Foolishness VS Wisdom
Psalms 14
October 7, 2018
Tonight we look at yet another song
Which God inspired for His church to sing.
A song which again was “For the choir director”
To teach to the great congregation.
The truths contained here are truths to be read, memorized, sung,
And thus engrained in the human heart.
It is a song that details the difference between foolishness and wisdom.
Certainly we can all understand the importance of this topic.
Even when the Lord finished His Sermon on the Mount, He ended it with a statement on the difference between foolishness and wisdom.
Matthew 7:24-27 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. “And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. “Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. “The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell — and great was its fall.”
Most know that story, and there is even a child-song we sing about it.
That story is an application of Jesus’ entire sermon.
He spent 3 chapters talking about true righteousness as opposed to merely external religious behavior.
• He condemned hypocrisy
• He condemned self-righteousness
• He condemned those who put all their trust in their own religious deeds
• He called men instead to see their sin and ask Him for righteousness
• He called men to realize their desperation and enter through the narrow gate
• He called men to be poor in spirit and to hunger for righteousness
Those who would see God’s righteous standard
As something they had failed to uphold
And who would understand their due judgment
And who would run to Christ to be saved from that judgment
Were considered wise.
Those who ignored God’s righteous standard,
Ignored God’s judgment,
And chose rather to trust in all their own efforts
Were considered fools.
After Jesus gave that sermon He could have easily ended with this Psalm.
It is a song which emphasizes those very points.
We the church sing it still
• As a reminder of how badly we need the righteousness of Christ,
• And how only a fool would trust in His own works.
AND THAT IS A REMINDER WE NEED
Buried in the prideful human heart
Is a continual draw toward legalism and self-reliance.
And even we must be continually reminded
To never put confidence in the flesh.
This is why Paul wrote to the Philippians:
Philippians 3:2-9 “Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision; for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh, although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless. But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,”
The Philippians needed to guard themselves
From the temptation to put confidence in their flesh.
That confidence is the very heart of all foolishness.
• Only a fool trusts in his own house and forsakes the rock of Christ.
• Only a fool ignores the warning signs of judgment and believes himself to be well established in his own goodness.
And the church must be reminded of this continually.
ALL WE HAVE IS CHRIST.
No wonder God inspired such a fitting song to be sung.
I might also add, that God published it twice in His song-book, repeating it as Psalm 53.
This is an important Psalm to remember.
This is an important doctrine to fix in your heart.
Two major points tonight
#1 THE FOOL
Psalms 14:1-6
Here we are talking about “The fool”
It’s not a foreign term – the book of Proverbs uses it 38 times.
Yet there are 3 different Hebrew words that are commonly referred to as “fool”
There is EVIL (e-veel)
• And this one just means “one who despises wisdom”.
• They don’t want correction
• They don’t want instruction
There is KESIL (ke-seel)
• And this is just a stupid or silly person.
And then there is the word used here.
• It is NABAL and it means “senseless”.
• That is to say, they just don’t get it.
This is the fool who can’t seem to discern
That the storm is on the way and his house is about to fall into ruin.
This is the person who can’t seem to grasp
The holy expectation of God or His coming wrath.
HE IS SENSELESS.
In the New Testament this man is not so often referred to as a fool
So much as he is referred to as “dead” or “spiritually dead”
Colossians 2:13 “When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,”
It speaks of that person who is unable to recognize the things of God.
He is not aware of what is going on around Him.
This is why Paul prayed for the lost unrepentant like this:
2 Timothy 2:25-26 “with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.”
When we speak of the prodigal son, the beginning of his salvation is recorded like this:
Luke 15:17 “But when he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger!”
This is the type of fool spoken of here.
• Not necessarily a stupid person
• Not necessarily a stubborn person
• But mostly a senseless person, they don’t get it.
It is a lost person
It is a spiritually dead person
Here David gives 3 characteristics about this type of fool.
These characteristics are true of all lost people.
1) HE DENIES GOD’S DESIRE (1)
“The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; There is no one who does good.”
• Here we find the heart-confession of the senseless fool.
• He “has said in his heart, “There is no God.””
