Faith Presbyterian Church - Birmingham
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Faith Presbyterian Church - Birmingham
Psalm 14:1-7; Foolish Heart
Jamie Peterson June 29, 2025 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL Bulletin
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Please turn your Bibles with me right now to Psalm 14. Psalm 14. You may have it on an electronic device. We have it in a bulletin. We also have printed copies of God's Word up in the windowsill. If you would like to have a copy of God's Word, please feel free to take one of those and it's yours.
Speaker 1:But while you're turning there, when I was in junior high I had one of my favorite teachers and coaches that I had through any level of school that I attended. He wasn't just a good teacher, he wasn't just a good coach. What I appreciate about him so much and really to this day when I'm able to have contact with him he genuinely cared about us as human beings. He really cared about who we were as people, not just how we could perform in the classroom, not just how we could perform on the athletic field, but that we were growing and that we were growing into mature men and women. He was also the junior high basketball coach, and while I didn't play basketball, I had him from some other sports. But one of the things that we all know about basketball is is that you can only have so many people on a team, in other words, that you have to have tryouts and you have to have kids who are being cut. And one of the things I appreciated about him as I'd hear about him when he'd have to cut people from tryouts is that he wouldn't do it through some impersonal list. He wouldn't do it from some other impersonal way, but he'd come up to each individual, tell them all the great things about themselves truthfully, all the things that they had done, all their effort and that, and then he would break into the news of I've got bad news, you haven't made a team. But then he would follow it up as a hey, here's some things you can work on, here's some opportunities. If you need some help, I'm here to help you.
Speaker 1:In a similar fashion, we need to view this psalm that's going to have some hard things to say to us in light of what Jason preached about on Psalm 8 last week. Psalm 8 was a building up of us In that we saw where we, as human beings who are created in God's image, are crowned with His glory. We are a little bit lower than the angels. We have dominion over this universe that he has created, and all those things are graces that have been given to us. We bring nothing to the table with regards to those things. We don't earn the crown that God gives us. We don't earn our status to be lower than the angels. We don't earn the fact that we have dominion over the universe. So that builds us up and that prepares us for the hard news that we're going to see in Psalm 14. These are some harsh realities that we all face within ourselves, living in a broken world. But at the same time, we're also going to see in the last verse of Psalm 14, that there's some awfully good news that God doesn't leave us where we are, but he has come to rescue us.
Speaker 1:So before we read this passage, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father in Heaven, we thank you for your Word, we thank you for your truthfulness, we thank you for the fact that you remind us of who we are as your image bearers, and we also thank you for the harsh reality of the fact of what we bring to the table and that is nothing more than our sin. And we also thank you for your Son, jesus Christ, that you have sent into this world. To address that, lord, as we read and study this passage, may you give us eyes to see and ears to hear Him, the author and the perfecter of our faith. We pray all this in His name, amen, psalm 14. We'll be reading all the verses, verses 1 through 7.
Speaker 1:Hear the word of the Lord To the choir master of David. The fool says in his heart there is no God. They are corrupt. They do abominable deeds. There is 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 have all turned aside Together. They have become corrupt. There is 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. He 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. Here is a reading of God's Word At one church where I served a number of years ago.
Speaker 1:I was serving as an associate pastor and I would preach from time to time, and after I got through preaching, I always had this one fellow who was a middle-aged fellow attorney, very gregarious, big personality, the kind of guy who when he was in a room, you knew it. But I would also say that when he was there I was also very happy to see him. As a matter of fact, telling this story brings a smile to my face. Well, when I would get through preaching he'd come up and put his hand on my shoulder. He says man, that was a wonderful sermon. I appreciate your preparation, I appreciate this and that. And he said and there sure were an awful lot of people here in the congregation that needed to hear that and we laugh at that.
Speaker 1:But I think, if we're honest with ourselves, there are certain passages that we come to in the Bible where we say that's not really for me, that's for someone else. And I think Psalm 14, by my own admission, is one that we can read on a surface level and think that very thing, as it says, the fool said as, in heart, there is no God. And you would say to ourselves well, that's not me, I know that there's a God. And we think that it's speaking to the ardent atheists like Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins, an atheist professor in a large lecture hall full of university students, a self-described Marxist, advocates of communism, and the list goes on and on. But what we have to realize is this first verse takes us to a place that goes much deeper than what may be written in books or said in a lecture hall. It says this the fool says in his heart there is no God. In other words, this isn't just what comes out in books or what's said verbally, but there's a process that goes on where we can actually be functional atheists. It's not talking about the people that I just had just listed. This is a universal problem that we all have, and I'll explain it this way.
