Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 14 | Date: August 13, 2023 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Psalm 14

Psalm 14. Notice in the superscript, this is another Psalm of David. Beginning with verse one:

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt. They do abominable deeds. There’s none who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They’ve all turned aside. Together they have become corrupt. There’s none who does good, not even one. Have they no knowledge? All the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon the Lord? There they are in great terror, for God is with the generation of the righteous. You would shame the plans of the poor, but the Lord is his refuge. Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion when the Lord restores the fortunes of his people. Let Jacob rejoice. Let Israel be glad.

Let’s bow together for prayer.

Our Father, we come to your word. We have been singing your word. We have prayed according to your word. We have given in response of your word coming to us. And now we come to hear your word, and we pray that you will open our eyes and our ears and our hearts to hear it well. We pray that you’ll give us through it a deeper understanding of this culture in which we live, to see it from your perspective, and we pray that through it you will also give us a deeper appreciation for the blessings that we have in the Lord Jesus. We pray in his name. Amen.

In the late 19th century, the famous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche made the statement that “God is dead.” That was picked up again—you might remember, some of you who are as old as I am—that was picked up again and made popular in the 1960s: God is dead. And there were a number of responses that were given to that from the Christian community, many of them very clever. I remember hearing one very eloquent response to it: “If God is dead, then who performed the autopsy on the deceased?” “If God is dead, why wasn’t I notified? I’m one of the family.” And one popular song you might remember: “If God is dead, then who is this living in my soul?” And those all, I think, serve a purpose; a point is made.

But of course, answering on that level misunderstands what Nietzsche was saying and what it was all about. He was not speaking ontologically, that is, in terms of what really is. After all, he was an atheist. He didn’t believe there was a God to die. He wasn’t thinking that God actually had died. What he is saying and what he meant was that the Christian God, specifically the God of the Bible, in the psyche of Western culture, was no longer there. So in effect, in terms of the Western culture’s common psyche, God had died. And he even said himself, God will continue to live in caves and various places for thousands of years. But in terms of the collective awareness of our society in Western culture, God is dead. It’s over.

Today we speak of it in terms of a post-Christian culture. And in fact, Nietzsche wasn’t even recommending the idea as a necessarily good thing. He was concerned that it would lead to despair on the parts of people, meaninglessness. If God doesn’t exist, if there is no God, then what’s the meaning of life? He wasn’t for any of that. He was actually concerned about a lot of that. He was also concerned about Western culture itself. It has long been recognized that Christianity lies at the very foundations of Western culture. And here are a few samples that just have come to mind to me as I was preparing the notes: Christianity lying at the foundations of Christian culture in art, education, science, politics, government, law, religious freedom, notions of justice, notions of human rights, notions of liberty, human dignity, notions of freedom, values and ethics, healthcare, philanthropy, monotheism. The idea that there’s just one God in our Western culture—if you’re going to deny God, you’re not denying many gods; it’s one God. That’s a leftover of the influence of Christianity. Ideas of the sanctity of life, human dignity, personal responsibility, value of work, work ethic—all of these things that we take for granted and form a common psyche in our culture come to us straight from the belief in God and specifically the belief in the God of the Bible.

Now, with the Enlightenment, of course, all things began to change, and God was removed from the center. Human reason, instead, was put at the center of our culture, and not God and divine revelation. And so, with that, new thought structures began to emerge. We call them today belief structures or plausibility structures that we have. Those common ideas that float in the backgrounds of our minds that we all just take for granted and can say, “Well, it’s just always been that way. You don’t have to think about it. We all know that. Everybody knows that.” These common plausibility structures have changed with the so-called death of God and the relevance of God passing from our common psyche in our culture. The beliefs and the ways of thinking and how we do things—all of those things that we took for granted in a Christian culture increasingly now are not taken for granted, and the plausibility structures then that we have in our minds have changed.

