Psalm 14
Date: April 14th, 2024
Speaker: Samuel Crites
Scripture: Psalm 14
Exegetical Outline
MIT: David longs for the day when the depravity of man will be restored and salvation will come to Israel from Zion.
1. 14:1-3: All men are corrupt and deprave and there is not one person found among the children of man that seeks after God.
2. 14:4-6: David wonders whether the wicked understand the danger they put themselves in because God is a refuge for the righteous.
3. 14:7: David longs for the day that salvation will come out of Zion and God will restore his people.
MIS: God restores the brokenness of humanity for the joy of his people.
1. The brokenness of humanity. (1-3)
2. The culpability of humanity. (4-6)
3. The restoration of humanity for the joy of God’s people. (7)
Introduction:
This week has been one of the most beautiful weeks of weather that I can remember in College Station since we moved here two years ago. The sun was warm, the shade was cool, the breeze was refreshing. It was just about as perfect a week as is probably possible in College Station. It was like everything was as it should be in the world.
The question before us in today’s sermon text is, is that true? Is the world as it should be? Is everything as God originally planned it to be? The biblical answer to that question, and what we will see in Psalm 14, is no. The world is not as it should be. It is in desperate need of restoration.
Psalm 14 deals with the brokenness and ugliness of mankind. It is the bookend psalm in a series of psalms that has been a slow contemplation of depravity and sin. It is not a happy psalm, but it is a hopeful psalm. Because in the midst of the darkness, there is a message of restoration. Let’s read Psalm 14 together.
Psalm 14
14 To the choirmaster. Of David.
1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds;
there is none who does good.
2 The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man,
to see if there are any who understand,
who seek after God.
3 They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one.
4 Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers
who eat up my people as they eat bread
and do not call upon the Lord?
5 There they are in great terror,
for God is with the generation of the righteous.
6 You would shame the plans of the poor,
but the Lord is his refuge.
7 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.
Psalm 14 is not a standalone psalm. It is paired with Psalm 10 and these two psalms together are a manifesto of depravity and sin. These two psalms explain the human condition of fallenness more clearly and explicitly than almost any other passage in the Old Testament.
This is not a fun topic to discuss but it such an important topic and it is taught on so infrequently in the Church. But if we do not teach on sin and we do not struggle to come to understanding of what the Bible teaches then we will never understand or be able to communicate the Gospel. It is in the context of the absolute depravity of man that the beauty and the mystery of the Gospel is seen.
This is what Psalm 14 is all about. It is a psalm about the complete and total sinfulness of every child of Adam that has ever walked this earth so that the undeserved grace of God’s restoration in Jesus Christ can be seen in all of its brilliance and magnificence.
Now, if you are a guest today and this is the first time you have been at Mosaic, this is the point in the sermon where I give you the main point. The main idea of our sermon is that one thing that answers the question: what is this passage all about? We encourage you to write it down because if you get nothing else from the sermon this morning, we want you to understand the main idea of the sermon and we want you to be able to see how I didn’t make it up but that it came right out of the sermon text.
Ok, so here it is. The main idea of our sermon today is this: God restores the brokenness of humanity for the joy of his people.
We are going to walk through this passage and break down the main idea down into three points. First, we need to take a long, slow look at the brokenness of humanity in verses 1-3. We will see that the brokenness of humanity is foolish, it is evil, and it is total. It is foolish because it denies reality. It denies the truth. God has demonstrated the reality of his existence and the natural state of man acts against his own self-interest and denies the existence of the one that created him. It is evil because it is anti-God. Human nature is by definition opposed to and antagonistic toward God. If God is good than that which is not God is evil. And It is total because there is not a single child of Adam that has ever been born that wanted God, sought after God or did anything good. Psalm 14 is absolute. It is true of every single person that has ever been born from Adam.
Which brings us to the second thing we learn in Psalm 14. Not only is man totally broken, but man is totally culpable for his brokenness. Building off of the first point, it is not only foolish to deny God’s existence because it denies reality, it is also foolish because it is dangerous. In verses 4-6, David mocks the natural man because in living an evil and godless life, they are storing up wrath for themselves. They eat up God’s people and oppress the poor, unaware that God will not stand idly by. He is a refuge to his people and will bring an end to the wickedness of man and when he does, every single child of Adam that does evil will deserve the condemnation they receive.