Speaker 1:Atheism, like I just described and gave examples of, is a relatively new thing in the span of human history. This type of atheism finds its genesis in the late 1600s to the early 1800s and what we have referred to as the age of enlightenment, which is actually 2,700 years before I mean 2,700 years after this psalm was written. So if it's not referring to that, if there's really no frame of reference to that type of atheism when this passage was written, what if it's not referring to that, if there's really no frame of reference to that type of atheism when this passage was written. What is it referring to? I would argue that the real age of enlightenment didn't start in the late 1600s and go to the early 1800s, it's actually. We find it's Genesis in Genesis, chapter 3.
Speaker 1:In Genesis 1 and 2, we see our first parents, adam and Eve, in a perfect relationship with God, with each other, with creation and themselves. God told them that they were free to enjoy everything that he had created, that he would have dominion over all of creation, except for one thing not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because in that day they would die. And there wasn't anything magical about that tree. It was simply there to remind them that God was God and they were not him. But Genesis 3, satan, in the form of a certain serpent, comes along and says did God really say? He?
Speaker 1:Puts doubts in their hearts and their minds, convinces them that God is suppressing them and, as such, they cease to be thankful for the good life that God had given them, as Romans 1 says, beginning with verse 21, for all of a new 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. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men and birds and animals and creeping things. As such. What we have been has been transpiring ever since is not a total jettisoning of a God, because we see throughout human history that there has always been a worship of a God or gods. What this is jettisoning is the notion that we have the God of the Bible. It's leaving him, the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, isaac and Jacob and, because of our sin, the ones who are created in His image.
Speaker 1:We have attempted to create God in our own image and, as such, we become functional atheists. And every time we sin, we are denying the God of the Bible. Every time we sin, we are saying in our hearts, as fools, that there is no God. When we embrace created things more readily than our Creator, we are saying in our hearts that there is no God. When we say that we can live a God-honoring life apart from His people, we are saying that there is no God. When we say that we can live a God-honoring life apart from His people, we are saying that there is no God. When we go about leading the church, loving our spouses, parenting our children on the basis of our own wisdom and power rather than God's, we are functionally saying that there is no God. Verses 2 and 3 gives us perspective on our lives and who we are and what God sees.
Speaker 1:And a couple weeks ago I was reading a book by Chad Bird, upside Down Spirituality, which is a great book if you have time to read it. And he actually quotes Eugene Peterson's paraphrase from the message on these two verses, which I found very providential as I was going to be preparing for this sermon a week later. And this is how Eugene Peterson paraphrases verses 2 and 3. God sticks his head out of heaven. He looks around. He's looking for someone, not stupid, one man, even God-expected, just one God-ready woman. He comes up empty a string of zeros, useless, unshepherded sheep taking turns pretending to be the shepherd. The 99 follow their fellow.
Speaker 1:That's a rough way of saying it, but it is indeed a way of saying it, and not only is it very strong language, but we find it repeated throughout scripture. Whenever we hear god say something one time, it's worth, uh, taking is taking very, very seriously, as serious as anything when you hear god saying something twice, it really gets our attention. And then when he says something three times, it's repeated in such a way it's like I don't really have human words for this to help you see the gravity of this. And what we see here is that we see Psalm 14, which there's an awful lot of gravity to that this being God's word but then it's repeated almost verbatim in Psalm 53. And then you see some of these same verses and some of these same themes repeated again in Romans 1 and Romans 3. So here it is we see these themes repeated three times, almost verbatim, in God's Word. This is so important to hear and it's important especially for us as those in the church.
Speaker 1:Francis Schaeffer, the great pastor, theologian and apologist of the 20th century, wrote a piece in 1974 that was entitled the Lord's Work and the Lord's Way, and he said this the central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the threat of communism, nor even the threat of rationalism or monolithic consensus which surrounds us. All these are dangerous, but not the primary threat. The real problem is this the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually or corporately, tending to do the Lord's work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of God's people, not in the circumstances surrounding them. We all have problems with functional atheism In our hearts. We're continually saying at very, very many turns, often at all turns on some level, that there is no God. And to help us to see these hard truths about ourselves, to come face to face with these facts, and also to see the hope that God gives us in Jesus Christ, I want us to look at three things First, the hostility of our foolish heart. Second, the horror of our foolish heart. And then, third, the hope of our foolish heart. And then, third, the hope for our foolish heart.