So for example, we think so much in terms of science and our accomplishments, it’s very difficult anymore to think in terms of miracles. And if you can’t believe a miracle, Christianity itself is discredited. We no longer think of the world in terms of being created by God. We think of it in terms of evolving, arriving at where it is by an endless stream of natural accidents. We don’t think of the universe as governed by God. We think of the universe as governed by natural law. We don’t think of governments anymore in terms of divine right. We think of governments in terms of the right of the consent of the people.

In fact, there’s an interesting thing in the American history in that regard that shows the turn in thinking that was coming at the outset of our country. Thomas Jefferson writes, when he writes the Declaration, he writes: “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.” We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable. Give it to Benjamin Franklin, he scratches it out: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” And there already is that signal that Enlightenment thought has come to dominate our thinking in such a way that it’s less and less where God is relevant. With all of that, notions of sin and judgment have pretty much been erased in our common culture. In the formerly shared assumptions that we have of the idea of sin, the idea of judgment—because they are so incredible to us anymore, Christianity itself has become discredited. Our culture is becoming post-Christian.

Now, I should clarify something on that score. You hear some differing voices coming from this pulpit on this matter of post-Christian. You hear me talking about post-Christian culture, and then you’ll hear Pastor Boyd saying he just can’t believe that the world’s becoming post-Christian; he doesn’t like that idea. And we were talking about it recently in one of our elders meetings. He said, “I should probably clarify that for you.” He speaks in terms of the world, and there will never be a post-Christian world. God’s purpose will be fulfilled. And he’s certainly right in that. What I’m speaking of is in terms of this culture. So for example, Turkey—Asia Minor—in the early centuries of the church, it was a hotbed of Christianity. Turkey is not a hotbed of Christianity today. Northern Africa was a hotbed of Christianity. Alexandria, Egypt was a hotbed of Christianity. It’s not that anymore; it has passed.

And so for the last number of centuries, Western Christianity has been marked by the dominating influence of Christianity. Ever since the early centuries of this millennium when Christianity has made Christendom, it’s the official state religion, and increasingly Christianity has become the dominant influence in our culture. And in the last couple of hundred years in particular, it’s just been a bastion of Christian thinking and Christian theology, and it’s what dominates all of our thinking. But it’s becoming increasingly post-Christian, and Christianity’s moving to other cultures. We see it booming in places like South Korea, and China, and places where it wasn’t before. And even unbelieving critical philosophers who are critics of Christianity are themselves now writing books lamenting the idea that this passing of Christianity from Western culture will mean the demise of Western culture itself. We’re becoming post-Christian.

Well, it’s the same way then in terms of morals. We no longer think of morals as divinely given. And we don’t think of morals in terms of universal norms to become relativized. So the question then is, what comes of a culture’s moral standards when God is no longer relevant? What comes of a culture’s moral standards when God becomes irrelevant? The very insightful 19th-century Russian novelist, Dostoevsky, remarked famously—this is back more than 100 years ago—”If there is no God, then everything is permitted.” A few years ago on Books at a Glance, we featured a book by a man named Jerry Bergman who wrote a book called Darwinism and the Corrosion of Morality. It’s what we all know, but he has documented it. If we are just a matter of so much physical and biological material evolving to what we are, well then what is the very idea of morals? Where has that gone? And he’s documented in his book how this influence of Darwinism has corroded the morality of our society in the West. And in fact, Nietzsche himself was concerned that the loss of a God consciousness in our society would in fact bring out the worst in humanity.

So the question: how do we decide morals? But first, your only options are either one of two things: to democratize them—leave it up to the common consensus of the community—or to individualize them. The community decides what is right and what is wrong, what’s allowable. Or the individual decides: “It’s right for me; it’s not necessarily right or wrong for you, but it’s right or wrong for me.” These matters of truth are individually determined. And the only thing left after that, of course, is some totalitarian kind of rule that dictates what is right and wrong and allowable. And in fact, it’s no surprise that in the 20th century, we witnessed the rise of various “isms” that arose in the wake of God’s death, like most famously communism with its authoritarian structure and its utopian promise.

