Sermon Tone Analysis

Announcements

Free movie on January 21st at 7pm—screening of American Gospel: Christ Alone in the Auditorium.

Free admittance, drinks, and popcorn.

Door-to-door outreach ministry on January 29th at 10:30am in Chester Hill.

Let me remind you to continue worshiping the LORD through your giving.

To help you give, we have three ways for you to do so: (1) in-person giving can be done through the offering box at the front of the room; checks should be written to Grace & Peace and cash should be placed in an envelope if you want a receipt for it; debit, credit, and ACH transfers can be done either by texting 84321 with your $[amount] and following the text prompts or (3) by visiting us online at gapb.church and selecting giving in the menu bar.

Everything you give goes to the building up of our local church and the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Prayer of Repentance and Adoration

Sermon

Introduction

As you know, on Wednesday evenings, we’ve been working through an expositional series through the book of psalms.

Last week, I reintroduced the series and gave just a brief reminder of the purpose of the psalms prior to the message and I’d like to remind us again of the purpose of the book as we jump into Psalm 14 this evening.

Again, the book of psalms is unique when compared to other books in the Bible because the Psalms isn’t a narrative, it isn’t necessarily an historical record, and it isn’t like an epistle, which is letter meant to encourage and teach; though, it’s clear that there are narrative elements to the psalms, there are historical events in the psalms, and they definitely encourage and teach.

The book of psalms is a compilation of poems written by various authors during a multitude of different events all for the purpose of being utilized for the musical worship of the LORD.

In many ways, we can look at it like an ancient hymnal meant to be utilized for Israel to worship God through singing.

Now, of course, there’s a few differences, which you can ask me about after the service, but the point is that the psalms exist as a hymnal of sorts for the Jewish people to musically worship the LORD.

Unlike many of our modern-day worship songs, which emphasize joy, happiness, and an upbeat tempo, many of the psalms are actually more reflective, possibly at a slower tempo, and don’t always emphasize joy and happiness.

This evening’s psalm is another one of those psalms in which it’s clearly more reflective than joyous, though it does end with great joy.

Psalm 14 was written “To the choirmaster” of or by David—it was meant to be sang by a choir for musical worship and it was written by King David.

We aren’t sure on the timeline of when it occurred or why it was written, we simply know that David wrote it as he reflected on the state of mankind.

Now, there is something that I do want to point out before we dig into Psalm 14 and it’s this, Psalm 53 is very similar to Psalm 14. It’s almost identical and you might question why there are so many similarities between these two psalms.

I think, when I first introduced this series, that I mentioned that we were working through the psalms by book and between each book, we would take a break.

The book of psalms isn’t one large compilation of psalms, it’s actually five compilations that have been put side by side.

Book one is chapters 1-41

Book two is chapters 42-72

Book three is chapters 73-89

Book four is chapters 90-106

And Book five is chapters 107-150.

Chapters 1-2 provide an introduction of sorts to the whole collection of 150 psalms, whereas chapter 150 provides a doxology for the entire collection of psalms.

Scholars believe that each book was given to a different group of Israelites depending on their geographic location; and thus, everyone in Israel could continue to worship the LORD musically, even when not in Jerusalem.

On occasion, some of the psalms are very similar to other psalms in different books—Psalm 14 and Psalm 53 happen to be one of those occasions.

Psalm 14 is in book one; Psalm 53 is in book two—and they’re similar so that people in different areas of Israel could still utilize the concepts found in both psalms to worship the LORD musically.

It’s of note because anytime Scripture repeats something it adds emphasis to the importance of what it says.

Keep that in mind as we study Psalm 14 together this evening.

Let’s read Psalm 14.

As we study this passage together, we’re going to break it into three parts: (1) Vss.

1-3, An Assessment of Mankind; (2) Vss.

4-6, The Punishment of the Wicked; and (3) Vs. 7, The Coming Kingdom.

The psalmist starts by reflecting on the evil and the wickedness of mankind and by doing so, he explains what we typically refer to as the total depravity of man—that prior to salvation, mankind is utterly wicked.

He then transitions into talking about the impending punishment who remain in wickedness; and then he ends, by reflecting on God’s salvation of his people and the establishment of his Kingdom.

This psalm helps believers to understand the utter wickedness of unbelievers, that mankind isn’t genuinely good prior to salvation.

It’ll also help us to understand that God is right in the punishment of wickedness, but as his people, we can rejoice in the coming kingdom.

Prayer for Illumination

An Assessment of Mankind (1-3)

David starts his psalm with a statement that not only contradicts how a lot of people in our modern-day world thinks, but he says it in a way that might sound harsh, but its truth is vitally important for us to understand today.

“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”

I say that this is counter-cultural because it seems as if there are quite a few people who believe that there isn’t a God today—Pew Research states that approximately 60% believe that there is some form of a higher being (whether that being is the God of Christianity is a different story) and that only about 5-6% of the American population will outrightly claim that God doesn’t exist.

Of course there are many variable to take into account, but the majority seem to actually believe in some sort of God.

