I'm going to be looking here
in Psalms again. Psalm 14. This is the Psalm of
David. The fool hath said in his heart,
There is no God. They are corrupt. They have done
abominable works. There is none that doeth good. The Lord looked down from heaven
upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand
and seek God. They were all gone aside. They
were all together become filthy. There is none that doeth good,
no, not one. Have all the workers of iniquity
no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not
upon the Lord? There were they in great fear,
for God is in the generation of the righteous. Ye have shamed
the counsel of the poor, because the Lord is his refuge. Oh, that
the salvation of Israel will come out of Zion, when the Lord
bringeth back the captivity of his people. Jacob shall rejoice,
and Israel shall be glad. The fool has said in his heart,
there is no God. Now, this is on the surface a
very straightforward thing that we might call those who would
identify themselves as atheists, that they are fools. I mean,
we can call them fools according to what Scripture says. Now,
the Lord said to the Pharisees, you know, if a man calls another
man a fool, he is in danger of hell fire. But you can scripturally
and rightly, in this instance, call a man a fool if he says
there is no God. But that is not essentially what
the psalm is saying, because the gist of the psalm is this,
the fool has said in his heart, there is no God for me. Now even
the most foolish of men, according to what the scripture says, knows
that there is a God. An atheist is not someone who
is innocent in his consideration of those things that he would
profess in saying, I don't believe in God. The gist of the issue
is that men do not want to believe in God. They have no desire to
believe in God. They can't escape the fact that
there is a God and that He created the world. Now really and truly,
how can it possibly be? that all of these things that
we see, the intricacies of all of this that we know to be the
creation of God, how could any man possibly consider
that he understands and knows how these things came to be?
I mean, really. You know, men say, oh, well,
you know, there was a spark back there somewhere, and all of it
just kind of, you know, there was a molecule created in the
spark, and one thing led to another, and over millions of years of
time, this happened and that happened, and you know, the fool is the one who would
profess these things. Men exalt such great thinkers,
do they not? In their minds. I mean, these
are the people that are supposedly considered to be the great wise
ones. Stephen Hawking. Here is a man that is supposedly
one of the most brilliant men on earth. He did not have a clue. He was a fool according to what
Scripture said. The fool has said in his heart, there is no
God for me. See, that's really the essence
of all of the sin of men, is that in those moments when men
will deny the truth of God, that's what they're saying. It's not
that a man says he doesn't believe that God created the heavens
and the earth. He's just saying, I'm not going
to do what God said. There is no God for me. Nobody
is going to tell me what to do. I am going to do what I want
to do. That is inbred and born in the
heart of every individual that has ever grew breath in this
world. The fool. Because you see, all
men, all men are fools by nature. just the way that it is. What
does it say? It says they are corrupt. Those who have disobeyed the
commandments of God, the Scripture says, are corrupt. Those who
have denied the right of God to rule over them and tell them
what to do. You see, Adam did not believe
it, did he? He said, there is no God for
me. God said, don't do this, but
who cares about that? I'm going to do it anyway. But
the Lord told him, the Lord said, in the day you eat this, you're
going to die. He didn't believe that. He believed the devil.
And in order, at least the woman, she would deceive, she believed
the devil. The devil said, you don't really think that's going
to happen, do you? I mean, come on. That's just something that
that you was told just to make you afraid to do something, you
know, to really enjoy life. No, the Lord said to Adam, you
are going to eat this, and in the day you eat it, you are going
to die. But Adam said, I don't believe
it. The fool has said in his heart,
there is no God for me. No one is going to rule over
me. They are corrupt and they have
done abominable works. There is none that do us good.
Now, I would venture to say that most people would rebel at that
truth right there. Most people do not believe that. Let's read it. What does it say? There is some that do us good. There are some that do us more
good than others. Now what does it say? It says
there is none that do us good. Well, what do men spend a lot
of their time doing? Patting one another on the back
for all the good they've done. Now, comparatively, among men,
There are good men and there are bad men. That's not hard to see, is it?
I mean, you can look around. I mean, comparatively, as you
compare men in society, you can honestly say, he was a good man. That is, on the standards that
men adopt and say, these are good things and these are bad
things. You can say that. Nothing wrong with that. But
that's not what this is saying. See, this is talking on a different...