We’ve all witnessed in our own lifetime—if you’re as old as I am, at least—you’ve seen it in a striking way, the consequences of a post-Christian culture. We’ve seen the collapse, the complete collapse of a moral consensus in our society. In fact, we’ve seen the collapse of even a moral consciousness in our society. We’ve drifted from our Christian roots, and so everything else is just left up for grabs. And we hear it commonly in our common talk: “Who are you to tell me that this is wrong? Who are you to tell me that that is wrong?” We had the sexual revolution in the 1960s. Who are you to tell me that premarital sex is wrong? And of course, if you’ve surrendered the Bible and the God of the Bible, you can’t answer the question. And with that ground having been eroded underneath us—the common consensus of morality, the common standards of morality—they’re gone, and everything is up for grabs.

Or with the current crisis with regard to abortion: “Who are you to say that it’s wrong to kill that baby before it’s born?” Or as we have now: “Who are you to say it’s wrong to kill the baby after it’s born?” And we’ve seen in our society with this collapse of God awareness and a consensus of it, we’ve seen the rise of all kinds of evil and social ills. We see violence on the rise, divorce, fatherless children on the rise. We see irresponsibility, entitlements, all of this because there’s been an exclusion of God in our thinking. And with an exclusion of God in our thinking, morals collapse, and the concern is society itself will collapse as well. Well, all that to say that that problem is an old one. Psalm 14 is given to emphasize this very point, telling us that humanity has long been marked by its refusal of God, and it’s displayed in the rejection of God’s law. Verse 1: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.'” And as a result, “they are corrupt. They do abominable deeds. There is none who does good.”

Now we’ve been looking at the various forms of the Psalms to recognize what specific genre of Psalms each one is. This one, there is no particular form that is followed. Some have suggested that this then is a psalm of confidence, a psalm of trust in God because of the way it ends. It may be that it does not follow the common form of a psalm of trust, but there are exceptions. We’ve seen that, so it could be that. I tend to think we might better look at this as a wisdom psalm, where he is counseling us with regard to right and wrong. But however we classify it, the progress of thought in Psalm 14 is really pretty simple.

Universal Corruption Of Humanity

Verses 1 to 3, we have the universal corruption of humanity. Verses 4 to 6, the Lord’s punishment of the wicked and his preservation of the righteous. And then it ends with a plea in verse seven, with a plea for the salvation of Israel. So we have two stanzas of equal length, followed by a plea at the end in verse seven. Verses one to three express David’s contempt for the wickedness of the world. And then verses four to six, he assures the people of God of God’s presence with them and of the eventual destruction of the wicked. And then he concludes with verse seven, an anticipatory prayer, pleading with God to bring the salvation that has been promised, and then in fact, at the very end, praising God for the giving of that salvation that will come. Verse five, I think, summarizes the message well: “There they are in great terror, for God is with the generation of the righteous.”

All right, let’s work our way through the Psalm quickly. Verses 1 to 3 then emphasize the problem of humanity’s universal depravity. Humanity’s universal depravity. Notice how the end of verse 1 and then the end of verse 3 frame the verdict that there’s none who does good. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God,’ they are corrupt, they do abominable things, there is none who does good.” And then the end of verse three: “There is none who does good, not even one.” And then in between those, we have a graphic portrayal of God in search of any exceptions. “The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside. Together they have become corrupt.” That is to say, there’s only sinners everywhere. Just sinners everywhere. This is the consequence of excluding God from their thinking. Sin prevails everywhere. They’re convincing their conscience as far as they are able: “there is no God, there is no God, there is no God.” And so they behave accordingly. There’s no restraints; whatever furthers their own agenda is what is right. It’s right for them, and so that’s what they pursue.

And this is the problem of our culture today. Now it’s not yet fashionable in our culture to deny God outright—dogmatic atheism: “there is no God.” Rather, what we have in our culture, rather than a dogmatic atheism, is called a virtual atheism or a practical atheism. A virtual atheism is an atheism that doesn’t deny God outright, but it defines God in such a way that it leaves you virtually without him. Or practical atheism: “Oh yeah, there’s a God, but he makes no difference, he’s marginalized, he’s off to the side, it makes no difference in life.” Practical atheism. God, in either case, has been domesticated. We can still acknowledge his existence, but it doesn’t really matter that much. It’s like what we find in the Psalms and in the Proverbs, often where the wicked are saying, “Does God know?” Okay, they acknowledge God, but does he really know? And is he really going to judge us for that?

