Several years ago, as a part of an ad campaign for the British Humanist organization a placard was placed on buses that said:
“There’s probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”
“Probably”…that’s a pretty big caveat but at least they are honest…you can’t disprove God.
Not to be outdone, over on the continent some German atheists rented a bus and placed their own sign that read…
“There is (with probability bounding on certainty) no God. A fulfilled life needs no faith.”
Then it really gets interesting, some energetic Christians rented a bus and followed that vehicle around with a sign asking the question, “And what if He does exist?”
I don’t know if anyone’s mind was changed either way by a sign on a bus…but it did spark conversation
What stood out to me are the implications that:
- The existence of God was associated with worry and lack of enjoyment.
- To embrace atheism is implied to be the path to experience freedom and true happiness.
That’s a stretch.
On a website for atheists, arrogantly named, Brights.net
They define a “bright” as “A person who has a naturalistic worldview. A bright’s worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements. The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic worldview.”
The “is” and the “ought” don’t come from God, but from ourselves.
To their credit, some of the leading atheists are not postmodern relativists, atheist author and speaker, Sam Harris, once said to a Christian audience “One of us is right, the other is wrong.”
That part is refreshing, there is no…”Your truth and my truth…not true truth.”
One well-known atheist, Richard Dawkins said, “Show me a relativist at 30,000 feet and I’ll show you a hypocrite.”
He is saying what Harris said, and what I’ve said over and over…Reality is what it is, some are right, and some are wrong.
That includes aerodynamics as well as religion, ethics, purpose.
Russan author, Dostoevsky (daa stoy ev skee) said,
“If God does not exist, everything is permissible.”
He is correct, now to the question…does doing whatever you want lead to freedom and greater enjoyment of life…or the exact opposite?
Is real human freedom the ability to do what you want or to do what you ought?
Jacques Monod (Jzok mano) was a Nobel winning French biochemist, he wrote:
One of the great problems of philosophy is the relationship between the realm of knowledge and the realm of values. Knowledge is what “is” and values are what “ought” to be. I would say that all traditional philosophies up to and including communism have tried to derive the “ought” from the “is”. This is impossible. If it is true that there is no purpose in the universe, that man is a pure accident, you cannot derive any ought from is.
LENNOX, JOHN C. . Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are missing the target (p. 106). (Function). Kindle Edition.
Science can tell you some of what “is” but it cannot tell you what “ought to be.”
It cannot give the foundational “why” for human existence.
It cannot tell you what is the good to do with your life.
Last week I heard a college student sing the song “No one is alone”, from the Musical “Into the woods” where one line is…”you decide what’s right, you decide what’s good.”
I thought…that sounds like the book of Judges…and King Saul…good luck with that.
The thing is “ought” cannot be discovered by humans like “is” can be.
Even thinking atheists, who disbelieve in God…will admit as much.
I’m not saying atheists don’t come up with ethics, they often do…but those ethics are fabricated, they have no foundation.
They are not laws, like gravity that everyone must submit to.
Dostoevsky (daa stoy ev skee) is correct…
“If God does not exist, everything is permissible.”
Now, again to that big question…what is freedom for a human?
To do whatever we want, or to be able to do whatever we ought?
To know the ought and to have the power to do it…that is real freedom.
In fact, real freedom is to want to do what we ought…and to have the power to do it.
In our reading through the Bible, we saw that in the times of the Judges, it was an utter disaster because “Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.”
Then they thought a King like the other nations had would solve their problems, but Saul, did what was right in his own eyes, and it cost him his throne and his life.
At the end of 1 Samuel we read of the fall of the house of Saul because he acted over and over as if there were no God…he decided what is good and right.
It was terrible.
Now in 2 Samuel we read of the rise of the house of David…he has waited 15 years between God anointing him and his ascension to the throne.
He will have to clean up the mess left him by Saul, and he proves to be an able military leader and king.
Then, we will see that even Israel’s greatest king, David…will at times, become a practical atheist…he will do what is right in his own eyes and the cost personally and to the kingdom will be great.
Today, our passage is Psalm 14…a Psalm of David.
Listen as I read it:
The fool says in his heart, “There’s no God.”
They are corrupt; they do vile deeds.
There is no one who does good.
2 The Lord looks down from heaven on the human race,
to see if there is one who is wise,
one who seeks God.
3 All have turned away;
all alike have become corrupt.
There is no one who does good,
not even one.
4 Will evildoers never understand?
They consume my people as they consume bread;
they do not call on the Lord.
5 Then they will be filled with dread,
for God is with those who are righteous.
6 You sinners frustrate the plans of the oppressed,
but the Lord is his refuge.
7 Oh, that Israel’s deliverance would come from Zion!
When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people,
let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.
In this Psalm David laments the oppression in the land caused by wicked people.
He speaks of the wicked as “fools” using one of several Hebrew words for fool, “Nabal.”