Bear in mind, he may not have said this with his lips,
But he says it with his heart.
There are plenty of lost people who will say they believe in God.
That is to say that NOT all lost people are full-blown atheists.
But the obedience of their heart
Is more compelling than their empty professions.
Titus 1:16 “They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.”
This the person David has in mind here.
It’s NOT that he runs around militantly declaring that God isn’t real.
(Honestly, that’s the “stupid” kind of fool – you have to turn your eye away from way too much evidence to come to that conclusion. That’s just silly)
David is talking about the guy who lives like there is no God.
He may very well say He believes God is real,
It’s just that his actions don’t bear that out.
What do you mean?
“They are corrupt”
“corrupt” there is the Hebrew word SHACHATH
And it means “rotten” or “perverted” or “spoiled” or “decayed”
It speaks of something that
Is no longer useful for its intended purpose.
Genesis 6:11-13 “Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. Then God said to Noah, ” The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth.”
Interestingly enough in that last line when God says that He will “destroy them” that word is also SHACHATH.
They are spoiled, rotten, and decayed, so God will decay them.
Exodus 32:7 “Then the LORD spoke to Moses, “Go down at once, for your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves.”
That of course was in reference to the golden calf incident.
• Through their actions the people had strayed from their original purpose and had rendered themselves unfit for their intentional design.
• They were ruined and no longer useful.
This is what David says about these fools.
“They are corrupt”
They have strayed from their created purpose
And are no longer useful for what they were designed for.
David goes on to say that “they have committed abominable deeds;”
This was the means of their corruption.
“abominable” is a word that means “detestable”
The reason they are so ruined is because
They have spoiled themselves
By doing absolutely detestable things.
They have done things they should not have done,
And as such have corrupted themselves
And rendered themselves unfit for service.
Consider what Peter wrote to the early church:
2 Peter 1:5-9 “Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins.”
Peter speaks of the type of behavior that makes you useful and fruitful.
But if you stray from those things you risk corrupting yourself.
This would be bound up in things like
The qualifications for overseers or deacons.
These men must maintain a set of standards,
Not to keep their salvation, but to keep their office.
They must not corrupt themselves by doing what it detestable before God
And then to sort of sum up the total problem of the fool David says:
“There is no one who does good”
“good” there is TAWB
You’ve seen it before
Genesis 1:31 “God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”
“good” there represents God’s expectation and desire.
• It represents what is complete and perfect and useable to Him.
• It represents something that functions exactly as He designed it to function.
And David says that there is no fool “who does good”
• They are all corrupt
• They have all been defiled by their detestable deeds
• None of them maintains the original good purpose which God designed for
them
That is why we say they have all DENIED GOD’S DESIRE
God created humanity for a specific purpose and for a specific design
And every fool out there denied that purpose and corrupted themselves.
They were all ruined and useless.
The fool Denies God’s Desire
2) HE DISREGARDS GOD’S JUDGMENT (2-3)
“The LORD has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men To see if there are any who understand, Who seek after God. They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt; There is no one who does good, not even one.”
Certainly we see again emphasized the fact that
The fool has failed to live up to God’s righteous expectation.
But added to that problem here is the fact that
The fool is also totally unaware that God is watching with expectation.
“The LORD has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there are any who understand”
We already established that man has corrupted his purpose
And is unusable to God,
Here we want to know if they realize that there is a problem with that?
And the answer from David is, “NO”.
God wanted to know if “there are any who understand”
• That is, do they understand that they have corrupted the purpose for which they were created?
• Do they understand that they have maligned their true purpose?
• Do they understand that they have offended Me, their Creator?
And the answer is, “No, they do not”
And it’s the same answer across the board.
“They have ALL, turned aside, TOGETHER they have become corrupt; There is NO ONE who does god, NOT EVEN ONE.”
What we are talking about here is not just a couple of people
Who need to be segregated or quarantined,
WE ARE TALKING ABOUT A GLOBAL EPIDEMIC.
It was the same epidemic that occurred before the flood.
Genesis 6:11-12 “Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.”
They had become corrupt, God was watching, and they didn’t care.
• It mattered not to them that judgment was occurring.
• It mattered not to them that their Holy Creator disapproved.