We hear it in our culture in different words. We don’t hear the spokesmen of our culture and the celebrities saying, “Does God know?” What they say is very smugly, “Well, you can believe in a God who judges sin if you want to, but I don’t want to believe in a God like that.” They say it just smugly and full of confidence. It always strikes me as though what you want to believe determines what actually is. Well, you can believe in that kind of God if you want. But in either way, God has been domesticated. And in the end, notions of sin and judgment are eliminated.

But notice now the problem here in verses one to three is much deeper than just behavior. Verse 2: the problem is not just behavior. The problem is the understanding. The problem is ambitions, desires, ideals, what they want, bias. The problem is not as though humanity is trying—”Oh, we’re trying to do better, and then we just kind of fail. You know, our reach exceeds our grasp. We don’t quite get there, but we really want to.” That’s not the problem. The problem is, verse 2, “none seek after God.” There’s a bias. There’s a proclivity to sin. Inwardly, there’s a corruption that drives them to sin and away from God. This is the desperate condition of the human heart. This is what we mean by total depravity. We don’t mean by that expression that every man is as wicked as he could possibly be and behaves in a way as wicked as he can possibly do. What we mean is he’s bad off as he can possibly be. He not only sins, but he sins because he wants to. He not only turns from God, but he turns from God because of an aversion to God.

Something has affected the understanding. You’ve heard us talk before about the noetic effects of sin. Sin has affected the mind and the heart. The desires and the ambitions and the drives are driven not by a desire to seek after God and to follow his will. We’re driven by an inward compulsion to sin and a proclivity to evil. And what he says here is that there is no exception. Verse one: “there’s none who does good.” Verse three: “they’ve all turned aside. Together they’ve become corrupt. There’s none who does good, not even one.” This is the universal state of fallen humanity, and it is not mitigated until God in regenerating grace comes and reshapes the mind and the heart and gives us new affections.

The Lord’s Punishment Of The Wicked

And so in verse 4, David addresses and describes the wicked. “Have they no knowledge? All the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon the Lord?” Notice that expression. It’s just a terrible one: “who eat up my people as they eat bread.” That is, verse 3, not only have they turned aside and together become corrupt, but verse 4, they eat up my people like they eat bread. That is, opposing and oppressing the people of God is as natural for them as eating. It’s just what they do. It’s who they are. It’s the demonstration of their depravity. You mark it down: increasing evil in a society is always marked by increasing oppression and opposition of the righteous. This is our culture’s progress. Rips me that we call pushing to the left into more evil—we call it “progressive,” as though it’s some positive spin to put on it. But this is the mark of our culture’s progress.

What before was considered evil became allowed and accepted. And then it became approved. And then it became celebrated. And then it becomes championed. And then we finally get to the point where we condemn those who don’t join the celebration. So that what was formerly considered—by the common consent of the people, even—considered evil, is now celebrated as the ideal and good. And those who don’t join in the celebration are themselves cancelled. We have, I just read it—was it this week or last?—a new law being passed in the state of Illinois where certain pro-life efforts have been criminalized. Isn’t that something? We’ve seen it with other laws that are coming where efforts toward detransitioning—or the term “deconversion”—that’s been criminalized in some ways. A person who’s become a homosexual and you try to influence him against that, a deconversion, that becomes a violation of his rights. A person who’s become a transsexual and you try to oppose that, that’s a violation of his rights. There is no end to the evil of a people who’ve excluded God from their thinking. And the one thing that they must do in the advance of their evil is to cancel and to get rid of the righteous who stand in the way. They eat up my people as they eat bread.