Speaker 1:From 1865 to 1909, there was a man who went by King Leopold II, who was the king of the Belgians, obviously king of Belgium, but he went by king of Belgians and he had pretty much everything that he could ever want from a human standpoint. He was born into royalty, had lots at his disposal and from a human standpoint, materialistically, he could have lived a very peaceful life, but it wasn't enough. As he got a little bit older, in the 1870s, 1880s, he started to look around and he realized that Belgium didn't have a colony like some other European nations. So after some exploration and looking around and networking with some other people, he began to make some relationships with people who could go and colonize the Congo on behalf of the nation of Belgium. So he actually never went there, but he would send people down and what was supposed to happen is supposed to be this mutually beneficial relationship between Belgium and the Congo.
Speaker 1:Sadly, everything was one sided. Sadly everything was one-sided. The people who would go on behalf of Belgium and King Leopold. They would go and enslave the Congolese men, women and children to harvest ivory and rubber and if quotas were not made, they would face torture, amputation of limbs or even death. Eventually, the sources for these goods became more and more scarce, but the demands didn't let up, which led to a near annihilation of the Congolese people. So much so that when censuses were performed in the early 1900s, there were almost entire generations of people missing from the censuses.
Speaker 1:Leopold, functionally claiming to be God, became increasingly narcissistic and all sorts of dysfunction plagued him and his family. This may be a little bit too simplistic, but let's think about this from an opposite standpoint. Let's say that King Leopold wasn't a fool. But let's say that he was wise and he saw his place in life as a gift from God, his time and place in history, that he was thankful for it, that he saw it as a free gift from God, that he saw an opportunity to be able to go and work with another country was an opportunity to be able to benefit them and so that righteousness might be able to flourish. But that isn't the case. Few of us have the reach of a King Leopold, but when we cease to be thankful and follow our corrupt hearts, we are no less dangerous to the people in the world around us.
Speaker 1:The last half of verse 1 tells us that what happens when we cease to be thankful and we say in our hearts that there is no God? It says that we are corrupt, we do abominable deeds and there is none who does good. One scholar says that corruption, mentioned here, is the effect of denying God, and that is that it means to spoil or ruin or to act ruinlessly. When we deny God because of the God-shaped void in our hearts, we must fill it with something we either make ourselves God, others, god, creation, god or some combination of the three, and it has a corrupting effect on everything and everyone around us. 1 Corinthians 15.33 says that bad company corrupts good character, and we normally use that proverb to teach our kids, to teach our youth, that you need to be careful who you hang around, and that's certainly an element of truth. That you need to be careful who you hang around, and that's certainly an element of truth.
Speaker 1:But when I put myself and others in the place of God, bad things happen. When I put myself in the place of God or other things in the place of God, I can corrupt the world around me. I'm putting myself in the place of God when I try to control my spouse, my kids and my co-workers rather than serving them, and when I make those same people gods, I put expectations on them that will crush them. We also do abominable deeds, which is the fruit that comes from this corruption. Just as I discussed, I mentioned the age of the Enlightenment just a little while ago, and it's fascinating to do a study on how those philosophies that found their beginning in the late 17th century to the early 19th century actually evolved and led to what we saw happening in World War II. There's a direct line between what happened with the age of enlightenment and the atrocities of the 20th century with the Communist Revolution, world War II, the Holocaust and things like that.
Speaker 1:But we also do abominable deeds through our functional atheism. We kill rather than promote life and flourishing. We lust after others rather than embracing the call of singleness or marriage that God has called us to. We steal rather than being generous as God has been generous to us. We lie rather than speak the truth in love. We long for more stuff rather than giving thanks for what we have.
Speaker 1:And then the third thing that's mentioned in that last phrase of verse 1 is there is none who does good. We see this being articulated in Isaiah 64.6. It says even our greatest deeds are nothing more than filthy rags in the sight of God. Everything we do is tainted by sin. There is nothing purer about us. In other words, one can say I serve the church not out of a heart of gratitude, but so that others may think more highly of me. I do nice things for my spouse so that they will show me attention or just simply leave me alone. I parent my children not for their good and God's glory before others, so other people may think more highly of me and my parenting and so that my kids won't cause me any grief. Lord, help us. We are so corrupt. None of us do good. None of us do good. Next we will see that, while every last man, woman and child is in this state of hostility, we will also begin to see a glimmer of hope for God's broken people, but also a horror for those who do not know Him.
