Let's open our Bibles again to
Psalm 53. As we read these two Psalms open
the surface, you see that Psalm 53 and Psalm 14 are almost carbon copies of each
other. Both Psalms speak of the fool who says, no God. These
are not wasted words. Having these two Psalms be almost
identical and repeated. Because the total depravity of
our nature is something we've got to hear over and over and
over again. And I'll tell you why. We're
so depraved, we forget we're depraved, unless God reminds
us. Some people think that David
wrote Psalm 14 when he was a young man, and he wrote Psalm 53 when
he was older. And over the course of his life,
they speculate David learned even more clearly how depraved
all men are by nature. And he felt the need to stress
it again. And he wrote this second psalm.
Every son and daughter of Adam is born with the exact same heart
or same nature. Scripture describes that heart
or that nature as desperately wicked. It describes our nature
as dead and seen. It describes our heart as darkened
and foolish. So this psalm describes our foolish
heart. I always email Mike the text
and title of the message and I emailed him Monday and told
him that the title was A Foolish Heart. A little bit later I emailed
him back and I said correct that. This is our foolish heart. Our
foolish heart. See this isn't just describing
the heart of the atheist. It's not describing the foolish
heart of an unbeliever. It's describing the heart the
nature of every son and daughter of Adam. The Apostle Paul quotes
this Psalm in Romans chapter three as the proof. All men are
totally depraved. There's none that doeth good,
no not one. So all men stand in need of Christ. All of us here tonight are born
with this foolish heart. Every single one of us here tonight
has this foolish heart. But the believer has a second
heart. a second nature given to them in the new birth. And
scripture describes that heart as a righteous heart, as a holy
heart. Scripture describes that nature
as partaker of the divine nature. We've been given the nature of
our new heavenly father in the new birth. And the only people
who can see that they have a foolish, wicked heart are people who've
been given a new heart. The only people who can see that
they've got a dead heart are people that God's given life
in the new birth. The only people that know that
they have an old foolish heart are people who have a new heart,
who struggles with, who strives against that old heart every
day. And I want us to look at this
psalm this evening in clear and simple terms so every one of
us can leave here tonight knowing, do I have two hearts or one?
We're going to recognize this foolish heart in ourselves if
we have two hearts, if we have two natures. So number one, here's
the foolish heart. Our foolish heart will not bow
to God's sovereign rule over us. Verse one, Psalm 53, the
fool has said in his heart, there is no God. Corrupt are they and
have done abominable iniquity. There's none that do of good. Now you notice the words there
is, is in italics. Those words have been added by
the translators to try to help us better understand the meaning
of the text. And certainly anybody who says
there is no God is a fool. They're just an utter fool. Creation,
you just look around you. Creation tells you that God is. You're willingly ignorant if
you think all this evolved from nothing. I mean, that's just
being willfully ignorant. Somebody with great wisdom, great
power, great understanding created all of this to make it all work
together. And besides that, our conscience tells us that God
is. Man inherently knows, I'm going to have to answer for what
I've done. I'm going to have to answer to God for this and
the judgment. Our conscience tells us that
God is. But that's not really what David
is saying here. Those words, there is, were not
in the original. What David actually wrote is,
the fool has said in his heart, no God. Only a fool would tell
God, no, I will not bow to you, and think he can get away with
it. Only a fool would do that. It's a fool that just absolutely
does not know any better to say, no God, I will not accept any
limits. I will not accept any restraints.
I will not accept any order from you that I have to follow. How
foolish is it to think that way, to talk that way, because that's
ignoring the sovereignty and the power of almighty God. And it's also ignoring the insignificance
of man. My friends, God's king. Now he
is king and we have no right to tell God no. It's the natural
order of things that the creature should obey the Creator, isn't
it? It's just the natural order of things that the maggot would
be subject to God. Fools ought to obey Him whose
name is wisdom. So it's the fool who says no
God. It's also the fool who says no
God. The fool hears the gospel and
says no. No God, I know a better way than
you. You know the worst kind of fool?
