Psalm 14

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I'd like to invite everybody to open their Bibles to Psalm 14. Psalm 14,
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I'm going informal tonight, I took off my vest. Yeah, I know. Psalm 14.
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It was, won't help me from those flaming darts though, Victor John Stringer.
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Anybody ever heard of him? I didn't think so. He's an atheist, was a particle physicist, philosopher, author, and religious skeptic.
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He wrote The Failed, or God, The Failed Hypothesis, how science shows that God does not exist.
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His final book was God and the Multiverse, Humanity's Expanding View of the
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Cosmos. That came out in 2014. He was a regularly featured author in the
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Huffington Post. He was also an advocate for removing the influence of religion from scientific research, commercial activity, and the political process.
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He coined this phrase, science flies you to the moon. Guess what religion does?
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It flies you into buildings. Here's one of his,
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I have a couple quotes from him. And this one is really kind of the heart of what we're going to get into this evening.
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He says, proof is not required to believe in a God, but some sign, some evidence is needed.
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Listen, none exists. Find some inkling of evidence.
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There is none. Let me translate that for you. There is no
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God, so says Victor John Stringer. Now this quote, and I'll get back to it in a few minutes, but listen to this.
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This is mind -boggling logic here. Assuming the universe came from nothing, it is empty to begin with.
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Only by the constant action of an agent outside the universe, such as God, could a state of nothingness be maintained.
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The fact that we have something is just what we would expect if there was no
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God. You have to be pretty smart to come up with that, because I can't figure it out.
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But he says basically this, that if nothing existed, in other words, the universe did not exist, that would be evidence for God.
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But since the universe does exist, that's evidence against God. That's what
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I said. Let me read you our text. To the choir master of David.
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The fool says in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt.
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They do abominable deeds. There is none who does good. Yahweh looks down from heaven on the children of men to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.
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They have all turned aside. Together they have become corrupt. There is none who does good, not even one.
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Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers who cut up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon Yahweh?
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There they are in great terror, for God is in the generation of the righteous.
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You would shame the plans of the poor, but Yahweh is his refuge. Oh, the salvation for Israel would come out of Zion.
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When Yahweh restores the fortunes of his people, let Jacob rejoice.
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Let Israel be glad. Now, when we see to the choir master,
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I read that intentionally because this is obviously written by David. And it's in a section of the
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Psalms wherein David is primarily concerned by the distress of God's people by their enemies.
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In the beginning, I think he's a little bit philosophical. You can almost see the wheels turning in his mind as he starts thinking about this topic.
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He's thinking about the wicked and how they seem to prosper, even as they oppress the people of God, even as he wonders at the brazen thoughts of the unbeliever.
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David is sure of one thing, and that is this. Yahweh will rescue his people.
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As one preacher, James Montgomery Boyce, noted, he said, you know, if Scripture says something, it's important.
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If Scripture says something twice, it's really important.
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If Scripture says something three times, God's trying to get your attention.
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And Psalm 14 is virtually replicated in Psalm 53. There are a couple of different little differences.
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And the same text is used in Romans 3. Once, twice, three times, sold.
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This is important. It's as if the ideas, the concepts of universal depravity and God's sovereignty over salvation and the fact that he will rescue his people are important.
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Underline it, underscore it. We need to be reminded of these things over and over and over again.
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Tonight, I'm going to divide this Psalm into three sections. And these three sections of the
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Psalm are ultimately going to show us that we have need of a
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Savior, and that Savior is the Lord Jesus Christ. Our three sections are these. First, the judgment of the fool.
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Second, the judgment of Yahweh. And third, Yahweh the rescuer.
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So, the judgment of the fool, the judgment of Yahweh, and Yahweh the rescuer.
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First, the judgment of the fool. And this is David's judgment as he looks, as he contemplates these unbelievers.
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Again, verse 1. The fool says in his heart, there is no God. Sometimes we think, well, who cares what a fool thinks?
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He's a fool, right? He's dumb. But that's not the point here.
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Being a fool has nothing to do with intellect, as we saw here from this brilliant man who was at the
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University of Colorado. Wrote all these books. I guess he was profound.
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Here's a second hint. The idea that the fool says in his heart there is no
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God is not just to do with atheists. We think it is, right?
