1. The Bible often uses the word "fool" (cf. Ps.14:1; 53).
2. This word is seldom used much today. This is probably because we have become a nation of fools and fools do not like to be told when they’re acting like fools.
3. DEFINITION: "A silly or stupid person; a person who lacks judgment or sense" – Webster’s Dictionary.
4. Spurgeon said, "Yet let us never forget that all unregenerate men are more or less such fools." He said Psalm 14 concerns "practical atheism."
5. According to the Bible, a fool is a man who leaves God out of his life. When you consider the millions of Americans who are not in church every Sunday, you can understand why I say that America has become a nation of fools.
6. People can sing, "America! America! God shed His grace on thee," but they really do not mean it.
7. Can they truly sing this from their heart? No, I am afraid for most people today, their hearts are not right with God.
8. They are fools. God calls them fools, therefore they must be fools.

1. THE FOOL HATES GOD (PS.14:1).

1. First, notice in 14:1, "There is" is in italics. This could be read literally, "The fool hath said in his heart, NO GOD," or in other words, "NO GOD FOR ME!"
2. Secondly, notice the words, "in his heart" (14:1). The problem with man starts with the heart, not with the head. If man gets his heart right, then God will straighten out his thinking.
3. Sometimes worldly people will try to justify their unbelief by saying they have "intellectual problems" with the Bible. Don’t you believe a word of that kind of talk. The problem is not intellectual, it is spiritual.
4. And the problem is not intellectual, it is moral. Whenever I hear a person talking about their intellectual objections to the Bible, I start digging around a bit and soon find out that they are immoral people.
5. And because they are deep in sin and living like the devil, they turn away from the Bible and the things of God (cf. Ps.10:4; John 3:19,20).

2. THE FOOL IS CORRUPT (14:1).

1. David says, "They are corrupt" (14:1). I do not need to remind you that we are living in a corrupt society. Everyone today is looking to get over on somebody. Some people are just not happy unless they are taking advantage of someone.
2. People cannot be trusted. People are dishonest, coarse, vulgar, and two-faced. From the White House on down to the poor house, people are corrupt.
3. In addition to being corrupt, "they have done abominable works" (14:1). Abortion is abominable, and so is homosexuality, pornography, rock music, and most of the trash on TV.
4. And beloved, let me remind you that idolatry is abominable. In fact, get out your concordance and look up the word "abomination." Most of the references are to idolatry.
5. "There is none that doeth good" (14:1). This is so important that God repeats it again in 14:3b. And again in Rom.3:12 (see 3:10-18, 23).
6. Sinners are so busy doing bad, that they have no time for doing good. And even what they consider good, God considers bad (cf. Isa.1:11-18; 64:6,7).
7. Man is so spiritually blind that he thinks he can get away with his sin. He does not consider that God is looking down from heaven (Ps.14:2). What is God seeing?

3. THE FOOL IS FILTHY (14:3).

1. If I had to choose one word to describe America in 1999 it would have to be "filthy." "They are all together become filthy" (14:3).
2. Hollywood is filthy. Television is filthy. Rock music is filthy. Even the daily newspapers are filthy. My wife and I now have to look through the NY Post before we allow our kids to look at it.
3. The way people dress (or undress!) today is filthy. Most teenage girls dress like prostitutes. Most middle-aged women dress like ridiculous teeny-boppers. Most boys act like dirty little savages (e.g. boys in Bronx Zoo gift shop). Most men have nothing but filth on their mind. And why should we be surprised, when they live on a steady diet of filth – filthy movies, TV shows, magazines, etc.
4. If we as Christians are not careful, we can get accustomed to this world’s filth. Illustration: I read an article about a boy who grew up on a farm and one of his chores was cleaning up the barn floor after the cows. He got so accustomed to being around cow manure that he could not even smell it anymore. There is a lesson here for us!

4. THE FOOL IS IGNORANT (14:4).

1. The Psalmist is not speaking here of being ignorant from a worldly point of view. Many sinners are highly educated, well-read, successful in business, and so on. But they are ignorant of God’s Word.
2. They are ignorant of God’s grace, ignorant of the substitutionary death of Christ, ignorant of heaven and hell, etc. So the Psalmist asks, "Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge?" (14:4).
3. They "eat up" (persecute) God’s people (14:4).
4. They do not "call upon the LORD" (14:4). Therefore they are lost. Therefore they will spend eternity burning in hell. Therefore, God calls them fools.

5. THE FOOL IS FEARFUL (14:5).

1. "There were they in great fear" (14:5). Remember, in the book of Revelation, when God gives out the occupancy list for the residents of hell (Rev.21:8) – remember who heads up that list. Ahead of the unbelieving, before the abominable, way ahead of the murderers and whoremongers and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars – at the top of the list is "the fearful."
2. The Bible says, "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked" (Isa.57:21).
3. Deep down in the soul of the sinner, he knows he is not right with God. He tries to cover this up with alcohol or smoking or drugs or TV or he works all the time or he even tries to cover his sin with religion.
4. But deep down he is fearful. "There were they in great fear: for God is in the generation (company) of the righteous" (14:5).

6. THE FOOL IS SHAMEFUL (14:6).

1. The fools have "shamed the counsel of the poor," they have mocked the poor man (14:6). But they cannot be successful "because the LORD is his refuge" (14:6).
2. Why is it that the LORD is the poor man’s refuge but the man that is well-off will not give any serious consideration to the things of God? Because money and materialism have blinded their minds.

7. THE FOOL IS GIVEN TIME TO REPENT (14:7).

1. The first six verses all speak of judgment – man has been foolish; he is guilty before God; man is filthy; and so on.
2. But now in verse 7 we see that wonderful word, "salvation."
3. It would be a terrible situation if God’s Word was nothing but a message of judgment. But thank God, God’s Word also contains a message of salvation.
4. "For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved" (John 3:17).
5. Are you saved? Now is a good time to think about it.

CONCLUSION:

1. The French politician, Prince Talleyrand, was a man the world would consider a great statesman, but God would call a fool.
2. He had a clubfoot, which prevented him from going into the army, so his parents advised him to become a RC priest. This he did, all the while carrying on with various mistresses.
3. Then in 1789, the French Revolution broke out and since it was strongly anti-priest, Talleyrand aligned himself with the revolutionaries, earning the title, "Bishop of the Revolution."
4. This type of reversal was characteristic of Talleyrand, who had a life-long habit of double-crossing his friends, including the emperor Napoleon.
5. I came across a fascinating account of his death, written by the famous French writer, Victor Hugo. You could call this, "The Death of a Fool."
6. "The doctors embalmed the corpse. After the manner of the ancient Egyptians, they removed the bowels and brains. After having transformed Prince Talleyrand into a mummy, and having nailed it up in a coffin, lined with white satin, they went away, leaving on the table that brain which had thought so much, inspired so many men, constructed so many ambitious edifices, managed two revolutions, deceived twenty kings, and held the world in check. The doctors gone, the servant entered and saw what they had left. Not knowing that it was wanted, and regarding it as a loathsome object, he gathered it together and threw it down the sewer in front of the house."
7. Though his brain was in the sewer, and his body wrapped up in sheets, Talleyrand’s soul went to the place where all fools go when they leave this world.
8. What about you? Are you ready to meet God?