The worst kind. It's somebody who thinks they
know everything when they don't. The worst kind of fool. Because
you can't teach them. A fool needs to be taught. But
somebody thinks they already know everything. You can't teach
them anyway. Only a fool would say, no God,
I don't like your way of salvation that's all in Christ. No, God,
I don't like your way of righteousness. It's in the obedience of Christ,
not in mine. Only a fool would say, no, God,
I don't want your will. I want my will. Now we say, I
want my will, not God's will. Take what we're saying. I don't
want holiness. I want iniquity. I don't want
power. I want weakness. If the fool
says, no, God, I want my way, not your way. What we're saying
is I want the way of death, not the way of life. I want the way
of war, not the way of peace. In our day and time, I might
be tilting at windmills, but you parents here listen closely
to me. I've raised children. I've been
around a little bit. I've seen a few things. You people
who are not parents yet, you listen carefully to me. I'm going
to give you something to make your life better. Don't you ever,
ever, I don't care if they're 18 months old, don't you Don't
ever let your children stand in your face and tell you no.
Don't ever do that. You teach your children to respect
your authority. So when you tell them to do something,
they immediately say, yes sir, yes ma'am, and do it. Could be
you'll teach them to obey God the first time He speaks. He
might just speak once. If your children think they can
tell you no, or if they can tell you no, they're going to think
they can tell everybody in the authority no. They're going to
think they can tell their teacher no. They think they can tell
the policeman no. And they'll think they can tell
God no. Your job as a parent is to teach them better. Allowing
our children to act like fools is going to end up with a bad
life for them every time. That's just me on my soapbox.
Put that away for your future reference. But God allows us to go the way
that our foolish heart wants to go. We're going to go away
from God. We're going to try to establish our own righteousness
and will not submit to the righteousness of Christ. We're going to try
to earn our own salvation by our own works. And Davis tells
us what our works here are. They're corrupt. They're abominable
iniquity. They're not just iniquity. They're
horrible, abominable iniquity. Those works of righteousness,
works we do trying to get righteousness from God or be righteous in front
of God are corrupt works. They're works of abominable,
awful, hateful iniquity that God hates. So if you find yourself
struggling against your desire to want your way and not God's
way, you've been born again. You've cut two natures. That's
the evidence of two natures fighting against each other. If you've
got no trouble insisting on your own way, you've got no trouble
going your own way, then you've not been born again. You just
got one nature, and I'm here to warn you, it's foolish nature.
All right, number two, our foolish heart cannot understand God's
way of salvation. Verse two, God looked down from
heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any that
did understand, that did seek God. Every one of them has gone
back. They are all together become
filthy. There's none that do it good. No, not one. In our
carnal, natural mind, the foolish heart that we're born with cannot
understand how God saves sinners. Can't do it. That's why God has
to send us preachers. That's why God has to send the
Holy Spirit into our hearts to teach us and give us an understanding,
because the gospel can only be understood if God reveals it
to us. We cannot understand that salvation
is in Christ's obedience, not our obedience, unless God reveals
Christ to us. Otherwise, our foolish hearts
are going to think we can earn salvation by keeping the law.
We are so foolish, we think we keep the law well enough. Until
God reveals Christ to us, that's what we'll think. We cannot understand
that salvation is in Christ's sacrifice, not in our sacrifice
until God reveals Christ to us. Until God reveals Christ to us,
we'll think that salvation can be obtained by us sacrificing
something. I've got to give up the pleasures
of this world. People think that. That's why
preachers can get away telling you don't drink, don't smoke,
don't cuss. Give up those things that make
you feel better, and they'll think, you know, you're righteous.
That's what we'll think until God reveals Christ to us. We
cannot understand what the Lord told Nicodemus. Couldn't understand
it, could he? You must be born again. You can't understand that
until God births you again, until he gives you a new nature. See,
before God gives us a new heart, our foolish heart thinks, I can
do something good enough that God will accept me. And I'll
tell you why I think that. Because I don't know I'm dead.
The only way we can know we're dead is if God gives us life.
But I tell you the main thing this verse shows us is we cannot
understand salvation is by God's electing grace, not our decision.