David was well acquainted with this type of fool, he encountered one whose name was literally, “Nabal.”
We read back in 1 Samuel 25 of a man who clearly was smart, he was rich with a large and thriving business…takes some smarts and skills to pull this off.
Yet he was a wicked fool, and he almost brought the full wrath of David’s militia down on his family.
His wife, Abigail was wise, and she turned David’s wrath through her intervention.
She said this about her own husband:
“My lord should pay no attention to this worthless fool Nabal, for he lives up to his name: His name means ‘stupid,’ and stupidity is all he knows.”
Ouch…they need some marriage counseling…but it’s too late for Nabal.
Nabal will suffer a stroke and die.
I’m confident David had him in mind when he wrote:
The fool (Nabal) says in his heart, “There’s no God.” They are corrupt; they do vile deeds.
The “nabal” is a type of fool who is foolish because he is morally deficient.
And he is morally deficient because he is foolish.
It doesn’t mean they can’t run business or companies or armies…they may be intelligent fools.
Their pride makes them wicked.
That is made clear in the second line.
“They are corrupt, they do vile deeds.”
The defining characteristic of this kind of fool is that they deny God.
Whether they are actual atheists or not is irrelevant.
They may be an intellectual atheist (disbelieving in God in their minds and lives) or a practical atheist…affirming God with their mouths and denying him with their actions.
This the flip side of Proverbs 1:7,
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
Here:
“The rejection of God is the beginning of folly.”
The fool says in his heart, “There’s no God.” They are corrupt; they do vile deeds.
David acts foolishly in his life but here he is no hypocrite…as he considers Nabal, he writes
In fact…
“There is no one who does good.”
All of humanity are, himself included are, essentially…”Nabal”
Maybe small “n” not capital “N”
God agrees with David’s assessment.
2 The Lord looks down from heaven on the human race, to see if there is one who is wise, one who seeks God. 3 All have turned away; all alike have become corrupt. There is no one who does good, not even one.
This is not an absolute statement in the sense that everyone is Nabal…David himself seeks after God.
In days of Noah, there weren’t many who made the boat…but there were some.
The point is, left to ourselves, our own sinful hearts turn away from, not to God.
So, God answers the question, asked in Rob Buckman’s book, “Can we be good without God?”
“No, you cannot.”
4 Will evildoers never understand? They consume my people as they consume bread;
they do not call on the Lord. 5 Then they will be filled with dread, for God is with those who are righteous. 6 You sinners frustrate the plans of the oppressed,
but the Lord is his refuge.
David is amazed that the wicked fool persecutes the righteous as if God does not see and will not respond.
This is part of being Nabal.
When Abigail’s fool of a husband, Nabal, heard that he had narrowly escaped the sword of David…because he had been greedy and oppressive…he suffered a stroke and died.
This is given in Scripture as clear evidence of God’s judgement on his wicked folly.
But David looks to God for ultimate justice.
7 Oh, that Israel’s deliverance would come from Zion! When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people, let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.
Zion is reference to the Hill in Jerusalem where the Temple was built…it is a symbol of God’s presence and involvement with his people.
There are number of tensions here:
- None are truly righteous or consistently seek God, but the righteous do seek God and will prosper as they do.
- The wicked fool may be super intelligent and successful, but he or she is in fact a stupid fool.
- It appears that evil people are escaping judgment for the way they treat people but God is a just, powerful, and involved God…no one escapes God’s justice.
Let’s look at these one at a time:
- None are fully righteous or seek God, but the righteous do seek God and will prosper.
David knew his own conflicted and inconsistent heart.
God called him a man after his own heart but not because his heart was perfect but because of the trajectory of his life towards worship, and repentance.
He continually turned back to God.
The fact is, we are going to spend our lives getting back on track.
Not because we plan to get off track but because we will.
We must continually, mess up, fess up, and get back on track.
Or we will stay continually off track.
David’s Psalms are full of this process, because in his life he lived this reality.
The wicked fool doesn’t repent, repentance means to turn around a go a different direction.
There is no salvation without repentance…how could there be?
How could we be saved from our sin, if we do not turn away from it.
How could we put our faith in Christ, if we do not turn toward him?
That is what the word means…metanoia…change of mind, change of life direction.
- The wicked fool may be super intelligent and successful, but he or she is in fact a stupid fool.
Historically, leaders of nations, armies, businesses, organizations of all types…have been intelligent, talented, and sometimes successful in their endeavors…all the while being stupid fools.
The success of a fool is short-lived and turns to destruction in the end.
There are so many examples it is hard to choose:
Stalin, Castro, Nero at the national level…the list is quite long.
Ken Lay of Enron, Bernie Madoff, Sam Bankman…at the business level…the list is also long.
There are countless examples of this in the lives of people all around us…they don’t make the news, but they live this out.
