Many of us know Psalm 14:1: “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” I was reading through the Psalms some time back in the Legacy Standard Version and saw something interesting. The LSB uses the New American Standard Bible as the base and sought to get an even more accurate word-for-word translation to include using “Yahweh” for “Lord” and “slave” instead of “servant.” But in Psalm 14:1, it includes the term “wicked.” The LSB says “The wicked fool says in his heart…” That caught my attention.
One thing I know about Scripture, it does not distinguish between “wicked” and “fool” here. The addition of “wicked” is simply an additional descriptor of a fool. There are not “wicked fools” and “righteous fools.” Fools are wicked, period. That is one of the points here. Psalm 14:1 is not merely talking about full atheists who openly and abjectly reject God’s existence; it also includes those who DO believe in God but live their lives as though He is not around to see and assess each word, thought, deed, and motive.
Let me be clear. Every one of us has been such a fool and lived as such a fool. Read the very end of the verse: “There is none who are good.” We are all wicked in our sinful state that is in such defiance of God that to even acknowledge His existence makes us cringe. And in the pride and stupidity of mankind, people have bought the lie that to deny God’s existence and role is “enlightenment.” The most “educated” people that the world praises think they can figure things out without God; time and time again they prove to be utter idiots. They are constantly wrong, always changing their story with “new evidence” but absolutely refusing to consider the time-proven truths that have always remained.
Look at how the Bible describes the sin-cursed mind.
"The shocking discovery can be best grasped in the following twelve different negative New Testament words that describe the ruin of man's intellectual capacity.
1. Romans 1:28: debased
2. 2 Cor 3:14: hardened
3. 2 Cor 4:4: blinded
4. Eph 4:17: futility
5. Eph 4:18: darkened
6. Col 1:21: hostile
7. Col 2:4: deluded
8. Col 2:8: deceived
9. Col 1:18: sensuous
10. 1 Tim 6:5: depraved
11. 2 Tim 3:8: corrupted
12. Titus 1:15: defiled
- Richard Mayhue: Think Biblically! page 39
This is the mind of the “wicked fool” of Psalm 14:1, and this is the mind of each of us apart from Christ. And yet, as a Church today, we have so embraced the “academic” of this world that we have failed to see this is their mind. It does not matter how many degrees they have. All education is capable of is instructing one fallen man by another fallen man on what fallen men think they have discovered. In reality, education to a sinful person just makes him more sophisticated in his ability to sin. That’s not true learning. And yet we have been so conditioned to listen to these people without question that when the Bible says one thing, the knee-jerk reaction is, “What about all these scientists? How can they be wrong?” The answer to that is they are nearly ALWAYS wrong. They are almost never right. And the few times they are right is when they are forced to admit what a CHRISTIAN has revealed and they have no alternative way to explain it. This is true in science, history, archeology, and everything. Most of the time, the only time the consensus ever says something correct is when they are forced to agree to what an individual discovered, most of the time by those seeking the mind of Christ in what He did and how He did it.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones saw the dangers in this over 70 years ago in his sermon “The Narrow Way”:
"The Christian Church in her utter folly during this present century has been recognizing a new authority, and the new authority, of course, is the man of knowledge, the man of culture, and particularly the man of scientific knowledge; and the church has been at great pains to do everything she can to please this new authority.
This man of learning must never be offended, and in order to please him and duplicate him, the church has been ready to take things out of the Bible. She rejects and throws out the whole of the first three chapters of Genesis. Much of the other history throws out all the miracles. She'll throw out anything in order to make her message pleasing and acceptable to this new authority, the man of knowledge, the man of learning, the man of science."
Yet what does the Bible say about this “man of knowledge”? It calls them all foolish, blind, and ignorant. And guess what? These so-called “great intellectuals even admit it. Listen to this:
“The practice of real-life science is much like figuring out the correct passageway through a maze. Not those printed mazes where you can see from the start where the exit lies, but one that you find yourself inside of, where the exit can only be found by experimenting with different routes.”
- The Grand Canyon: Monument to an Ancient Earth, page 177
Talk about blind people leading blind followers! I’m listening to these guys and thinking, “How can anyone take this seriously?” And then I realize the depravity of man and the desperation to hear anything except what God says no matter how irrational it is. It is foolishness to leave God out of the equation. There is no rationality in any knowledge apart from God.
God is omniscient. He knows everything. – literally everything. He cannot learn because there is nothing for Him to learn. There is no one who can teach God. God has made sure that every single person has innate, pre-programmed knowledge of Him. No one has any excuse. As I have watched many people make their arguments either against God’s existence or without God’s input, I hear people who know full well that God is there, but they just don’t want His say on the matter… and yes, that includes many professing Christians. We have all done it. Some of us still do it. We need to repent of that mindset, especially if we want to be actually intelligent.
Don’t be fooled by the idiocy of the self-proclaimed intellectual. They do know what they speak of and unless their claims have their roots in what God has revealed, it will not only be wrong but it will be out of sin and wicked rebellion against Him. The wicked person may be able to say something correct from time to time, but the Bible is crystal clear we are not to sit at their feet or take any counsel from such people, and we will be blessed if we do not. Trust the Lord; do not rely on your own understanding. Doing the latter is not worth it.
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