We are already today in Revelation 13 and following, where if you don’t take the mark of the beast, you have a hard time doing business here. It’s becoming increasingly—I was going to say difficult—impossible. It’s becoming nearly impossible for Christians to teach in the public education system. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for a Christian to serve in public office, to be a judge, because he holds certain beliefs that are not in keeping with public policy. And so David asks the question in verse four: “Have they no knowledge?” Don’t they know better? Don’t they understand what they’re doing? And of course, you and I know the answer. Of course they know better. In their heart of hearts, they know that God is, and they know that they are accountable and responsible to God, and they recognize inwardly, just intuitively, this basic right and wrong. It’s just inescapable. They’re made in the image of God, and God’s image is stamped on our soul, and you just can’t escape that. This awareness of God is not something that they’ve learned. It’s not something that’s been taught to them. People universally acknowledge that.

What they’re trying to do is get away from that. And they’re trying their best to convince themselves there is no God. “Have they no knowledge?” And the way David asks the question here is to anticipate a negative answer. No, they don’t. Of course they do. They act as though, to the best of their ability, they don’t know. They live in this dream world of imagined autonomy, where they’re not accountable to God. And that’s why in verse one, David says, “the fool.” It’s a fool who says in his heart, “There is no God.” In his heart of hearts, he knows better. It doesn’t say he “thinks” in his heart. He “believes” in his heart there is no God. He has to say it and say it and say it, convincing himself the best he can that there’s no God, he doesn’t matter, he doesn’t matter. “There is no God, there is no God, there is no God.” Going against what he recognizes to be the reality, he convinces himself otherwise. “There is no God. Okay, there’s a God, but he doesn’t judge.” And David says, with his heart full of concern for political correctness, says, “they’re fools.” Fool says in his heart. He persists in this imaginary autonomy; deep in his heart he knows better, and he continues to try to convince himself against it. Augustine, the fifth-century towering theologian, remarked that he who denies the existence of God has some reason for wishing that God did not exist. And that’s what David is saying here. The preference for sin is so strong that they deny what they know to be true.

Paul, of course, picks up on that in Romans chapter 1. Romans 1 to 3 is Paul’s inspired commentary on Psalm 14. He takes up these ideas and expounds them at length. He tells us that righteousness is known, God is known—they know it, they know it, they can’t help it, it’s in them intuitively. The created order declares that they can’t escape it, but they suppress it, and they suppress it, and they suppress it, and they suppress it. They put it down, put it down. “I won’t believe it, I won’t believe it.” And in the end, it’s unchecked evil. When Paul gets to the end of all of that, in Romans chapter 3 he summarizes it by quoting the first three verses of Psalm 14: “As it is written: ‘There is none righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.'” This is the universal problem of humanity in its fallenness. It is an outright rebellion against God. We saw that at the outset of the Psalter, didn’t we, in Psalm 2? The nations in a rage. “We won’t have it. We won’t have it. We won’t have it.”

So when we get to verse five, David warns the wicked: “There they are in great terror, for God is with the generation of the righteous. You would shame the plans of the poor, but the Lord is his refuge.” This verse may not be immediately clear. There are a couple of questions to interpret it. Number one: who is in view? Who’s the “they” who are in great terror? Well, given the fact that we have the righteous being oppressed and God taking sides with the righteous against the wicked, it’s pretty clear it’s the wicked then that are in terror. So the next question then is: when will they be in terror? They’re clearly not in terror right now. When will they be? Is it present or future? It’s pretty clear it has to be future. And what seems here is that David is envisioning a hopeful envisioning of a future judgment when God finally acts on behalf of the righteous and against the wicked. And at that point, the wicked will finally recognize and affirm what they have denied all along: that God is God. And so verses 5 and 6 tell us of the justice of God, the certainty of divine judgment, and his compassion for his people.

A Plea For The Salvation Of Israel

Verse 7, then, is a plea for deliverance. “Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion, when the Lord restores the fortunes of his people. Let Jacob rejoice. Let Israel be glad.” Oh, that this situation would be reversed, when the wicked no longer oppress the righteous, and the righteous are no longer under the heel of the wicked. Verse 7: plea for final judgment of the wicked, an affirmation of the vindication of the people of God, and then the last part of the verse calls us to rejoice in the anticipation of it. “Let Jacob rejoice and let Israel be glad.” That day is coming.