It is the horrifying statement found in Romans 1
Romans 1:32 “and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.”
THEY JUST DON’T CARE.
Some even go so far as to argue that God isn’t angry,
And that He even approves of the way they live.
THAT IS TO BE SENSELESS
• They don’t get it.
• They are totally oblivious to the standards of God and the judgments of God.
• They are senseless, they are dead
The Fool Denies God’s Desire The Fool Disregard’s God’s Judgment
3) HE DECLINES GOD’S SALVATION (4-6)
“Do all the workers of wickedness not know, Who eat up my people as they eat bread, And do not call upon the Lord? There they are in great dread, For God is with the righteous generation. You would put to shame the counsel of the afflicted, But the LORD is his refuge.”
Here you actually have David asking, “Do [they] not know?”
• These people “who eat up my people as they eat bread”
• These people who “do not call upon the Lord?”
Do they not know?
Know what?
That in that position “they are in great dread, For God is with the righteous generation.”
David isn’t saying that the fool is fearful,
David is saying that they should be.
They are in a horrible condition and they don’t even know it.
• They have corrupted their purpose
• They commit detestable deeds
• God is watching
• They eat up God’s people
• They refuse to call on God
Do they not realize what a terrifying predicament they are in?
Hebrews 10:29-31 “How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, “VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY.” And again, “THE LORD WILL JUDGE HIS PEOPLE.” It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
Do they not know that?
And the answer is – NO
• They don’t know that God is righteous and they are wicked
• They don’t know that they are wicked and God is angry
• They don’t know that God is angry and they are in danger
And the real tragedy is that it’s NOT LIKE they haven’t been warned.
(6) “You would put to shame the counsel of the afflicted”
There David says that “the afflicted”
Has actually given “counsel” to these fools.
What do you think that counsel is?
• It’s all about the holiness of God
• It’s all about the necessity of repentance
• It’s all about how they should call upon the Lord
But the fool won’t listen to it.
• He “would put [it] to shame”
• He mocks it, he rejects it, he won’t listen to it.
Isn’t that what Jesus said?
Matthew 7:26 “Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.”
That is a fool.
That is a senseless person.
That is a spiritually dead individual.
• They don’t realize that they have fallen short of God’s righteous expectation.
• They don’t realize that God is watching and will judge them for it.
• They don’t listen when the righteous tell them repent and call on the Lord.
AND THERE IS NO GREATER FOOL THAN THAT
They are senseless.
But now, let’s look at the righteous person (or the wise person).
#2 THE RIGHTEOUS PERSON
Psalms 14:4-7
Here we overlap a little because in verses 4 through 6 we learn some things about the righteous as well.
1) HE DISCERNS GOD’S DESIRE (4-5)
“Do all the workers of wickedness not know, Who eat up my people as they eat bread, And do not call upon the Lord? There they are in great dread, For God is with the righteous generation.”
What is it that these righteous people discerned?
“God is with the righteous generation”
They learned that corrupting your way
And committing detestable deeds
Would get you nowhere with God.
• God above all else desired righteousness.
• God created you to be righteous.
• Righteousness must be the most sought after attribute of your life.
These wise people had discerned that.
Now, we do know why they figured it out.
It is because God, in His grace, revealed that to them.
Ephesians 4:17-20 “So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. But you did not learn Christ in this way,”
We used to be dead like them, but Christ made us alive
And revealed to us the danger of our iniquity
And how far short of God’s holy standard we had fallen.
And when Christ breathes life into that dead soul…
When Christ allows one to come to his senses…
THE VERY FIRST THING HE SEES is that he has fallen drastically short of God’s Holy expectation.
• This is why he immediately becomes poor in spirit
• This is why he immediately mourns over sin
• This is why he immediately becomes meek and submissive
Christ allowed him to see what he had not previously seen
And now he knows that God desires righteousness.
• So, as Jesus said, he hungers and thirsts for righteousness.
The righteous man discerns God’s desire
2) HE DELIGHTS IN GOD’S SALVATION (6)
“You would put to shame the counsel of the afflicted, But the LORD is his refuge.”
There we learn something else about this righteous man.