We cannot understand that salvation is God's choice, not ours. God's electing love is the fountainhead
of every grace that God has for a sinner. It all comes from God's
election of a people. There can be no salvation of
a sinner unless it starts with God's election of a people. And
I know what people say. I mean, if you read the Bible
with any human understanding whatsoever, you understand election
is. So people try to come up with
their own definition of it. I'll give you an example. They
say God looked down through the telescope of time, and He saw
who would be good, and He chose them. And God saw who would choose
Him, so He chose them. But that's not so. God didn't
choose people because there's any goodness in them, because
there is no goodness in them. God chose a people to save just
because God would. If God looked down through the
telescope of time and saw, well, that's who choose me, so I'll
choose them. That's God taking credit for what man's already
going to do. And that's not salvation. Now, God did look down through
time. He did look into the heart of
every son of Adam. And you know what he saw? He
saw man's heart is desperately wicked. God looked down and he
saw that every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart is
only evil continually. God looked down from heaven.
He looked into the heart of man and he saw No one understands. He saw that no one will seek
God. God saw no one would ever choose him. No one would ever
do anything to deserve to be saved, but God chose the people
to save anyway. Now that is unconditional election. What unconditional election means
is this. It's such good news to a sinner.
There are no conditions you have to meet in order to be saved.
Not one. Because God met every condition
and satisfied every condition in the person of His Son, our
Lord Jesus Christ. That's the truth of this book.
I know the foolish heart can't understand it, can't believe
it, but that's so from this book. And a wise man or woman, a wise
boy or girl will say, Lord, choose me. Lord, save me. And the fool will say, no, God.
I insist on my free will. Even though scripture says my
free will is going to send me to hell. That's what a fool would
say. Only a fool would say I'm going
to continue doing what I'm doing even though God says it's going
to send me to hell for it. Only a fool would do that. Brethren,
our will is only free. And people think just because
I can choose to pick this glass up and set it down that I've
got a free will. My will is constrained by my nature. Clean a pig up. wash it up, put
ribbon on it, and take it down to the county fair. If it rains
during the time of the county fair, what's the pig gonna do?
He'd go into the mud. Why? This is nature. I can't do anything but lie.
I can't do anything but sin. I can't do anything but hate
God with this nature. Why? Because that's my nature. My actions are constrained by
my nature. So left to my own will, I'm going
to choose the way of sin, death, and hell. Left to my own will,
left to resist God's electing love, it's going to lead me away
from God. That's verse 3 says. Every one
of them has gone back. If a man opposes, if he chooses
his own way, the way that he'll go, and he opposes God's way,
he'll choose to go away from God, not toward God, every time. And I'll give you proof of that.
That's why God has to command us to come to Christ. If we've
left our own will, we'll go away from it. And they say, but I
want a way of goodness. I want a way of kindness. I want
a way people are nice because election is so hard and mean
and cold. When the opposite is true. The opposite of that is
true. Nothing is more loving than God
choosing to save sinners. who are opposed to him. Nothing
is more loving than that. And they want this goodness.
But what does God say about their goodness and their kind works?
He said, look at everything you're doing. Don't just stand one of
you alone, put all of them together. And they're still filthy. None
of them are doing any good. And they say, but wait, what
about my morality? What about my honesty? What about
how I never miss a service? What about how I read my Bible
and pray every day? What about how I feed the poor and visit
people in their homes? No, not one. Now that means you and me. We're included in that. There's
none that doeth good. God says those works aren't good
works. Those works don't impress Him. Those works don't produce
any spiritual life. All they do is produce more dead
flesh. that's offensive to God. He says
here, they're filthy. The word means they're defiled.
They're polluted with sin. They're not just dirty on the
outside. They're polluted through and through with sin. And it's
offensive to God. And only the fool would choose
that way. The word fool that David uses here has two meanings.
The first one is stupid. Now I've been taught The word
stupid is probably not politically correct in our day. I used the
word, I didn't know I did it, but apparently I did. I used
the word stupid in front of one of my nieces, my grandnieces,
and she ran to her mommy and said, Mommy, Uncle Frank used
the S word. I did not. I found out the S word is stupid. It's not a politically correct
word. And I was told, Uncle Frank, you don't say that. Oh, OK. But
that's what the word means. It means stupid. It doesn't mean
ignorant now. Somebody who's ignorant is untaught.