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We think it's only people who say, objectively, that there is no God. But what about those of so -called
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Christian faiths? Or those of a faith that proclaim to have a
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God? Are they better off? The fact that they say that there is a
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God, and then they basically craft one of their own liking? A God who's not the
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God of the Bible? Are they better off than the atheist? I don't think so.
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There isn't a sliding scale. God doesn't say, well, you know what? I understand that you don't believe in my son,
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Jesus Christ, but that's okay as long as you believe in a God. He doesn't say, well, it's okay that, you know, you want to put me in a pantheon of gods.
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That's fine. It's not fine.
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You're just as morally guilty as an atheist if you believe any of those things. This fool that the psalmist writes about wants no one to be above him.
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He wants to be accountable to no one. And today we would see these people, even the religious people, so -called religious people, again, shaping and molding and choosing a
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God for themselves. They might even call him Jesus. But what would we call him? If he's not the
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God of the Bible, he is, or she is, an idol, a faux
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God, a fake God, no God at all. And here's the test for the unbeliever, for the atheist, for the scoffer, for the fool.
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Does this faux God approve or condemn sin? And the answer is always going to be, according to the fool, what?
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Of course he approves of sin. He loves me just as I am. I don't have to change a thing.
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God loves me, my God loves me, in spite of whatever I do. And I believe that's really at the heart of so -called red -letter
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Christianity. I mentioned in Sunday school, I'm interacting with somebody, and I can already tell that he thinks he's a red -letter
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Christian. This man has been involved in a homosexual relationship for a decade.
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He may be a lot of things, but he's not a Christian, at least not yet.
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We'll see, we'll see how it goes. This word fool, it's the
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Hebrew word nabal. And it means one who has no relationship with God, an unbeliever.
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Okay, so again, it has nothing to do with stupidity. It's not a mark of intelligence or unintelligence.
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It's not an intellectual deficiency. It is a spiritual deficiency.
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As Kidner says, he says, it's not a matter of misguided conviction, right?
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It's not just, oh, he's sincere, but he's sincerely wrong. It's a matter of defiance.
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There is a God, and this person will not be accountable to him. Atheists or unbelievers are not neutral.
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They hate God, they hate his law, and they hate his people. So I would encourage you to think that you can't somehow approach the unbeliever in a sense of neutrality and present evidence to them.
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And just as a few, I guess, examples of the failure of evidence, my favorite, right now anyway, my favorite is
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Adam and Eve. They walked and talked with God in the Garden of Eden. And guess what they did?
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Not only did they sin, but they denied what God told them. He told them to their faces.
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And then they denied it, questioned it, denied it. The Israelites, read this morning, took them out of Egypt, across the
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Red Sea. I mean, you would think watching Charlton Heston stretch his staff across there and watching, okay.
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Watching Moses do that would be pretty dramatic. It would be something that you wouldn't forget. It would be something that you would not deny.
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But they did. Cast aside the real God for an idol.
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In fact, the story of the Bible is this, the faithlessness of God's people and God's faithfulness, the contrast between those two things.
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And in Psalm 14, the psalmist is developing this idea of a universal guiltiness.
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And Paul did very much the same thing in Romans 1. Let's turn there for a moment. Romans 1, verses 18 to 23.
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Romans 1, verses 18 to 23. After Paul talks about the power of the gospel, he's not ashamed of the gospel.
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It was the power of God unto salvation to all who believe, right? He goes on in verse 18, and he says,
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For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
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For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.
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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.
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And listen, here's the killer at the end of verse 20. So they are without excuse.
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Verse 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.
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Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal
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God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
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Verses 19 and 20 tell us that we have enough information just by virtue of natural revelation, general revelation.
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Just looking at what the good doctor here, Dr. Stranger, said was proof that there was no
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God. The Bible says, guess what? It's proof that there is a God. When we look around at the universe, we see the wisdom of God put on full display.
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We see just untold order. I mean, if Stanger were right, we would expect this to be an existence of chaos.
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If it came out of nothing and there's no God, then we would expect there to be perfect chaos.
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Instead, we see perfect order. In fact, we not only see order, but we also see the power of God, right?
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Because he sustains everything that exists. But Paul says that they chose not to honor him.
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Instead, they suppress those truths. They hold them down. So we find someone as brilliant as Dr.