But there is hope. After seeing the brokenness and the culpability of mankind, David reveals God’s grace. The third and final thing that we will see in Psalm 14 is the restoration of humanity for the joy of God’s people. If we only had the first 6 verses of Psalm 14, it would be a sad story indeed, but David reveals God’s plan for restoration. God has promised salvation and David’s soul aches for that plan of restoration to be revealed.
You see, restoration implies a return. A return to something better. What we will learn from Psalm 14 is that God’s plan of restoration is ultimately for the joy of humanity. The broken trap of condemnation that mankind finds itself in was not part of God’s original design. He did not create man broken. He intended for mankind to be in perfect, joyful relationship with him. God’s plan of restoration is meant to return us to that happy state for his glory and for our good.
Our study of Psalm 14 this morning will begin in the darkness of human sin and depravity, but stick with me. By the end of our journey through dark night of wickedness we will see the first morning light. We will see, on the horizon, the dawn of hope as we join David in longing for the coming of the blessed man, the only begotten Son, that was promised to come out of Zion and restore the joy of his people. In Psalm 14 is both bitter and sweet because in Psalm 14 God is restoring the brokenness of humanity, through his Son, for the joy of his people.
The Brokenness of Humanity
Let’s begin by reading Psalm 14:1-3 again, and let’s consider together the brokenness of humanity.
Psalm 14:1-3
To the choirmaster. Of David.
1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds;
there is none who does good.
2 The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man,
to see if there are any who understand,
who seek after God.
3 They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one.
I want you to see three things about the brokenness of humanity: it is foolish, it is evil, and it is total.
First, it is foolish. Look at verse 1. David begins the psalm by saying the fool says in his heart there is no God. Now in case you think that David is talking about a particular segment of the human population and that he is not referring to everyone, notice that the subject established in verse 1 does not change as we transition to verses 2 and 3. Meaning, denying the existence of God is profoundly ridiculous and every single person in their natural state of sin denies the existence of God in one form or another.
The mistake that we could make is to think that David is referring here to atheism. That the denial of God in verse 1 is referencing the person is a dedicated materialist, meaning, they believe there is nothing that exists in nature that is supernatural, everything is made up of matter that we can observe. Atheism is a kind of denial that is real and very prevalent in our world, but it is actually in the minority. It is actually really hard to be an atheist and deny some form of intelligent design. It requires a special kind of arrogant stubbornness to insist that in all that we do not know about the universe that the existence of God is impossible.
This is definitely a kind of denial that David has in view in verse 1, but it is not the primary kind of denial. Let’s turn in our Bibles to Romans 1:18-25 and see the typical way that man foolishly denies God.
Romans 1:18-25
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
The foolishness David is referring to at the beginning of Psalm 14 is not an outright denial of God existence, but an exchange of the glory of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for the things he has created. It is not just the denial of any God’s existence but the one, true God’s existence that is completely and utterly ridiculous to David.
God is not just a Spirit, or force, or feeling that all men share. He is a person. He has revealed himself in a particular and specific way. Romans 1 says that his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, from beginning, in the things that have been made. Any corruption, distortion, accommodation, confusion, trading, or obfuscation of who he has revealed himself to be is an absolute denial of who he is.
This is what mane does in his natural state. It trades his glory for images carved in wood or stone. It confuses him with the sun that he has created or the kings he has allowed to rule the children of men. It divides him into multiple deities or depersonalizes him into a spiritual, mystic force of nature. God has made the truth clear and the foolish heart of men suppresses that truth and trades it for anything and everything but the one true God. This is the height of folly.
But it is not only foolish, it is also evil. Man’s predisposition toward God is hostile. They are corrupt and do abominable deeds and there is absolutely none who does good. In case we would be tempted to ignore this point, David says it twice in the first three verses. There is none who does good not even one.
This where the discussion of human depravity becomes very challenging. We all want to believe that, on some level, we are inherently good. Perhaps we want to believe that we are born good. Or perhaps we want to believe that other people are bad, but I am a good person because I try not to do bad things. Or, maybe we know that we aren’t all that great, but we know someone who is good: a grandmother or a teacher in school. You believe good people exist because you have known people that are good.
David leaves no room for such fantasies in Psalm 14. With utter clarity, he teaches us that there is none that are good or do good, not even one, because all men have turned away from God. They don’t seek him, they don’t want him, and they suppress the true when he shines it into their lives. The natural man’s natural reaction to God is to turn away, to suppress, and to rebel.