This is not talking about comparatively. It's not comparing one man to
another. Because it doesn't make any difference
how men stack up against one another. Because that's not the
standard. There is one standard. and it
is absolute perfection. And according to that, there
is none that doeth good. The essence of what is being
said here is that it is not in the heart of man by nature to
do good. Anything that arises out of man
that can be said to be good is going to be that which cometh
from the Lord. and perfect gift coming from
above. Now, men don't like that. You
are not going to get far in this world telling men that. They don't want to hear it. You
can go up to Washington. Now, we talk about all these
problems that are in society. Oh, what's wrong? Well, I'll
tell you, it's spelled out right here. Here's what the problem
with society is. There's none that do us good.
We're all corrupt. You know, we're going contrary
to the way of God. That's what he says. They have
done abominable works. Where are they abominable? Now,
everything you've done in your life is not abominable to me. Everything that a lot of people
have done in the earth is not necessarily abominable to me.
But dear brethren, we've got to understand that the very best
thing that men have ever done is an abomination in God's sight. Why is that? Because the Scripture
says he is of purer eyes than to look upon sin. And what did
he say? There's none good, no, not one. There is the basis, and whether
we like that or not, that's the truth. The Lord is not grading
on the curve. He does not say, because John
is a better citizen than Bobby, that I'm going to give him some
points and he's going to be in a different position. No. He says there is none that doeth Now that pretty well takes away
a man's place of glory and boast, does it not? I mean, you can
look over here at an old sorry-no-count guy, a drunk laying in the gutter,
and you can look down your nose at him and you can say, yeah,
sorry-no-count fella, and you can feel good for a little while.
But when you come back and read this, you will realize that you
are no different than He is in the sight of God based on what
you are. And the only difference between
you and Him is the restraining grace of God, the mercy of God. Because by nature, dear brethren,
We are capable of the foulest of deeds that can be known comparatively
among men. And so there is none that doeth
good. The Lord looked down from heaven
upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand
and seek God. Now, this is not speaking in
terms of how God did things. It's speaking in terms of how
men would look at what God did, okay? God didn't look down from
heaven and say, oh, man, look. He knew what man was, did He
not? He created him. He created Adam just like He
created Adam. Now, He said it's good. I mean, it was good to Him. It
was according to His good pleasure for Adam to be just like Adam
was. What was Adam? Adam was a man that was a rebel
against God. Now who's to blame for that? They're ready to mow them to
go. That's what we are. See, men
don't want to admit what they are. What are you? You're a sinner. What am I? I'm a sinner. I have
not done anything that could give me a place of favor in the
sight of God. Nothing I can perform is going
to bring me to a place of favor in the sight of God. There is
none that do it good. The Lord looked down from heaven
to see if there were any that did not understand and seek God.
Are there? Well, men would say, well, sure
there are. Look at all these people that
are following the Lord. Well, speaking of themselves,
were there any by themselves? Did you wake up one morning all
on your own without any intervention of the Spirit of the living God
in you and call you to say, you know, I am a sinner before God.
I need to seek mercy at His hands. Why did you do that? It is only
because of the mercy of God who visited you. Because left to
yourself, you would have continued on the very path that you by
nature desire to walk in. Contrary to the way of God. Same
with the fool. No God for me, I am going to
do what I want to do. But you see, this psalm is about
the demonstration of the mercy of God. Because you see, you can't understand
the mercy of God until you see the problem that men have. Now
what we have today, by and large, in the religious philosophy that
is most popular in the world, is that everybody is on kind
of an even keel out here. And everybody has a chance. Now what you do with your chance
is all up to you. Do a good thing or you can do
a bad thing. And if you're good enough, then you'll ultimately
reap the favors of God. Now that's kind of how it's viewed,
is it not? I mean, we're all just kind of
in a neutral place. We're not good, we're not bad,
we're just going along and we choose bad or we choose good.