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Stranger saying there is no God. But that if nothing existed, that would prove that there was a
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God. Like I said before, that's so smart. It doesn't make any sense.
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In effect, super intellects like Dr. Stranger worship what? We could say themselves, but they really worship their own intellects, their own
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IQs, their own biographies. They're so smart that they come to think that they are the center of the universe.
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They are the judge of what is true and what is right. And so they sit in a judgment, essentially, of God.
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This is the creature saying to his creator, You don't exist because if you did, this is the way things would be.
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This is the way you would be. You are not the way I want you to be.
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Therefore, I'm not going to worship you. And ultimately, there's no difference between this and breaking out a hammer and chisel and working on a piece of stone or taking out a saw and working on a piece of wood.
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They are fashioning idols. They're making them up. I love what one writer,
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Craigie, says. He says the opposite of fool and folly. You go back to Psalm 14.
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The opposite of fool and folly is not wise man, right?
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We think wise men and wisdom says the opposite of folly in wisdom literature is loving kindness.
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Our first thought when we see fool is, well, I don't want to be a fool. I want to be smart. I want to be informed.
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That's a good thought, but it's not the right thought. The right thought is
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I don't want to be a fool. I don't want to be left in the dark. I want to be in light.
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I want to be enlightened. I want God to enlighten me. I want him to grant me his loving kindness, his chesed, his grace, as we would say in the
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New Testament. That's what I want. The smartest man in the world, whoever that may be at any given time, whether it's
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Einstein or whoever it is. The smartest man in the world is a fool if God does not grace him, if God does not illumine his mind, if God does not reveal himself to him through his word.
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First Corinthians chapter one, you don't have to turn their verses 19 and 20 for it is written.
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I, God, will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning.
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I will thwart. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?
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Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world? So in comparison, you know, if we were to think, well, how smart do you have to be to be as smart as God?
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Well, that's impossible. Kind of reminds me of when God says to Job, where were you when
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I created the world, when I hung all these things up in the universe? No one can know the only
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God in existence apart from an act of his grace, his kindness.
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Mankind's spiritual blindness must be healed for anyone to see the truth.
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You must be born again or you will remain in darkness. You will remain foolish.
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And of course, this rules out any kind of idea of becoming wise, of gaining wisdom on our own.
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In other words, efforts. Because God's grace cannot be earned. And the
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Bible never gives an explanation of how one gains enough wisdom to know
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God, except. For God going first. God must go first.
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Colossians 2 verse 13 says this, and you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh,
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God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses.
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There is never a situation in Scripture where man goes first and God then response.
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And there is only one source of genuine wisdom. Again, going back to First Corinthians chapter one verses 20 to 24,
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First Corinthians one verses 20 to 24. I read some of this, but let me just continue.
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Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world?
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For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom. It pleased
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God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach
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Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. But to those who are called both
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Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.
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And here's the point. The point is people set up these systems. The Greeks had these systems where they thought they were going to philosophize and get themselves to a higher state of wisdom.
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Jews are looking for signs. They're looking for signs of the future coming of the
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Messiah. But God says, here's the sign, my word. It's the gospel.
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It's the cross. It's Jesus Christ and him crucified. Which Paul says is a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.
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They hear it and they're like, OK, we want something that sounds wise.
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And this whole idea of a crucified savior, that doesn't sound wise to us. Again, Craigie says the fool.
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Unsaved person really is not a rare subspecies within the human race.
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All human beings are fools apart from the wisdom of God. So now let's talk about the conduct of the fool back in Psalm 14.
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What do they do besides say there is no God? What does a fool do? The psalmist writes, they are corrupt.
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They do abominable deeds. There is none who does good. Well, when we see that they are corrupt means even if they tried to be good, if they tried to make something right, they couldn't because there's just that little element of it that's never going to allow it to be in balance or to be right.
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Their very best efforts are so tainted by sin as to be displeasing to the Lord. There's no way they could get it done.
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The abominable deeds are examined from a religious perspective as being offensive to God.
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And because of their godlessness and their wicked desires, they cannot help but do what is wicked.
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They always sin. It's what they want to do. They're all very much like their namesake.
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I told you about that word, the Hebrew word for fool, Nabal. Here's what, there's actually a person.
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Now, I read this and I thought, you know, we have some unusual names at the church.