And it is totality that is so disheartening. The depravity of man it total, meaning, every single person that has ever been born is a sinner. We see this clearly in verses 2 and 3. God looks down from heaven at the children of man. The Hebrew word here for man is adam. So it verse 2 is quite literally every person that has been born from Adam. God looks down at them all to see if there are any that seek after God, and in verse 3 we see that every single one has turned aside and none do good, not even one. There is not one.
Out of all the heroes of the Old Testament, not one. Out of all the disciples in the New Testament, not one. Out of all the trillions of people have been born throughout history that we will never know, there is not one pigmy on one island anywhere in the world that has sought after God or done anything good, not even one.
The good news of the Gospel is that there was one man who was not born from Adam. Psalm 2 says that there is one man that is not a son of Adam, but is the only begotten Son of God. He was born of a virgin, by the power of the Spirit, so that he would not fall under the curse of the first Adam but would be a new and better Adam, inaugurating a race of humanity that is free from the foolish, evil, and total corruption of sin. You cannot appreciate the uniqueness of Christ unless to understand totality of depravity.
The culpability of humanity.
But David does not stop with depravity. He goes on to explain that the brokenness of man’s nature makes him culpable for all the evil he commits, meaning man is responsible for his rebellion against God. Look at verses 4-6:
Psalms 14:4-6
4 Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers
who eat up my people as they eat bread
and do not call upon the Lord?
5 There they are in great terror,
for God is with the generation of the righteous.
6 You would shame the plans of the poor,
but the Lord is his refuge.
Listen to the tone David uses in these verses. In verse 4, David asks a rhetorical question because he is in disbelief at the ignorance of the wicked. Are they completely without sense? Do they have no concept of reality? They destroy God’s people, they eat them up like bread. Do they not know how dangerous that is?
It would be as if my kids encountered a bully in the neighborhood. If they were playing down the street and came home crying because something happened, there would not be a lot that I could do in that moment to deal with the situation other than try to comfort my kids and teach them what to do when they are in that kind of situation.
But lets say the kids were playing in the front yard and I was standing in the window, enjoying a cup of coffee, and I saw that bully come into my yard and push one of my kids to the ground. That would be a different story. The bully doesn’t know it but the father is watching and I am much more powerful than he is. That kid would be in big trouble.
That is what is taking place in verse 4. I am a limited father. I can only see what takes place in front of my eyes, but God sees everywhere. He knows all that the wicked does to persecute his people and he forgets nothing. David looks at what they do and he is astounded that they do not know this. Like Paul in Romans 2:5, David sees that the wicked are storing up wrath for themselves for the day of wrath. They are building up a case against themselves that gets worse with every passing day and every new act of rebellion. They are making their situation before God worse and giving him more and more reasons to justly sentence them to destruction.
This is what David has in view in verses 5 and 6. That day when they will be there standing before God’s throne and the only appropriate emotion that the natural man will be able to feel is terror before a just and holy God. David says that they will be in great terror because they will see what they denied before. They will see the God of the righteous ones that they persecuted and took advantage of, and they will know in that moment, when it is too late, that God is a refuge for the poor in Spirit. The bully will finally meet his match and his oppression that is spoken of in great detail in Psalm 10 will be brought to an end. The wicked will not be able to stand in the congregation of the righteous, as David says in Psalm 1:5.
Why do we have passages like this in Scripture? This is not a happy or fun piece of Scripture to meditate on as a Church. Especially because, if you are in Christ, this is not who you are any longer. Wouldn’t it be better for us to spend our time talking about how to love each other and serve one another? How to reach lost people and not preaching about what will happen to them if we don’t?
This is not an easy passage, and in fact, the last five psalms, beginning with Psalm 10, have not been easy psalms to preach. As a unit, they are a slow contemplation of man’s brokenness and all that means for the world and God’s people. But I would argue that this kind of passage and this kind of sermon are absolutely necessary for us to be healthy followers of Jesus. Studying the depravity of man will do two things for a Christian.
First, it will make you a more humble and thankful follower of Jesus. To really understand all that has been said today about what it means to be lost in the natural state of sin that all men find themselves in is to know that all of this was true of every believer in this room at some point. Psalm 14:1-6 was you and it was me. This is who we were before Jesus found us and what he has saved us from. The reason that people outside the Church look at people inside the Church as hypocrites is because many of us have forgotten this very thing. If it were not for the gracious intervention of Jesus Christ in our lives through the power of his Holy Spirit, we would all hate God. We wouldn’t want anything to do with him. We would be the worst rebels imaginable, causing pain and destruction everywhere we went.