All right, so we’ve worked through the Psalm quickly. What are some of the takeaways? We’ve been doing this with many of the Psalms. What are some of the takeaways? What do we learn from this Psalm? And I’ve got a few here we’ll go through quickly. The first three having to do with lessons concerning our culture and viewing it and how we should view it from God’s perspective. And then last, a couple of observations that are more theologically oriented.

So what do we learn? The impossibility of secular morals. I want you to follow me on this. In June of 2014, a Pew Research survey told us that—they sent the question around—”Is belief in God necessary to be moral?” Is belief in God necessary for morality? The overwhelming, vast, overwhelming majority said, “Well, no, of course not. You don’t have to believe in God to be moral.” On one level, of course, that makes sense. You believe that people are basically good and many people, in fact, have morals that they live by and they don’t have any reference to God. So on one level, I guess that makes sense. But when I read those kinds of surveys, what strikes me is the question: where do you get this idea of “moral”? Where do you get this idea of “moral” without God? You take away that standard, that authority, and where does it come from? Where do you get this idea of good, bad, right, wrong, just, “ought”? Where do you get these ideas, absent God? By what authority do you determine?

So, for example, is slavery wrong? Why is it wrong? A given society wants to have slavery, a certain element of the society enslaved. What’s wrong with that? Racism—is that wrong? Sexual assaults—is that wrong? What makes it wrong? Now of course you and I know the answer to that. We’re made in the image of God, there’s human dignity, there’s a sanctity of human life, and there’s all kinds of reasons why all of these things are wrong. If a society, a given society, gathers together and collectively consents that a given part of that society should be enslaved, or there should be institutional racism, and there can be prejudice against, and they don’t get the same kind of—you and I know that there are all kinds of things wrong with that, and we have good reason for it, and it starts with God. Remove that from your thinking, what makes it so wrong?

In fact, one of the favorite arguments of the new atheists today—new atheists are simply old atheists with more sophisticated arguments and a little more vigor behind them and what they do—but one of their favorite arguments is the so-called problem of evil. Why is there evil if there’s a God? And there are all kinds of answers that can be given to that at great length and books have been written on that and there’s plenty of great answers to that. But I want to start: where do you get this idea of evil? When you say “evil,” you’re on my turf. When you say evil, you’re acknowledging what you’re denying. Absent God, there is no such thing as—you don’t have that category. You can’t borrow that category from me to use it against me. From there, we can go on to the other arguments.

And in fact, today’s pluralistic relativism has left us—and thinking people and philosophers—has left them with unanswered questions on this level. What is evil? What makes it evil? Is there such a thing as objective evil? Does it really exist? And because they’ve surrendered the standard, they’re no longer able to judge anything and say that “that is evil, that is wrong.” And then, of course, if that’s not wrong, then why would this be wrong? And the whole thing is left up into chaos. Now, intuitively, we all know genocide is wrong, child abuse is wrong, sexual assault is wrong, and on and on the list goes. But given their presuppositions, they’re not able to argue the point anymore, and so they’re left to say, to be consistent, “Is it really objectively wrong?” And our culture is unable to answer. And that’s just another reason David says, “They’re fools.” They’re fools.

It’s remarkable. I was mentioning this to my wife on the way here this morning. It’s remarkable in our day—who would ever have thought this 50 years ago?—we now have seen philosophically minded critics and unbelievers coming to Christ. And the turning point for them was this question of the objective reality of evil. Whoever would have thought that? That’s the problem with Christianity, right? The problem of evil. This has become, for many now, the turning point that brought them to Christ. They’re committed to their amorality: “What’s good for you is good for you. What’s good for me is good for anybody.” These don’t have to be the same. There’s no objective morality, and there’s no objective evil.

And then some wise Christian comes along and says, “Is there such a thing as evil?” “No.” “Really? There’s nothing in this world that you would call evil? Well, how about if a gang of thugs breaks into a girls’ school and kidnaps the girls and has their way with them and sells them as sex slaves? Is that evil?” People who have, because of their work that they’re involved in, have traveled internationally, they’ve seen many of these things that have happened, and it gets them. And they’ve got to come to grips with this: there really is something that’s evil. And once you say that, it’s not long before you get to God and you’re on your way to the gospel. And whoever would have thought that that would be the avenue that some have had to take now in coming to Christ. The impossibility of secular morals.