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In fact, some of my grandchildren have rather unusual first names. But so far, nobody at Bethlehem Bible Church has named their child
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Nabal, which is good. Well, somebody in the Old Testament apparently did, or he kind of picked this up along the way as a nickname.
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But 1 Samuel 25, 25 says this, says, Let not my Lord regard this worthless fellow,
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Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name and folly is with him.
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And that's how unbelievers conduct themselves. Foolishly, fools act foolishly.
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This just follows. They act on their unbelief. And the judgment of the fool, the universal judgment that we begin to see here, is fools act foolishly.
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That's just David's opinion. Now we see the judgment of Yahweh in verse 2. Yahweh looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.
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Now, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, David calls in effect upon Yahweh as a witness.
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I mean, he can't really say it this way, but it's almost as if, God, do you see things the same way
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I do? And so an anthropomorphic kind of stooping language where God is going to accommodate us so that we can kind of get it.
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I mean, does God need to look down? Is he gaining information? The answer is no. But the way the
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Spirit inspires David to write this, it's like God is, okay,
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I'll have a look. And what does he see? He sees people that, well, ultimately we're going to see, he sees the universal reason to universally condemn all mankind.
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There are no, there's no one who passes muster. Look at verse 3. It says, they have all turned aside.
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Together they have become corrupt. There is none who does good, not even one. And the apostle
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Paul used this, as I said earlier, in Romans chapter 3. Let's turn there. Romans chapter 3.
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And I'm going to read verses 9 to 18. Paul established really the universal guild of mankind as he goes from Romans 1 to 18.
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And he continues on through the end of the first chapter. And then the second chapter, the whole world,
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Gentiles, Jews, all guilty. And we come to verse 9 in chapter 3.
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And Paul writes this. He says, what then? Are we Jews any better off, better than the Gentiles?
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No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin.
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As it is written, here we go. None is righteous. No, not one. No one understands.
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No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one.
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Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips.
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Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood.
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In their paths are ruin and misery. And the way of peace they have not known.
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There is no fear of God before their eyes. This is the unanimous verdict on every single unsaved person.
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Every person sins, but with unbelievers there is no fear of judgment.
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There is no fear of God before their eyes, he said. That's the height of folly.
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To think that you can sin with impunity. They sin against their creator and they imagine that there is going to be no consequence.
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They sin in their actions, in their words, in their thoughts. Nothing but sin, nothing but failure and want of conformity.
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Elsewhere, David wrote of the arrogance of sinners in Psalm 36, verses 1 and 2.
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Listen to this. Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart. This is like their love language.
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Transgression, sin. Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart. There is no fear of God before his eyes.
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For he flatters himself in his own eyes that his iniquity cannot be found out.
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Cannot be found out and hated. And the truth is, God both finds it out and hates it.
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They have no fear because they believe their sin is undiscovered and therefore they are safe.
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But nothing could be further from the truth. By contrast, with unbelievers who wallow in their rebellion against sin, what do believers do?
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They hate their sin. They long to be delivered from it. As Charles Hodge once wrote, he said, it is not their realm.
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For believers, for those who love the Lord, sin is something they despise.
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They long to be free from. Why? Because when Hodge says it's not their realm, it's like strangers in a strange land, right?
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They're wandering through it. They experience it. They do it. They don't like it. They want to be out of that.
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They know they have displeased the God they love and they fear him. They rightly respect
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God. They have a fear of judgment. They don't want to displease him. He's their father.
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They love him. So there's a universal condemnation of unbelievers.
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And then there's a specific condemnation that also comes from Yahweh. He says, have they no knowledge?
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All the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon Yahweh? They're attacking the people of God.
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He says, don't they even have any sense that what they're doing is wrong?
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God doesn't need the information. But this is a rhetorical question. It's kind of a compound rhetorical question.
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If they had knowledge, if these sinners, if these fools had knowledge, if they knew that judgment awaited them, in other words, would they still sin with such abandon?
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Would they persecute the people of Yahweh with such vigor? Would they do it as they eat bread, just ravenously go after them?
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And again, the anthropomorphic language, language of accommodation, so that we can understand the absolute shocking nature of what these unbelievers are doing.
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They eat my people like they eat bread. They just consume them. But in verse 5, we have some sense, if you skip ahead just a bit, some sense of an alarm bell of conscience ringing in them, that they have the law of God written in their heart.