They can be taught. They're just ignorant. They haven't
had a chance to learn. Stupid means incapable of learning.
That's our nature. Incapable of learning. That's
why we need a new one. And the second meaning of this
word fool is vile. And that's this filthy, it's
vile. Anybody who doesn't trust Christ, but they want to produce
their own works, they're vile. Their works are nothing but sin. And that's the only thing that
we can be outside of God's electing love. So if you find that you
look at yourself and you find, I need God to choose me. God's given you a new heart.
And if you think you're just fine and you can choose God on
your own, you don't need God to choose you. then you've just
got a foolish heart. All right, number three. Our
foolish heart will not come to Christ. This is God's commandment
to us. Come to Christ. I'll tell you
another story. We had a little girl visiting
here with her grandmother a few weeks ago. She's four or five
years old. And they left and got in the car and she told her
grandmother, she said, I don't like that man. And she said,
You don't like Frank? Why not? And she said, he's bossy.
Well, at the threat of being bossy, let me tell you again,
come to Christ. That's God's commandment. Come
to Christ. Come to Christ for forgiveness.
Come to Christ for righteousness. Come to Christ for peace with
God. Come to Christ for everything you need. It's free. Come. Bob,
only a fool will say, I'm not going to take it because it's
free. At the end of verse 2, David
says, God looked down and he saw that there was none that
did seek God. Our Lord said, come unto me that
you might have life. Only a fool would say, I'd rather
stay dead. The foolishness of our heart
is choosing willfully not to come to Christ and trying to
go about to establish our own righteousness. This is what the
Lord told us. He said, you cannot come unto
me that you might have life. You cannot, you cannot, because
our foolish nature is dead. You cannot come to me except
the father would sent me. But this is also true. The Lord
said, you will not come to me. You will not. You willfully choose
not to come to me. It's the height of foolishness.
Now, if we would be saved, God's got to give us a new heart. He's
got to give us a heart that's willing to come to Christ and
that's able to come to Christ. And then he's got to draw us
to Christ. And you're the believer, this thing of coming to Christ. You know, it's not a one time
for all thing and it's settled. Salvation is union with Christ. It's a It's a relationship with
Christ. Just like marriage. I'm married
to you. It doesn't mean I said vows to
you 31 years ago and then I didn't see you no more. No, it's a relationship. Coming to Christ is not saying,
oh, I was baptized when I was eight. No. Peter said, to whom? Coming. We're constantly coming
to Christ. We're constantly coming to Him
for everything we need. We're constantly coming to Him
for comfort, for assurance, to be fed. So if you find your old
heart, that old foolish heart, constantly trying to bring you
back into captivity to the law, just like those Jews, they were
set free from Egypt. They had the Passover. They went
through the Red Sea. They saw Pharaoh and his army
drown in the Red Sea. And the first day they didn't
have a drop of rain, they said, I'm going to go back to Egypt. Only
a fool wants to go back to be a slave. Well, if your old foolish
heart is constantly trying to bring you back into captivity
to the Lord, and you find yourself constantly turning away from
yourself and constantly coming again to Christ, God's given
you a new nature. All right, fourthly, our foolish
heart is our worst enemy. Verse four, he says, have the
workers of iniquity, no knowledge who eat up my people as they
eat bread. They have not called upon God. Now, certainly this
applies to the wicked, the wicked who do not believe on Christ
or the believers enemy. They mock, they make fun, they
torment God's people as much as they possibly can. They do
it, they hurt God's people as much as God will allow them to
do. If God would allow it, they'd eat up and devour God's people.
And that mocking, that ridicule, you know, you see it on people's
faces and the things that they say to you, it bothers you, doesn't
it? It just eats you up. It just eats at you. But let's
be honest. Those enemies, they're real.