Speaker 1:It's no secret that funerals are hard. Death may be a part of life right now, but it's not supposed to be that way. It's part of living in a fallen and sinful world. However, most of us know from our own experience that there's a big difference, an distinct difference, between attending the funeral of someone who knows Jesus and someone who doesn't. For those who belong to Jesus, it's a sad time. It can be very, very sad, but think about the service. We give thanks to God for that person's life. We give thanks to God for saving them. We give thanks for the work that God did in their life to use them for His glory, for the good of other people. We give thanks for the fact that they are now their life to use them for His glory, for the good of other people. We give thanks for the fact that they are now in the presence of the Lord and we give thanks for the fact that one day we will get to see them again. Did we see that hope?
Speaker 1:On the other end, and I hate to say that many times, even in my own family, I've either led or attended a funeral of someone who does not have that hope. Family have either led or attended a funeral of someone who does not have that hope, leading a service of someone who does not know Jesus Christ, and you share Scripture and you try to point them to Jesus, but the presence of the Spirit doesn't seem to be there. There's no spiritual buoyancy, and when that funeral ends, it's one of those somber things any of us can ever experience and it's very, very sad. That is where we're all headed. Face death at some time or another, hard things in life. But there's a difference between those who know Christ and those that don't. And the reality is that for those who know Christ, those who belong to God and whom they seek refuge, things may not get better, but things may actually get more and more difficult.
Speaker 1:When we look here in verse four it says evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread, and what this is saying is is that there may be people doing things horrible to you because you are a believer. There may be people doing things horrible to you because you are a believer, and what it means is, though, they eat bread. It's referring to the fact that so often it's just part of the whoop and wharf of life. There's almost no thought that goes into it. You just automatically get trampled on. Compare and contrast this with this is when you have a nice dinner, you have to think about what will pair well with the entree, you think about what sides go well with it, you enjoy it and you reflect upon it. You don't do that with bread. You just eat it.
Speaker 1:And this is what it's saying is the thoughtlessness that goes about from those who do not know the Lord against God's people, and it may seem that here, in the here and now, that those that are outside, outside of god, outside of his refuge, or getting the upper hand, but it will not always be that way. As I was thinking about this, we think about how the fool, and we all do this, but there is a difference between those who belong to god, who put their faith in him, and those that don't. But one day those who do not belong to God will continue on saying there's no God, there's no God, there's no God. And then we see the horror and we see the terror at one day when they come face to face with death and they say no God. You see the difference. That's where we're all headed. Do you belong to Him or do you not?
Speaker 1:I have a pastor friend who serves with a ministry that works with campuses, at medical schools and comes alongside young people. It's a parachurch ministry Comes alongside young men and women's. A parachurch ministry Comes alongside young men and women who are training as doctors. He tells this one story about a fellow that was involved with his ministry. He was doing an oncology rotation and there where he was working, there was a man who was stage 4 cancer, put on palliative care, which basically means we're just trying to make him comfortable, we're trying to ease his pain until he inevitably dies sooner rather than later.
Speaker 1:And what they found was this one particular fellow is that he was not going to sleep. They gave him all sorts of drugs, they gave him all sorts of things to try to get him to go to sleep, to try to rest, and he was fighting it, he would not go to sleep. To get him to go to sleep, to try to rest, and he was fighting it, he would not go to sleep. And finally, one day my friends or this fellow, this young doctor, went into this patient's room and said what's going on? Why can't you go to sleep? And he more or less said I'm afraid that if I go to sleep I'm not going to wake up and if I don't wake up I don't know where I'm going to go. He sat down with him and told him about Jesus. He told him about Jesus entering into our suffering. He told about Jesus and how he paid the penalty for our sins and the things that we have done wrong and how that brings peace between us and God and how, even though we may not experience full healing here on this earth, we can experience full healing in the presence of the Lord. One day, and shortly after he had this conversation with his patient, the patient went to sleep and he got all sorts of grief from some of the attending physicians initially because they're saying what drug did you give him? What did you inject him? You're not authorized to be able to do that. What did you do? He said I just simply had a conversation with him and a few short days later, that fellow passed away and went into eternity with his Lord.
