The Psalmist ends with faith-filled plea for the LORD’s salvation. As he asks, he hopes, and so draws confidence despite the troubling truth that fools are “eating up” the people of God. You can’t face trouble without hope, and you can't have hope unless you confidently believe that God can, and will save.

Notice in v. 7 that his plea is that the LORD would deliver His people. He longs for salvation from the Lord. Notice that the salvation the psalmist longs for is corporate, he waits on the Lord to save Israel. We know it is the Lord who saves not only from the second stanza of v. 7, but also because of the location that salvation would come from–out of Zion. Zion is one hill Jerusalem is on. It was originally the fortress of the Jebusites that David took in 2 Sam. 5:7. Later, David placed the Ark of the Covenant there in a tent. The Ark being the throne of God; it symbolized His presence among His people. Soon Zion became equated with the name Jerusalem and represented God’s dwelling place.

But there are no random events, or mere happenstances when it comes not only to places and names but also their references in Scripture. David is speaking as a prophet. For these psalms are not merely his prayers set to song to entertain people but to teach and to prepare. And he said much more than I think he knew. So David prepares the people of God to look for salvation to come from Zion, the Holy City of our God.

Now, this salvation is not merely deliverance from fools, but from the corrupting influence of sin, which makes one a fool. Sin, as we have seen, has corrupted us, none excepted. The fact that there is a generation of the righteous is owing only to God’s marvelous grace. So it isn’t that the psalmist merely wishes that God would destroy the wicked, but that he would deal with what makes them wicked, namely sin.

To be delivered from sin means to be delivered from its corrupting influence and power over you. As Paul says, “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin.” (Ro 6:6–7). So, singing our plea for the LORD to save, does two things simultaneously. First, it reminds us of our own salvation, and calls on God to save others, I daresay even those fools devouring God’s people whom we once were.

Restoring our fortunes might give the wrong impression, as if salvation was merely monetary. So that when the Lord saves, it means moving from being poor to being rich. While in a spiritual sense that is certainly true, the reality is much deeper. Restoration alludes to recovering something that was lost. When mankind fell in Adam’s sin, we lost something, what theologians call original righteousness. One German theologian, Heinrich Heppe in His *Reformed Dogmatics put it this way.

“Original righteousness was (1) the light in man’s mind by which he knew God and His will; (2) the writing of God’s law in his heart, by which he inclined to obey Him, and the uprightness of the whole man, by which the spirit was subject to God, the soul to the spirit, the body to the soul and was obedient; (3) the acceptance of the whole man, by which he was pleasing to and accepted by God.2

Restoration is then a recovery of righteousness. Romans 5, as I alluded to earlier when we considered the fall of man and the spread of sin’s corruption, Paul continues in v. 17 to show the effect of one man’s righteousness.

“For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” (Ro 5:17–19).

So we, by faith recover righteousness through justification. In that great act of salvation, God, for the sake of Jesus Christ, and on the basis of His perfect life and sacrificial death, pardons your guilt and accounts you righteous in His sight. “Oh, that salvation would come out of Zion” has been answered when God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, came and took on flesh to dwell among us. He came and preached saying, “the kingdom of God is at hand.” He restored the fortunes of His people by healing the sick, opening the eyes of the blind and even raising the dead, all bearing witness to the New creation life He was ushering in. And during His life He perfectly obeyed His Father and suffered and died in the place of His people, to save them from sin. Fittingly, all this took place “from Zion.” Then, fifty days after He ascended to heaven, He poured out His Spirit upon the church on Pentecost, again also in Jerusalem.

As I said, singing psalm 14 reminds you “out of Zion” salvation has come. It reminds you that when God calls you to salvation, he does so from those “fools” who were corrupt and darkened in their understanding and did not seek God. When he calls you, he gives you a new heart, enabling you to respond to the gospel so that the exact opposite is true. Now you not only understand, but you seek God and find Him. So as we sing and we rejoice that God has given us so great a salvation, we give thanks and praise to the one who did not leave us in that lost and dead condition.