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Galatians 6:7,8
Don’t look around and be fooled by what you think you see.
Reaping and sowing are immutable laws of God in the world of human morality as surely as in the world of agriculture.
Which brings us to number three.
- It appears that evil people are escaping judgment for the way they treat people but God is a just, powerful, and involved God.
In the Movie “Operation Finale” a group of Israeli commandos, from Mossad (their CIA), travel under cover to Argentina to capture and bring to justice Adolf Eichmann, one of the masterminds of the Holocaust.
It is said that the main perpetrators the final solution (Holocaust) escaped judgment through suicide: Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and Goering.
I can understand the emotion of wanting to see these men pay for their crimes…but this is a human level view of judgment…they certainly did not escape judgment.
No one escapes judgment in the truest sense.
Everyone’s sin’s will be paid for…by themselves or by the Lord Jesus.
I want to make two final applications; I will make them in the form of questions.
- Have you repented of your sins and trusted Christ alone to save you?
2 The Lord looks down from heaven on the human race, to see if there is one who is wise, one who seeks God. 3 All have turned away; all alike have become corrupt.
There is no one who does good, not even one.
7 Oh, that Israel’s deliverance would come from Zion! When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people, let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.
“All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the inquity of us all.” Is 53:6
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:23-24
See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame. 1 Peter 2:6
- This is not an irrational leap of faith; this is about putting your confidence in the facts.
Christ has come, Christ has died, Christ has risen from the dead.
We must choose to repent and believe this good news.
- To not choose is a choice.
Recently some of our family was faced with a difficult decision.
It was one of those times in which not deciding was deciding.
If you are putting off deciding to trust Christ…you are living in the continual decision of not trusting him.
- If you are a follower of Christ, are you living in the freedom of Christ.?
Or are deciding, apart from Christ, what is good and right to do?
- We all do this to a degree. Every time we sin in attitude or action we are living, in that instant, as practical atheists.
We are doing what is right in our own eyes.
So, we must train for godliness.
Training is about mess up, fess up, get up.
- Some have failed to fess up and get up…some do not get back on track.
Some embrace sin, without ongoing repentance.
If this is you, if you are living in ongoing sin, void of repentance, you are living the life of Nabal…folly, stupidity…emptiness.
You may feel hopelessly trapped in your sin…but you are not hopeless if you turn fully to Christ and to the church (his people) for help.
If you continue to embrace folly…it will not turn out well for you.
This sin that you have embraced is not your friend…it will become a monster that will take everything from you.
I want to conclude with one final question:
What does it mean to be free as a human?
Betrand Russell once said, “Religion (faith) is a disease born of fear and a source of untold misery to the human race.”
But did he live free?…I assure you…he did not.
Andrew Sims, former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists wrote:
The advantageous effect of religious belief and spirituality on mental and physical health is one of the best-kept secrets in psychiatry and medicine generally. If the findings of the huge volume of research on this topic had gone in the opposite direction and it had been found that religion damages your mental health, it would have been front-page news in every newspaper in the land.
In a meta-analysis on studies of the effects of religious belief we read:
In the majority of studies, religious involvement is correlated with well-being, happiness and life satisfaction; hope and optimism; purpose and meaning in life; higher self-esteem; better adaptation to bereavement; greater social support and less loneliness; lower rates of depression and faster recovery from depression; lower rates of suicide and fewer positive attitudes towards suicide; less anxiety; less psychosis and fewer psychotic tendencies; lower rates of alcohol and drug use and abuse; less delinquency and criminal activity; greater marital stability and satisfaction… We concluded that for the vast majority of people the apparent benefits of devout religious belief and practice probably outweigh the risks.
LENNOX, JOHN C. . Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are missing the target (pp. 77-78). (Function). Kindle Edition.
Harvard epidemiologist, Tyler Vanderweele, has determined from his research that the loss of religious practice is a public health crisis.
I give that information purely to show that the facts in the real world will always, eventually lead us to God.
Because God is real, and he made the real world.
The best reason to believe the gospel and obey God is ultimately not so you will feel or be better…or because of data points.
But because it is true.
And because the gospel is true…if you live life as God designed it…it will better.
You will live in line with what is good and true…as known and revealed by God.
You will live in the freedom of God’s purpose, power, and presence…and as we obey, in the freedom of his experience pleasure in his life.
This will be experienced incrementally and over time…it will not mean the absence of struggle or suffering…you surely will experience these as well.
So, as Peter wrote, don’t be surprised by that.
To believe and obey God, to know and follow his commands…is human freedom.
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. 2 Peter 1:3-4
Freedom is the power of God to know and do what we ought.
God has revealed what ultimately “is” and what ultimately “ought” to be done with our lives.
Freedom is the desire to do the good we ought to do…this is the power of a transformed heart.
Thanks be to God for the freedom of his revelation and power.