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They are in great terror. But I think that day is yet to come.
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So far, we've seen the judgment of the fool, the judgment of Yahweh, that these people are not just innocent fools, ignorant of the truth, but they're actively rebelling against Yahweh, and they hate his people.
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And finally, we see Yahweh, the rescuer. Notice first that Yahweh is with his people.
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There they are in great terror, talking about the oppressors of God's people. For God is with the generation of the righteous.
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Now, they are in great terror. It's interesting, because I was looking at the
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Hebrew of this, and it actually would be something like, they are in dreadful dread, or they are,
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I think of the Septuagint says, they are in fearful fear. So that's where we get great, right?
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Because repetition is emphasis, and the writer wants us to understand that they are in serious terror.
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They are very much afraid. It's as if God was saying, you, sinner, think you have nothing to be concerned about, but you should.
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Even if you don't think you do, you should, because God is a consuming fire.
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Now, for us, for believers, or for believers back then, there would certainly be times when they wanted instant relief, right?
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They wanted deliverance right away. And I think there are times when we even think, right?
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We look around at the world, and we just think, how much worse can it get before Jesus returns? Lord, how long until you return?
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How much more must our brothers and sisters in Christ, who are in Africa and Asia, excuse me, and are literally regarded as sheep to be slaughtered, as Paul would write in Romans chapter 8.
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How much more do they long for the return of Christ? How much more do they long for deliverance?
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But the point here is, the Lord is not sleeping. He is not unaware.
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Vengeance is his. He will repay. When an unsaved person dies, talking about the presence of God, right?
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When an unsaved person dies, there is no presence of the triune God within them.
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Neither the Father, nor the Son, nor the Spirit is there to comfort them. When Jesus said,
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I will send you another comforter, he meant another of different kind, right?
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But of similar stature, similar abilities, similar essence, the same essence, comforters.
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Jesus, a comforter. The Holy Spirit, a comforter. That moment of death for the unsaved is a moment of great terror.
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Why? Because it's a moment of judgment. It's a moment of entering into the judgment of God.
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But for those who are in Christ, who have had their sins atoned for, who have been born again, who have received the hope to which
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David pointed, they have no terror. They are leaving the fallen world for the presence of Christ, which they have longed for.
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They know it is better to be with him than to remain on earth. He is with his people.
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Yahweh is. Yahweh is also a refuge for his people.
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Look at verse 6. You would shame the plans of the poor, but Yahweh is his refuge.
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Yahweh is where his people flee for protection. Jeremiah 17, 17.
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Be not a terror to me. You are my refuge in the day of disaster. Psalm 61, 4.
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Let me dwell in your tent forever. Let me take refuge under the shelter of your wings. Psalm 71, 7.
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I have been as a portent to many, but you are my strong refuge, whether from earthly enemies or even from the day of judgment of God.
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The idea is that Yahweh protects his people. He shelters them.
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He is a refuge for them. And he is a refuge for them from their ultimate enemy.
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And who's their ultimate enemy? His own wrath. No one who is protected by Yahweh will withstand, or who's not protected by Yahweh, will withstand his wrath on the day of judgment.
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Yahweh, however, will not leave or forsake his people. He's a covenant keeper.
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That's what Yahweh means. He will save his people. He will stay with them. That's his covenant name.
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Yahweh is also, he's not only a refuge, but he's also salvation for his people. Verse 7.
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Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion. When Yahweh restores the fortunes of his people, let
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Jacob rejoice. Let Israel be glad. Now you can read this and you can think, what David really wants,
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David really wants is for Israel to get gold and silver.
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To have their fortunes, their megabucks, restored. I don't think so.
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I think just as in the beginning when he was philosophizing about the nature of the wicked people that surrounded them and that were oppressing them.
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Here he's philosophizing about a future. He's anticipating the coming
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Messiah. Matthew Henry wrote this. He says the world is bad.
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Good point, Matthew. He says, Oh, that the Messiah would come and change its character.
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There is a universal corruption. Oh, for the times of reformation. Those will be as joyful times as these are melancholy ones.
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Then shall God turn again the captivity of his people.
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For the Redeemer shall ascend on high and lead captivity captive and Jacob shall then rejoice.