I'm not minimizing that. They're real enemies. But who's our worst enemy? Really? It's this old foolish heart that
we carry around with us everywhere we go. And it's that foolish
heart that just eats us up. Who is it? In the middle of the
night or middle of the day or whenever whispering in your ear,
you're not good enough for God to choose you. You better improve
so God will choose you. Who is it that whispers in your
ear? Well, God's not blessing you because you're not keeping
his law well enough. Who whispers in your ear, you know why you
don't have more of God's grace? You're not good enough. You're
not living a good enough Christian life. That's our foolish heart
eating us up from the inside out. Our worst enemy is already
in the gates. Only a fool would say you don't
have grace because you're not good enough. Grace, by definition,
is for people who are not good. You can't be too bad for grace.
You can be too good for it. But you can't be too bad for
it. Grace is for the guilty. The Savior said He didn't come
to call the good people. He didn't come to call the righteous
people. He came to call sinners to repentance. See, it's that
foolish heart lying to you and eating you up from the inside
out. It's our foolish heart that tells us. I know you need to
go pray, but now you better start doing good. You've got to do
better. Go do some good things, you know, before you go pray,
so God will hear you. That's just that old foolish
heart eating us up from the inside out, eating away at our joy,
eating away at our rest and our peace in Christ. So if you constantly
find yourself calling on God out of great need, Lord, save
me. Lord, forgive me that you've
been born again. Because only the new man is going
to call on God for relief from the old man. Only the new man
will do that. And here's the fifth thing. Our
foolish heart won't fear until it's too late. Verse five. There were they in great fear
where no fear was. For God has scattered the bones
of him that encampeth against thee. Thou hast put them to shame
because God hath despised them. Now our foolish heart goes through
this life with no fear of God. Our foolish heart doesn't fear
because it tells us we've lived well enough to please God. We
love God and of course God loves us because God loves everybody.
We even make up logos on T-shirts, no fear. I think we know we should
fear, we're just kind of whistling through the graveyard trying
to convince ourselves we don't have to fear anything, no fear.
Men are not afraid of God. because they don't fear Him.
They don't reverence Him. And more people would probably
fear God. They'd reverence God. If preachers, the false in the
pulpit, if preachers gave a more accurate description of who God
really is, more people would fear Him. And then at the very end of this
life, people begin to fear death. And they begin to fear because
they just can't help it. Now they're forced to face it.
There's going to be a judgment after. What's going to happen?
And suddenly, There's fear where there wasn't any before. And
they fear with good reason. If our hope of eternal life depends
on how well we've lived, we should fear, shouldn't we? Because we
never know. Did I do good enough? Have I
done enough? Did I get a passing grade? I remember being in college,
handing in tests, full of fear, pretty confident. Unless they're
grading on a big curve, I just hand in a failing paper. You want to face death that way?
You'd be afraid, wouldn't you? And if the thought of death doesn't
fill the unbeliever with fear, soon they will be filled with
it when they face God in judgment. That fear will both be reference
and bowing the knee, and it'll be afraid and falling into the
hands of an angry God. But like we talked about last
Sunday, there's no reason for the believer to fear death. You
don't have to be afraid of any of that. You don't have to be
afraid of death. You don't have to be afraid of the judgment. If our hope of eternal
life is based on how well we've done, we'll be afraid because
we don't know if we've done enough. But if our hope of eternal life
is in Christ, oh, there's no fear because I know Christ is
enough. Do I know all the technicalities
these great theologians talk about, about how he accomplished
all this? No, I can't understand all that exactly. But this I
know. Christ is enough. That takes
away all fear. There's no reason for the believer
to fear judgment. Christ has already suffered the
wrath of God for the sins of his people. And the Father said,
there's no wrath left in me. I poured it all out on your substitute.
There's no reason for the believer to fear facing God in judgment.
Christ has made them not guilty. An innocent man doesn't have
to fear the judge. So if you get filled with fear,
when you look at yourself, you get filled with fear. But then
your fears are silenced. As soon as you look to Christ
as all of your salvation. Brother, you've been born again.