IT IS THE HEART OF THE GOSPEL
“the LORD is his refuge”
We’ve seen it so many times…
We speak of it over and over and over…
• We are only declared righteous “in Christ Jesus”
• When we hide “in Him”
• When we are clothed in His righteousness
We are saved from the wrath of God through Him.
I remind you again what we spoke about
When we looked at the doctrine of SOLUS CHRISTUS
Namely that Christ did not come to make us righteous,
But to be our righteousness.
• We take off the old man and we put on Christ.
• We clothe ourselves in His righteousness.
• We don’t stand before God on our own righteous merits, but on His.
This is the problem with those shocked hypocrites
In the Sermon on the Mount
Just before Jesus gave that parable of the wise and foolish man.
Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’”
Do you hear them?
• Whose righteousness where they standing in?
• Whose deeds where they depending on?
• Their own
They were fools thinking they were ok as they were
And that they could withstand the storm on their own.
The wise man is not righteous because he is better than the wicked, but because he is taking refuge in Christ.
By now you’ve already figured out that the apostle Paul had been reading Psalms 14 before he wrote Romans 3.
TURN TO: ROMANS 3
• Of course you see it there in verses 9-18.
• There is Psalms 14 along with a few others we’ll get to later.
And what was Paul’s point based upon those verses?
• That we are all fools!
• We are all useless!
(READ 19-20)
There is not a mouth left open before God.
Every one of us is a senseless fool deserving of God’s wrath.
Until we get to that glorious verse 21 and the word “But…”
“But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested.”
• That is to say God’s righteousness, which we missed, is now available.
(22) “even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
• Do you hear Psalms 14 there?
BUT… we are (23) “justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is IN CHRIST JESUS;”
You hear Psalms 14 don’t you?
What separates the righteous from the fool
Is NOT that the righteous are somehow smarter or less wicked.
It’s that God has allowed us to come to our senses
That we may see our sin and run to Christ
To be shielded from the wrath of God.
The wise take refuge in Him and we are glad to do it!
• We love to run to Christ!
• We love to trust in Christ!
The righteous Discerns God’s Desire The righteous Delights in God’s Salvation
3) HE DESIRES GOD’S REIGN (7)
“Oh, that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion! When the LORD restores His captive people, Jacob will rejoice, Israel will be glad.”
LISTEN TO ME.
This is so true of the righteous
That it can also be seen as a fruit of salvation.
TRUE BELIEVERS LONG FOR THE RETURN OF CHRIST
First let me just support that statement.
When John first received the revelation of Jesus coming and judgment:
Revelation 1:7 “BEHOLD, HE IS COMING WITH THE CLOUDS, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. So it is to be. Amen.”
Notice he saw it and said, “Amen” (that is “so be it”)
He even ended that book:
Revelation 22:20 “He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming quickly.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”
When Paul was at the end of his life he wrote:
2 Timothy 4:8 “in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.”
This “appearing” he spoke of was Christ’s appearing for judgment.
That is made clear in:
2 Timothy 4:1 “I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom:”
Paul longed for that, and noted that all believers do as well.
Romans 8:23 “And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.”
Philippians 3:20-21 “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.”
1 Corinthians 1:7 “so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ,”
2 Peter 3:12 “looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat!”
1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 “For they themselves report about us what kind of a reception we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come.”
Titus 2:13 “looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus,”
Hebrews 9:28 “so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.”
You get the idea?
True believers long for the return and reign of the king.
Why?
Because in Him there is no fear of punishment.
1 John 2:28-29 “Now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming. If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.”
1 John 4:17-18 “By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.”
As those made righteous by Christ we don’t fear the coming storm.
• We don’t dread the final judgment.
• We are in Christ and we are confident.
• We look forward to that day.
THE WICKED CAN’T SAY THAT.
THEY CANNOT SAY THAT THEY LONG FOR CHRIST’S RETURN
BUT WE REJOICE
We once were fools,
But God by His tremendous grace,
Opened our eyes and saved us and made us His children,
Hiding us in Christ
And giving us a future and a hope.
THERE IS THE SONG THAT THE CHURCH SINGS.