Psalm 14 highlights the ones that say that there is no God by outrightly calling the ones who claim that there is no God fools.

Merriam-Webster says that a fool is “a person lacking in judgment or prudence.”

To call someone a fool means that they are thinking or acting in a way that lacks sense.

When the Bible calls someone a fool it implies godlessness, corruption, and sinfulness.

Psalm 14:1 starts by calling those who reject God and claim that there is no God in their heart fools.

This is beyond simply making the verbal statement that God doesn’t exist; the Bible says that they’ve said it in their heart that God doesn’t exist.

Their inner person or their inner being doesn’t believe that God exists and that’s who the Bible calls a fool.

One who doesn’t just claim verbally not to believe, but wholeheartedly disbelieves in their very being—their mind, their heart, their inner self rejects God.

The Bible calls this person a fool—a person who rejects God with their inner being is one who lives, thinks, and acts, in a way that lacks sense.

But the Bible doesn’t stop by calling them a fool, it explores the depths of their depravity through lines two and three of vs. 1, “They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good.”

This verse again goes against the grain of modern-day thinking concerning who man is.

Many people hold to the false idea that man is genuinely good, but they sometimes make foolish decisions; man is morally upright, they just get tripped up on occasion.

The reality is as Psalm 14 says, that they’re all corrupt doing abominable deeds—there is no such thing as a genuinely good person or a morally upright person apart from God. Psalm 14:1 makes that abundantly clear.

David reiterates this truth in vs. 3, “there is none who does good, not even one,” and then it’s actually repeated by the apostle Paul in Romans 3:9-20.

To think that mankind apart from God isn’t wicked, is to go against what Scripture itself says.

In addition, this verse goes against modern-day philosophical ideas in that many in our modern-day period believe that people are born as a tabula rasa or blank slate.

Many people today believe that people are born morally neutral and how they end up as an adult is simply a result of how they were raised.

There is some truth in that statement, that your childhood effects your adulthood, but there’s two errors in the tabula rasa thinking—(1) it assumes that man is born neutral and (2) it removes culpability from the person and places it on someone else.

In reality, mankind isn’t born morally neutral.

In fact, we know from Psalm 14 that all mankind is morally corrupt doing abominable deeds without God and we know from Genesis 3 that this corruption starts at the moment of birth.

And that the individual chooses to continue in wickedness rather than following God.

This is what David is reflecting on in Psalm 14—that mankind is corrupt and they refuse to follow God.

Now, of course, you read that “they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good” and it might cause you to question whether that’s a legitimate statement.

FIrst off, let me answer that by saying that it is Scripture, these are the very Words of God and because they’re the Words of God, who is only truthful, you can rest assured that what he says is true.

But for someone who isn’t coming to this with the presupposition that God is only ever truthful, you might read this and think, “But I know plenty of people who have rejected God and do good things.”

Let me ask you to consider what James writes in James 2:10-11 “10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.

11 For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.”

If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.”

Our finite minds think of sin as separate entities and our sinful nature causes us to categorize sins by severity—so, telling a white lie isn’t as bad as stealing from someone; stealing from someone isn’t as bad as taking someone’s life.

Taking someone’s life isn’t as bad as blasphemy.

And so on and so forth, we justify our sins by comparing our sins to the sins of others.

We’re like the Pharisee who prays in the temple and thanks God that he isn’t like the sinner next to him.

The reality is, that James 2:10-11 teaches us that God doesn’t view sin by degree, he views all sins equally as transgressions against the Law—so if you break any part of the Law, you’re guilty of it all.

In God’s view, a white lie breaks the whole Law; theft breaks the whole law; murder breaks the whole law; and blasphemy breaks the whole Law.

What David is saying in Psalm 14 is that those who are without God break the entire Law and thus nothing that they can do is good in light of their transgressions of the Law.

As transgressors of the Law, everything they do isn’t good because it’s colored in light of their transgressions.

It isn’t until the person repents and believes that their good works are seen in the light of righteousness from God and they’re no longer identified by corruption and abominable deeds.

But David’s focus here is on those who haven’t repented; that have refused God.

And he continues in vss.

2-3, “The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.”

David states that God is looking down from heaven on the children of man—and it paints an image of God looking around the clouds to see what mankind is like.

Which, let me be clear, isn’t exactly the truth.

This is an anthropomorphism, which simply means that David is utilizing human attributes to explain God’s actions.

If you think with me, God is Spirit and he doesn’t have a physical body in the sense that we do.

So, he doesn’t exactly have eyes and a face that’s looking down from heaven to the earth.

But this anthropomorphism gives us a pretty vivid image of what this is like—God is watching mankind and it’s actually not the first time that the Bible describes God doing this.

Genesis 6:11-12 talks about the corruption of mankind prior to the flood, “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sign, and the earth was filled with violence.

And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.”

Genesis 11:5 during the Tower of Babel incident, the Bible says, “And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.”

God watches mankind to see how man acts, reacts, and thinks.

We call this his omnipresence and his omniscience, his ability to be in all places at all times to see what is happening and to know what is happening.

David says that God is watching the children of man and he’s specifically looking for something.