Number two, the suicidal nature of cultural atheism. The second takeaway here: the suicidal nature of cultural atheism. If questions of morality and ethics are left up to the individual, or if they’re left up to the community, how can we live with that? How will society survive? How will it survive apart from outright chaos? We’re told today that you cannot legislate morals. You hear that quite a bit: “can’t legislate morality.” Which is just ridiculous, because we do it all the time. Laws against theft, we have laws against murder, we have laws against rape, incest, all kinds of laws. What we’re saying is we want certain immoralities to be legislated against, and we will select which ones we can make laws about. But then who determines that? So how does it work if it’s left up to the individual? Is personal violence wrong? I’m pretty sure that if I punch you in the nose, you’d think that’s wrong. And I’m pretty sure that I’d think it’s wrong if you punched me in the nose. Child abuse, sexual assault—are these left up to the individual to determine? How’s that going to work in society?

And if we turn it over to the collective consensus of society instead, what do we do then? Some societies love their neighbor. Other societies eat their neighbors. Is either more commendable than the other? Who determines these things? Cultural atheism inevitably ends in chaos. Now in our culture, it didn’t begin with a dogmatic atheism—”there is no God, there is no God, we don’t need that kind of thing.” It’s more subtle than that. God has been marginalized and he’s been dumbed down and democratized to whatever we think he is, or he’s been domesticated in one way or another. We have this religious pluralism that your God is your God and that’s fine for you and I’ll have my own God and I’ll worship him the way I want to and it’s all up to the individual to determine. And the effect of it in morals is—you hear it all the time—”You can’t judge. You can’t judge. You can’t judge.” How do you know what’s right and wrong?

And as a result, in our culture, what was considered evil has become acceptable, became approved, became celebrated, became championed, and now we condemn those who don’t join this celebration. And the reversal is complete now in our culture. What was previously considered as good is now considered evil. What was considered as evil is now considered good and to be celebrated, and we have now reached the point in our culture where outright immorality has the superior moral status. Have you noticed that? Outright immorality in our culture now has the superior moral status. So leftist politicians can with great confidence stand up and scorn and mock those who believe in marriage (one man, one woman) and the sanctity of life of the unborn. Society is in absolute chaos and inevitably determinations on these scores will be left to authoritarian structures, totalitarianism of some kind. We’re on the verge of losing freedoms, and we’re already stifling human flourishing in various ways. The suicidal nature of cultural atheism.

Number three, the inevitability of righteous suffering in a world that’s given to evil. The inevitability of righteous suffering in a world given to evil. That’s verse four. “Have they no knowledge? These people who do not call upon the Lord, they eat up God’s people as they eat bread.” That problem is as old as humanity. “I’ll put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.” That conflict is built into humanity ever since. We see it in the next chapter with Cain and Abel. Why did Cain hate Abel? Because, John tells us, because Abel’s deeds were righteous and Cain’s were wicked, and that’s why he hated him, and we’ve seen that all along. Jesus said the same thing: “They hate me, don’t think they’re going to love you. They hate me, they’ll hate you too.” Paul follows up: “all those who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.” We are naive to expect the world’s approval. We are naive to expect it ever. And a choosing of sides is always going to be necessary. Friendship with the world is enmity with God. And Jesus still demands that we take up our cross and follow him. The assurance that God gives us is that of verses five and six here, and that is that he will always be present with us and that of, in terms of ultimate vindication and a final defeat of the wicked. Until then, he calls us to persevere faithfully, and in fact, in the words of the book of Revelation, even to overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony.