Well, that's a good philosophy, I guess, if you just like philosophy,
but it ain't worth a flip when you read the Scripture, because
it says there is none good. There's not one good thing. The Lord looked down. Now, this
is again, this is man's view of what God did as the Lord looked. Just like the Scripture says
the Lord repented of having created man. Now do you think that means
that the Lord said, man, I really messed up. I shouldn't have done
that. No, He made man just like He wanted it to be. But insofar
as men look at it, it would be as if the Lord did that. Same here. The Lord looked down
from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any
that did not understand and seek God. Are there any? We read in
the book of Romans, there are none that seek Him. They have
all turned aside. Now, all is a pretty broad word,
is it not? All have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. Is there any that would seek
God? Well, some have, have they not? I mean, we profess to be
seekers after God, do we not? So what does it mean? Well, it
means did any seek God by themselves? Did any seek God according to
their nature? Are there any men who were born
into the world just natural seekers after God? No. I'll answer it for you. I won't make you think about
it. I'll just go ahead and tell you.
No, men will not seek the Lord. You won't seek Him. I won't seek
Him. Nobody will seek Him. We will just go on our road right
on down to destruction, except for one thing, the great mercy
of God, who sees fit to snatch some as bands from the burning,
not according to their goodness, but according to His own. He says, if there were any that
didn't understand and seek God. He says, no. They are all gone
aside. They are all together become
filthy. You ever think of yourself as
filthy? I mean, what if the President stood up to give a speech and
he said, you are all a bunch of filthy sinners. Well, yeah, that's right. Well,
now, I will have to say, I guess we'll have to give Hillary credit,
you know, on that deal, because she did say they were a bunch
of deporables. She was right. You know, she
was right, was she not? Now, we took offense at that,
didn't we? But she was actually correct. Well, exactly, exactly. They all go on the side. They
all together become filthy. There is none that do us good.
No, not one. Now, we would like to get through
with this, wouldn't we? I mean, do you like somebody to tell
you continually that you are no good, you are no count? They
tell us that if you tell people that, they will start to believe
it. But it is not true. Because you
can tell people all day long that they are not going to believe
it. They are not going to believe it. Only in the human realm,
you know, you might have an effect on somebody that way. But we
are not talking about that. We are talking about in the spiritual
consideration. Men need to know that they have
nothing that would cause God to take notice of them. in themselves. There is none that doeth good.
Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? Who eat up my people
as eat bread, and call not upon the Lord? Don't they know? Don't they understand? Don't they see the people of
God? I mean, couldn't all these nations that came against Israel
Couldn't they see what God was doing? Remember Rahab? She was a harlot
in Jericho. And she said, you know, we have
heard about what God did in bringing you out of Egypt. Now how did she come to this
conclusion? She said, we know God is with
you. She said, I'm going to be rescued when you come. How did
she know that? She didn't figure it out, did
she? God showed it to her. That's exactly correct. And He
demonstrated His singling out of a people. Because most of
the inhabitants of Jericho perished. But she and her household were
delivered. Now what did she do to accomplish
that? Nothing. You see the workers
of Iniquity, I mean why can't men see this? Do you ever get
frustrated when you read things in the Scripture and you're baffled,
why can't people see that? Well, you couldn't see it either
apart from the mercy of God. Because by nature, you cannot
get it. And we don't need to grow frustrated
with people when they don't get it. I mean, they're people. They can't get it. We need to
pray for them. Maybe the Lord might show mercy
to them. Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who
eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the
Lord. There were they in great fear,
for God is in the generation of the righteous. Now, he's speaking
about the righteous. He said that the people, see,
there's a people that have no knowledge and they call not upon
the Lord. But he said there is a people
that have knowledge that they've been given and they do call upon
the Lord, just like Rahab. She did call upon the Lord. She
said, I want to be delivered out of this mess because I know
the one that's with you is the true and living God. There were they in great fear.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, Scripture says. It
says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Now
you see, they don't have knowledge. He says here, have all the workers
of iniquity no knowledge? Why don't they have any knowledge?
Because they do not fear God. See, men that don't fear God
have no knowledge of spiritual things. But that man who's given
a fear of God, he's given knowledge of spiritual things. You see,
he trembles at the mention of the name of the Almighty God. He fears when he reads the commandments
of God. And he says, oh my, I've broken
these things, I've spat in the face of God, I've been a rebel
against Him. Lord, help me. See, he trembles
before the Lord. There were they in great fear. Yes, I have to tell you, I fear
and tremble when I think of the Lord. Because I know that He
does not play games, dear brethren. We are not dealing with some
little weak-kneed, half-pint God that is waiting on men to
do something. We are talking about the eternal
God who made the heavens and the earth. who formed the light and made
the darkness, who makes peace and creates evil
according to the good pleasure of His will. And dear brethren,
we must fear before Him if we have any knowledge at all. And knowledge begins, dear brethren,
with the fear of God. I mean, God has got to cause
a man to fear Him. Because by nature, he won't fear
God. No, he figures... I mean, you know, people talk
all the time about, oh, I'm going to tell the Lord this, and I'm
going to tell the Lord that. Brother, you're not going to
tell the Lord anything. You can't tell the Lord something.