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The triumphs of Zion's king will be the joys of Zion's children.
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The second coming of Christ, finally to extinguish the dominion of sin and Satan will be the completing of this salvation, which is the hope and will be the joy of every
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Israelite indeed. With the assurance of that, we should in singing this comfort ourselves and one another with reference to the present sins of sinners and sufferings of saints.
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The judgment of the fool, the judgment of Yahweh, Yahweh the rescuer.
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He will redeem his people and ultimately redeem them too. Now, just a few takeaways.
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When evangelizing an unbeliever, you are dealing with a fool and you need to be mindful of that.
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What does that mean? Well, first of all, it means you need to be gracious. I've seen people, especially in social media, be less than gracious to unbelievers when they're discussing spiritual things and I don't really understand that.
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We need to keep in mind that we were once unsaved too. We were once fools.
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Secondly, again, as I said earlier, I think it's important to stress that evidence will not necessarily bring anybody to faith.
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Eloquence will not bring anybody to faith. What they need to hear is scripture. What they need to understand is the gospel. Thirdly, you need not talk them out of committing a specific sin.
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I find that especially when it comes to homosexuality but also other sins, the first thing people want to do is talk them out of committing that sin.
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We're not out to reform people's morality. We want them to believe in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And guess what? Jesus will take care of their morality, right?
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The Holy Spirit will convict them of sin. We don't have to tell them.
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In other words, what's more important? Stop your sin or believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? Believe in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Renounce your sin is what you will eventually do. But we want to present the person and work of Jesus Christ to them.
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That He's truly God and truly man. That He bore the wrath of God for sinners.
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That all who believe in Him will receive His righteousness, His perfections.
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That He was raised on the third day and that by trusting in His life, death, and resurrection, all your sins can be forgiven.
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Now, will that person, if they truly believe, keep on sinning in the same way? No. We know that.
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But our job isn't to change them first, right? Let's clean you up so that you can come to Christ.
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We want to present Christ to them and He will do that. Final takeaway, when and if you are being persecuted.
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Your hope cannot be in the things of this world. What do I mean by that? Well, I mean, you can appeal to the government.
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The government is supposed to uphold justice. But ultimately, if things don't go your way, guess what?
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The Lord will take care of things. He's in control. He's not losing track of anything.
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He knows what's happening. He knows those who are His. Now, from the glorious to a little bit...
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I want to go back to Dr. Stranger for a moment. But first, I want to just give a little Star Trek illustration since it's
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Sunday night. In one of the movies, they do a little time travel.
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And my wife hates time travel because there are always problems with it, of course, since it's impossible.
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But they go back to... And I don't know if anybody remembers this, but they go back to the moment when life starts.
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And they're looking at this little puddle of goo. Okay, now, I can remember sitting in the movie theater just going, okay, this is stupid.
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But for those guys, it was like a religious moment. Right? I mean, like this is the beginning.
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This is a sacred moment. That's the difference between wisdom and foolishness.
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Wisdom says, that's stupid. Okay? The foolish mind, the one who says, wow, wouldn't it be cool if I could be there at the very beginning when those cells started to split and Dr.
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Stringer, this brilliant man, says this. He says, the prospect that evolution by natural selection,
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Darwinian evolution, at least as a broad mechanism will be overthrown in the future is about as likely as the prospect of finding out that someday the earth is really flat.
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Dr. Stringer, I have some news for you. The Bible says that the earth is not flat.
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The Bible also says that God did not need primordial goo or evolution or anything else.
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That nothing existed and He spoke everything into existence. It is the fool who says in his heart, there is no
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God. There is one God and He saves those who cast themselves upon Him.
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Let's pray. Father, we thank
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You for Your Word. We thank You for the
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Psalms. We thank You for the Gospels. We thank You for all of it. That You have preserved it, that You have granted it to us, that we might know the things that You have revealed to us.
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Father, make us tenderhearted towards those who do not know You. Even those who say outlandish things.
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Offensive things. Even those who proclaim their faith while they, as it were, shake their fist against You in their sinful lifestyles.
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Give us hearts to understand that each and every person that we come into contact with, no matter how they behave, each one of them is an image bearer.
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That is to say that they bear Your image and that they have a soul and one day they will have to give an account for what they've done with the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Make us slow to judge and quick to preach