Speaker 1:Where does this hope come from? And we see this in the very last verse, verse 7. What is our hope for a foolish heart? Many of you have seen the movie. It's almost 30 years old. Well, it is 30 years old now, the movie Apollo 13 that starred Tom Hanks.
Speaker 1:He portrays an astronaut named Jim Lovell. They're on a spaceship to go to the moon, hopefully be able to make a landing, be able to walk around and eventually be able to safely return to Earth. But the problem is, on the way to the moon, they have a catastrophic failure of the space capsule and they have to cancel their moon landing. And not only that, there's some doubt as to whether they're going to be able to arrive back home. So that's where the famous line Houston, we have a problem come from. And they're talking to Houston and Houston figures out. They've got these things on board, they're able to reconstruct it, be able to get the capsule in good enough shape to be able to bring it back to earth, which makes for a happy ending.
Speaker 1:The bad news for us is that there are not enough good things within us to get us to safety, to bring us back home, to fix our own hearts. We need someone outside of us. That's why Jeremiah 17.9 says the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick. Who can understand it? We see our hope here in verse 7. Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion.
Speaker 1:As I was processing this and thinking about how to explain this wonderful promise, I want us to work backwards. I want us to look at the last word of that first sentence Zion. It sounds like a very churchy word. It's not something that we use very often. It's something that's in a lot of songs. We're going to sing one here at the end of the service, where that is. But Zion is a literal geographical place in Jerusalem upon which a temple was built, and the temple was the dwelling place for God. It was a place where people would go and meet with God and His people, where they would experience His special presence, his Shekinah glory. But that wasn't the end of it. It was a foretaste of something greater God's eternal dwelling place in heaven, from which salvation came.
Speaker 1:And this salvation the Hebrew word for salvation right here is Yeshua, where we get the name for Jesus. In other words, this psalmist is literally crying out for Jesus to come out of heaven, and the good news is we see in the New Testament that Jesus did just that. He doesn't leave us in our foolish state. You see, when we readily say there is no God, there is a response from God Himself, who has heard this cry and has sent Jesus, our salvation, in response to the foolishness of our hearts. He has sent the personification of wisdom to answer our foolishness, whereas our foolishness we have torched all our relationships with God, others, creation and ourselves. Jesus has come salvation from heaven to restore all these things and to bring true healing. It doesn't mean that life is going to get easier on earth, and a lot of times for God's people it gets harder. But is there anything sweeter than being connected with our Lord through Jesus Christ, the personification of wisdom?
Speaker 1:As a child of the 80's and preparing for this, it was hard to read this passage and do all the studying to see heart and fool in the same passage and read it over and over again and not be reminded of Steve Perry's Foolish Heart song, and I wonder why. It kept on rattling in my head and I nearly paid a whole lot of attention to the words. I just always thought it was kind of a sappy romantic song. And just out of curiosity, I just always thought it was kind of a sappy romantic song. I just had a curiosity that I decided to look it up. And while he's definitely talking about a romantic relationship and how they fail him, steve Perry is created in God's image and I think he expresses some things here that we all feel that can only be met through Jesus.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to sing the song I'm going to spare you that and I'm not going to read the whole, all the words. But I'm not going to sing the song. I'm going to spare you that. And I'm not going to read all the words, but I'm going to read you enough to get an idea.
Speaker 1:He says I need a love that grows. I don't want it unless I know that each passing hour, someone somehow will be there ready to share. I need a love that's strong. I'm so tired of being alone. But will my lonely heart play the fool, play the part of the fool again before I begin? Foolish heart, hear me calling. Stop before you start falling. Foolish heart, heed my warning. You've been wrong before, don't be wrong anymore.
Speaker 1:Jesus has come so that we don't have to be wrong anymore. We find him, we find his righteousness. He has come to rescue us from our destructive foolishness that has wreaked havoc on ourselves and the world around us. Don't be wrong anymore. Come to know and trust Jesus. Through Him, true wisdom, healing and life abundantly. Let us pray, father in Heaven. We thank you for your Son, jesus Christ, the personification of wisdom, who came running after us when we were actively running after Him. Lord, may our hearts find rest in you, may we see in Him true wisdom and true life, and that through Him that we can experience true restoration of relationship with you, with others, ourselves and this world that You've created to point us towards you. And we pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.