You better hope he tells you something. There were they in great fear,
for God is in. The generation of the righteous. Now, that's an interesting passage
of Scripture. Now, what the generation of something
is the making of it, is it not? I mean, if you've got a generator,
when the power goes off and you happen to have one and it'll
crank, you know, it'll start generating power. What does that
mean? It's making power, is it not? Well, the Lord is in the
generation of the righteous. He generates the righteous. What
does He say to Nicodemus? Nicodemus, except a man be born
again, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. To be born is to be
generated, is it not? I mean, that is to come forth.
And so the Lord is the one who generates the righteous. He is
the one who regenerates, that is, He gives them life. He is in the generation of the
righteous also. A generation is an age of people,
is it not? I mean, the Lord said that there
is a righteous seed that belonged to Him. They are His generation.
They are His people. Now what did you do to be born
into the family that you are in natural terms? I mean, did
you pick it out? No, you were generated without
any choice of your own. And so it is when the Lord is
pleased to generate or regenerate a man, it is not according to
his choice, but it is according to His. Nicodemus accepted man
to be born again. But oh, the glorious thing is
that the Lord does generate men. He is in the generation that
belongs to Him. He has a generation that are
His people. They're His generation. How can
they be known? Only one way. They fear the Lord. That's what it says. There were
they in great fear, for God is in the generation of the righteous.
He's in His people. He works in us both to will and
to do of His good pleasure. He has shamed the counsel of
the poor because the Lord is His refuge. Oh, that's just a
bunch of weak-minded people that believe in this God stuff. You
know, it's just a crutch for you. You know, you've got to have
religion, you've got to have these, you're just weak, you
know, you're not strong and mighty and powerful and your mind, you
know, you're not letting your mind be free. See, all these
people are letting their mind be free. They think, but the
man who says that his mind is free, is the man who is in the
greatest bondage, because it is only as a man comes to the
place where he understands by the fear of God what he is by
nature that he could ever know what
it is to be free. Because see, until you know what
it is that has you bound, you cannot ever be free. I mean,
the jails are full of people that think that They say they
want to be free. And they've got these bars that's
all up around them, and they say, man, if I could get on the
other side of those bars, I'd be free. But you know what? Most of them, when they get on
the other side of those bars, it won't be long before they're
right back in the same place they were. Isn't that true? Why is that? because they didn't
understand what it was that had them bound. See, what had them
bound is not the bars that were around them, but it was the wickedness
of their own heart. Until a man is set free from
that, he will never be free. Until a man knows and understands
that is what his problem is. Until a man comes to embrace
what the Lord said, there is none that doeth good, there is
nothing in me. There is not a spark of divinity
as one of our esteemed politicians upbraided the President about
saying. She said there is a spark of
divinity in all men. Well, I am telling you that is
the biggest lie that has ever been told. There is not a spark
of divinity in any man unless the Lord is pleased to
put a spark in him. But by nature all men are corrupt
according to what we're reading here. He has shamed the counsel
of the poor because the Lord is his refuge. Now the world,
they make a mockery of those who would trust the Lord. Oh,
that religion stuff, I ain't got time for that. I mean, that's
just for the weak. But the weak, they say, that's
all they hope we got. I confess, brethren, I'm poor
and weak and beggarly. I don't have a hope in the world.