The Church needs teaching on the depravity of man because it reminds us that apart from grace we would still be lost. There isn’t anything special or good about those that have found Jesus other than what is already special and good about him. If there is any good in the people of God, it is because of the goodness of Christ within us, and many Christians could stand to be reminded of that. It will humble you and help you to rely and depend on him to live out the life of love and humility that he has called you to.
The second reason that the Church needs to be taught about the depravity of man is because it will make us more compassionate to lost people. To have a deep understanding of the human condition prior to Christ is to be reminded of the slavery of sin. Christians are surprised when lost people act like lost people, when they resist the Gospel and seems trapped in their sin. We tell ourselves that sin isn’t really that bad and that people aren’t really sinners. But Scripture paints a very different and more honest picture. It does not mince words about the fallenness of Adam and what has resulted from his brokenness. Christians need to be reminded of what Jesus said in John 8:34, that everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.
When we understand this, we will persevere with the lost, not grow frustrated with them. We will pray with hope, not with despair. We will have a reason to give our lives away to spread the kingdom of God because we will know that it does not depend on us. The hardness of the sinners heart cannot be broken by human effort. It is totally and completely controlled by their sinful nature. We will be encouraged to simply share the Gospel, because through the message of the Gospel, God gives lost people with sin natures a new nature. He overcomes their rebellion and rescues them from their slavery to sin. A deep understanding of the depravity of man and their culpability before God will make us more thankful followers of Jesus and more compassionate friends to sinners.
God’s plan of restoration for the joy of his people.
Which brings us to the third and final lesson that we will learn from Psalm 14. God has a plan of restoration that he is working for the joy of his people. Let’s read Psalm 14:7:
Psalm 14:7
7 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.
Brothers and sisters, this is a sad passage, but there is hope in the end. David longs for the promise that God has already made to him and to all of God’s people. There is a plan for restoration. There is hope to be delivered from the depressing state that man finds himself in. David looks forward to the salvation that God has promised would come out of Zion, to the only begotten son that God has promised would rule over the people of God and bring the rebellion of mankind to an end. That salvation, for David is still future. He is looking forward with hope to the day that God will reveal the means by which he will accomplish this great work of restoration.
Which should make us ask, what does it mean to be restored? I this verse, salvation and restoration are two sides of the same coin. The salvation David hopes for is yet to come but the idea of restoration is backward looking. It makes us think that there is something that we have lost that we must be returned to. This is the mystery of the plan that God has been working, it is both a return to the past and a hope that is yet to be realized in the future.
When we speak of the depravity of man, it is such a heart wrenching conversation, because this was not supposed to be the state man found himself in. It was not God’s original design for man to be spiritually dead and in slavery to brokenness and depravity. In some sense, all of humanity is sub-human, if we think of humanity as how God originally created us.
Adam and Eve were perfect, both physically and spiritually alive. In the Garden, they chose to listen to the lies of the enemy and do what God told them not to do. In that moment, God’s promise came true. He said that in the moment the ate of the fruit, they would surely die, and they did. Death entered the world physically, but that was not what God was referring to. Their rebellion killed their spirits. This is why in Luke 9:60, Jesus tells the young man to let the dead bury their dead. There is a kind of dead person that walks around every single day, eating and breathing and carrying on a sense of life, but they live a life that is less than God’s original purpose. They live a false life because they do not experience the true life of the Spirit. This is true of every single person that has ever been born from Adam, and so when God promises a plan of restoration, he promises a return to what he originally intended. The promise of the New Covenant according to Ezekiel 36:27 is that God will give you his own Spirit to live inside of you to restore you to what originally were meant to be. The Spirit of his only begotten Son.
Why does God do this? Because God loves to satisfy his people with joy and gladness. Look at the end of verse 7. By restoring the fortunes of his people and bringing salvation from Zion, God is giving his people a reason to sing and rejoice. He is putting gladness into their hearts through the salvation of his Son. And this is a good thing. It is right to say that God is out for the joy of his people, because by rescuing his people from their godless state he has given them the only thing that would satisfy them; he has given them himself. He has rescued them from a slavery that forces them to deny God and given them a new nature in which their greatest delight is him.
God’s plan of restoration is about the joy of God’s people because God restores his people to a place where they can enjoy God. And when rebellious, godless men go from hating God and seeking everything but God to enjoying God as their greatest pleasure in life, then God is seen in all his majestic beauty. He overcomes them with his only beauty and splendor so that they cannot deny him and fall in love with his glory. And that is where his people find true joy.