When we sing Psalm 14, we also call on God to continue His saving work from “out of zion.” The confession says,

The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. (WCF 23.2)

You cannot be saved, ordinarily outside of the church. The church is your mother. Calvin said,

For there is no other way to enter into life unless this mother conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us at her breast, and lastly, unless she keep us under her care and guidance until, putting off mortal flesh, we become like the angels [Matt. 22:30]. Our weakness does not allow us to be dismissed from her school until we have been pupils all our lives. Furthermore, away from her bosom one cannot hope for any forgiveness of sins or any salvation, as Isaiah [Isa. 37:32] and Joel [Joel 2:32] testify. Ezekiel agrees with them when he declares that those whom God rejects from heavenly life will not be enrolled among God’s people [Ezek. 13:9]. On the other hand, those who turn to the cultivation of true godliness are said to inscribe their names among the citizens of Jerusalem [cf. Isa. 56:5; Ps. 87:6]. For this reason, it is said in another psalm: “Remember me, O Jehovah, with favor toward thy people; visit me with salvation: that I may see the well-doing of thy chosen ones, that I may rejoice in the joy of thy nation, that I may be glad with thine inheritance” [Ps. 106:4–5 p.; cf. Ps. 105:4, Vg., etc.]. By these words God’s fatherly favor and the especial witness of spiritual life are limited to his flock, so that it is always disastrous to leave the church.3

The Author of Hebrews encourages the saints that they have not come to Sinai with all its fear and trembling.

“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” (Heb 12:22–24).

The reality is the church is much more than meets the eye. The church is that glorious city all the saints sing of since out of her the LORD brings salvation. So God continues to gather His scattered sheep, restoring their fortunes by calling them through the ministry of the church to faith in the Son. There is no such thing as a lone Christian. If you have been united to Christ by faith, then you have been united to His body, the Church. The confession continues:

Unto this catholic visible Church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints, in this life, to the end of the world: and doth, by His own presence and Spirit, according to His promise, make them effectual thereunto.

And that’s the mission of the church. Gathering (evangelism) and perfecting (worship and discipleship) God continues to use to effectually save His people.

What other response is possible but glad rejoicing? The mirthful singing of praise to the one who came down into the darkness of this sinful world was devoured by fools in death, but defeated it and set the captives free. What a fitting song to sing as we traverse from the depths of sin to ascend in worship with all the saints up to the heavenly Jerusalem, Mount Zion. Christians ought to be the most joyful people in the world. For you once were dead in sins but now have been made alive in Christ. So don’t tell me you don’t have something to sing for, don’t tell me your circumstances just don’t allow you to be joyful. For I will only point and say, “Your salvation has come out of Zion! The Lord has restored your fortunes, let the church rejoice, let all His people be glad!” Amen.

Lord’s Supper Meditation

Now, the table of the Lord has been called the Eucharist, which means thanksgiving. And one of the traditional elements in a Eucharistic liturgy was the sursum corda. The minister would say, “lift up your hearts,” and the people would respond by saying, “We lift them up to the Lord!” And this was done to remind the people of God where they actually live. Paul says, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Col 3:1–3). Your life is with God, for he is with the generation of the godly. And this meal is a reminder of all that God promises you. It’s a reminder that God is with you, that he is your refuge, that he defends the godly, and that your salvation has come out of Zion and your fortunes have been restored since you have been made righteous in Christ. But while we live in the time between singing as we do Psalm 14, Jesus gives us this meal to strengthen our faith as we as pilgrims and sojourners continue to make our way to the heavenly city, Zion, city of our God. So come, and rejoice in your salvation, giving thanks to Christ, who turned you from a fool and placed you in His church among the godly. Come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

Charge

Fools in their corruption don’t understand that God defends the godly and will restore their fortunes. When you sing Psalm 14, you remind them of this, even as you draw confidence knowing that from Zion your salvation has come, that the Lord has restored what was lost because of sin and has made you righteous. So rejoice in the Lord and be glad in the God of your salvation. Amen.

1 John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, vol. 1, The New International Commentary on the Old and New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1968), 103. ↩

2 Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics., ed. Ernst Bizer, trans. G. T. Thomson (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007), 239. ↩

3 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1 & 2, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 1016. ↩