I mean, I don't have a shred of any hope before Almighty God
except that He'll show mercy to me. That's my only hope. I
don't have any expectation that, as I've shared this with you,
my old neighbor, because he's dead now, he found out about
all this. He figured that he was just going
to tell the Lord when he got before him that he always tried
to do the best he could. Well, he was out to start with,
was he not? In the first place, he wasn't
going to say nothing to the Lord. The Lord was going to say something
to him. But what a foolish thing for a man to say. The Lord always
tried to do what was right. I never always tried to do what's
right, neither have I. Nobody I ever met did. You've
never done that. How foolish. What is the refuge
of the poor? The refuge of the poor is the
one who has what they need. See, if you're starving to death
and one guy is over here and he's got a a carload of gold,
and he'll just give you all this gold. But here's another man
over here, and he's got a basket of bread. And you can either
go over here and get the gold, or you can go over here and get
the bread. If you're starving to death,
what are you going to get? I mean, the gold would be nice,
but you can't eat gold. It won't do you any good. The
bread is the only thing that will sustain your life. And so
it is with the man who has been awakened by the Spirit of God,
there is only one thing that can give him rest. And that's
the refuge that he finds in Jesus Christ. But until a man is brought
there, He can't see it. It just seems
like so much mumbo-jumbo that means anything. Oh, that the
salvation of Israel will come out of Zion. Now, the language of this is
kind of a little different than probably we would say this in
our current understanding of language. Oh, that the salvation
of Israel will come out of Zion, or was actually brought to Zion. In other words, the salvation
of the Lord is coming to Zion. That it is that which is brought
to the people of God. Zion is the kingdom of God. And
we desire that. We desire to be in the presence
of the Lord. Oh, that the salvation of Israel
will come out to Zion. When the Lord bringeth back the
captivity of his people, Jacob, or brings his people out of captivity,
is the essence of what he is saying. When the Lord brings
back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice and Israel
shall be glad. This is summing up what he started
off by saying. And if we start off, there is
none who are not captives. If we read that, instead of,
there is none that doeth good, no, not one. If we said there
is none that are not captives, we are captives. See, all men
by nature are captive to sin. If not, why don't men quit? You know, if you sat down at
a card table and every time that somebody dealt the cards, they had the win in hand and
you had the lose in hand, wouldn't you start to suspect something
was wrong? You'd start to say, something's
not adding up here. Well, see, every time that a
child is born into this world by nature, what the Scripture
says, and people don't like this because they like to think of
babies as these nice little innocent creatures. The Scripture says,
the wicked, as soon as they are born, they go astray, speaking
lies. As soon as they are born. Why? I mean, does a baby stand
up and start telling you a lie? No, he doesn't start telling
you a lie, but what it means is it's in his heart. He's born
with it. He's infected with it. There's
none that do us good. There's all in captivity. Oh,
but the people of God rejoice, do they not? And Israel is made
glad when the Lord is pleased. to set His people free. The Lord
said that if He made a man free, he would be free indeed. Because
you see, it doesn't make any difference what else happens
to a man when the Lord has made him free. He's free. He can't
be brought into bondage. He can't be brought back. He
can't be out of the Lord. If he's in the Lord, he can't
be out of the Lord. Because that is the deliverance
of the people of God. Our refuge is in Christ. We desire no other. Peter said,
Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal
life. Now, there was only a handful, was there not, of those who were
of Peter's mindset. The multitude said, crucified.
We don't want anything to do with Him. But there were some
that said, Lord, You've got whatever we need. We don't want anything
else. Job said, though He slayed me, yet will I trust in Him. Why? Because he said, He is my
refuge. He said, though the skin worms
eat my flesh, though I am put into the ground and the worms
come, and the worms go in and the worms go out, and the worms
play pinnacle on my snout. He said, in my flesh shall I
see God. Now how did he know that? Where
did he come up with that? Why didn't Bill Dadd and Zophar
and all these other guys know that? because Job was a recipient of
the mercy of God and he was brought to a place to trust in Him. And
he couldn't do anything else. I mean, you know, when John Bunyan
was put in prison, And he was put in prison for preaching without
a license. Because back in those days in
England, if you were licensed by the government to preach,
you couldn't actually preach. He didn't care about that. He
was just preaching. And they put him in jail. And they said,
John, we don't want to keep you in jail here. Just sign this
thing and say that you won't preach anymore and we'll let
you out. He said, I ain't signing that. He said, because soon as
you let me out of here, I'm going to preach the glory of Christ,
because I can't do anything else. Dear brother, that's just the
way it is. When the Lord is pleased to awaken
a man to see what he is by nature, and to see that his refuge is
in Christ, he can't look for something else. Isn't there a
little easier path for me to go? I'll choose that one. No,
whatever it is that the Lord is, that's where I want to be. Like B.B. Caldwell said, if what
I believe will get me to the Lord, that's as far as I want
to go. I don't want to go any further. I want to be with Him.
May the Lord help us.