Quickly then, few more observations, these more takeaways on a theological level. Number four, the universal total depravity of humanity. Well, we’ve seen that, I think, at enough length. I mentioned that Paul takes that up in Psalm 14 and Romans 1 to 3. He makes that observation and presses it at great length. It’s interesting here in its context in the Psalter as well. Psalms 3 to 14—these 12 Psalms—Psalm 3 to 14, 12 of them are two groupings of six Psalms each. And the editors have placed them there to contrast for us something about humanity. In Psalm 8, the end of that first group, we have a contrast with Psalm 14, the end of that second grouping of Psalms. Psalm 8 ends with a reflection on mankind’s nobility. You remember that. We saw that last time. “You’ve given dominion over the works of your hands. You’ve put all things under his feet.” And now Psalm 14 ends with a reflection on his lostness. “They’ve all turned aside, together they’ve been corrupt. There’s no one who does good, not even one.”

I think I mentioned this to our prayer group recently on Wednesday evening when I taught at Penn State. We were teaching New Testament. At some point in the discussion in the class, one of the students mentioned, “Our psychology teacher tells us that man is basically good.” And I said, “Well, the question in this classroom is, is that a Christian notion? Can you claim to be a Christian and believe that?” And then I had them turn to Romans chapter three, a passage where Paul gives his concluding remarks, quoting Psalm 14, and the student read it out loud to the class and he gets through it and says, “I think he thinks we’re the scum of the earth.” What’s remarkable to me is that people can look at humanity as it is and come off saying, “Man, it’s basically good.” What are you seeing that I’m missing? Like the guy who said, “The devil is wildly optimistic if he thinks he can make humanity worse than it already is.” We’ve seen it all. Depravity is that one doctrine of scripture that’s empirically demonstrable. Well, the universal total depravity of humanity.

Number five, flip side of that, the necessity of electing grace. We read that from our confession of faith today together on God’s decree, just stringing together a number of related biblical thoughts: the necessity of electing grace. Can anyone read Psalm 14 verses one to three without seeing the necessity of electing grace? “None seek after God.” Arminian theology insists God looks ahead and he sees who will believe and who will come after and seek after him, and God chooses them based on their foreseen faith. What we see here is just the opposite: “None seek after God.” Humanity is lost and it’s determined in its lostness. And if anyone is saved, it is rescue in every sense of the term.

And while we’re on that, I have to bring this out. Who are these wicked people in Psalm 14? These who do no good, do not understand, do not seek after God? They’re turned aside. Who are these people? Well, verses 1 and 3 tell us there’s none who does good. There’s none who does good, not even one. Before we too quickly classify ourselves with the righteous poor whom God defends, we should remember that we were also part of this humanity who did not seek after God and whose heart was bent against Him. This was you and me. This was going our own way until God in grace interrupted us in our insanity and changed our hearts and brought us to see the glory of Christ in the gospel and brought us to faith. Our salvation is nothing short of absolute rescue.

That brings us then to the last observation from the Psalm, and that is the certainty of Christian hope. Verse seven: has David’s prayer been answered? “Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion.” Paul cites Roman 14 in Romans chapter three, the end of chapter three, and then through chapters four and five and following, Paul answers the problem at great length. The problem of human depravity and rebellion against God and its deserving of judgment is answered in the sending of God’s Son, who stood in the place of sinners and bore the judgment of God in their place, that they may be saved—securing their redemption in his sacrifice, his righteousness becoming ours, our sin becoming his. The heart of the gospel. David’s prayer has been marvelously answered.

But not completely, not yet. Verse 7 has a plea for salvation in the broadest perspective. It calls for a reversal of this current condition of humanity and a vindication of the people of God. And that hasn’t happened yet. But notice in verse 7, there’s no “if,” just a “when.” “Oh, that salvation would come out of Zion when the Lord restores the fortunes of his people.” No uncertainty, just an eagerness to see it come soon. And in fact, it’s a point of praise and anticipation. “Let Israel rejoice and be glad.” Psalms pulsate with this anticipation of the kingdom of God brought to its consummation and the ideal Davidic king who will come. Evil may be rampant, humanity might be corrupt to the very heart, but God’s promise to David will be kept. The wicked will be judged and eliminated, and God’s people will be kept safe forever. Until then, we look to the day when together we can sing, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Amen.