If you find yourself afraid, to stand before God outside of
Christ. And you wouldn't think about
presenting before God anything that you've done. You just want
to hide in Christ. If that's your hope, you've been
born again. If you have a fear and a reverence of the Lord,
God's given you a wise heart. Right, and here's the last thing. These first five verses have
all been about that old foolish heart. But the sixth point here,
the sixth verse, is about the new heart. Only the new man can
find joy and peace, find one place of salvation and deliverance
and rejoicing in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now the fool thinks there's
many ways of salvation. You know, there's many ways of
joy. It'll all be all right. You know, you go your way, I'll
go my way. We'll go two opposite ways, but we'll meet in the same
place. That's a foolish heart. A wise heart knows better than
that. O that the salvation of Israel
will come out of Zion, when God bringeth back the captivity of
his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad. Now this foolish heart that David
describes, remember, it's the heart we're all born with. It's
the heart that's still in every one of us here tonight, and it'll
be in us till the day we die. Well, is there any hope then
of not acting the fool? and escaping the end that a fool
deserves. That's what David asked here, literally translated this,
who will give salvations to Israel? Who will give salvation to God's
people? We know the answer to that one, don't we? The Lord
Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul said the same
thing. Talking about that warfare going on between the flesh and
the spirit. And he summed it up by saying, who shall deliver
me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ
our Lord. Christ delivers his people from
being captive to that foolish heart by giving us a heart of
wisdom, by being our wisdom. Christ is our wisdom. Once I
see Christ, I know I can't make this flesh any better. There's
no hope in trying to improve this flesh enough that God will
save me. But in Christ I see. Now I see. Now I understand how
God can save a sinner like me and still be holy. It's by giving
me the obedience of Christ, by making him my representative
and giving me his obedience so that I'm righteous. And by punishing
all my sin in Christ my substitute. That's the wisdom of God. That's
how God can save sinners and still be God. How he can be both
just and still justify the ungodly. And that salvation makes God's
people rejoice. The joy, oh the joy of being
set free from captivity to the law. To not be always going through
your life worrying about the law. What freedom there is in
being free, set free from all the ceremonies of religion. I'm
not going to go to hell if I miss Whatever ceremony it is they're
doing on a particular day, if I miss the priest doing that
mumbo jumbo, last rites, whatever it is, I'm going to go to hell.
No, I'm free from that. I'm free from the ceremonies
of religion. I'm free from the fear of death. There's joy in
Christ. Because all fear is gone. There's
joy in freedom. In freedom. Freedom from worry. Freedom from fear. Freedom from
God's judgment. I'm free from all that. I rejoice. God does not see me in all my
abominable works. Now, if I look at my works, that's
all I see about myself. But God doesn't see me in that
way. No, God sees me in Christ's work. He sees me as perfect in
Christ because he gave me Christ's work. Christ's work is mine.
God says I'm perfect. That's all I am. If we knew what it really meant
to be perfect before God, we'd jump for joy. We'd jump for joy. You know, I can't jump very high
anymore, but I'd still jump. I'd still jump. God doesn't see me and He won't
deal with me in the filth of my sin because He cleansed me
in the blood of His precious Son. Nothing makes me gladder
than that. I don't know if gladder is a
word, but that makes me gladder. That all makes me gladder. The
fool will rejoice in what he's done for Jesus, but the wise
heart rejoices in Christ. If you can leave here tonight
rejoicing in Christ plus nothing, nothing else, just rejoicing
in Christ alone, God's given you the arms. Let's be thankful. Let's bow together in prayer. Our Father, how we thank you. For salvation is full and free
in Christ. How we thank you for a sufficient
Savior. He is all we need. His obedience is all we need
to stand before you perfect and righteous. His sacrifice is all
we need to be cleansed from all of our sin. Father, how thankful
we are. We pray for a more full understanding
of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. That our hearts would
be filled with the peace in knowing Him, with joy in knowing Christ,
with being happy at being found in the Lord Jesus not having
our own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which
is through the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, bless the
hearts of your people. Comfort the hearts of your people
by applying your word to our hearts, causing us to find our
rest and peace and joy in him. It's in his precious name we
pray and give thanks. Amen.