1. The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Being a fool he speaks according to his nature. The atheist
is a fool in the heart as well as in the head. With the denial of God as a
starting point, we may well conclude that the fool’s progress is a rapid,
riotous, raving, ruinous one. No God means no law, no order, no
restraint to lust. Who but a fool would be of this mind? He who heartily
entertains a non-religious spirit, and follows it out to its legitimate issues,
is a son of Belial, dangerous to the commonwealth, irrational and despicable.
Every natural man is more or less a denier of God. Corrupt are they. It
is idle to compliment them as sincere doubters, and amiable thinkers—they are
putrid. There is too much dainty dealing nowadays with atheism; it is not a
harmless error, it is an offensive sin. All those who are more or less
atheistic in spirit are in that degree corrupt; their moral nature is decayed. And
have done abominable iniquity. Bad principles soon lead to bad lives. If
everyone is not outwardly vicious it is to be accounted for by the power of
other and better principles, but left to itself the No God spirit would
produce nothing but the most loathsome actions. There is none that doeth
good. Without a single exception people have forgotten the right way. This
accusation twice made in the psalm, and repeated by the apostle Paul, is an
indictment most solemn and sweeping, but he who makes it knows what is in man.
2. God looked down from heaven upon the children of men. He did so in ages past, and he has continued. To see if
there was any that did understand, that did seek God. Had there been one
understanding man, one true lover of God, the divine eye would have discovered
him. Those pure heathens and admirable savages that people talk of live nowhere
but in the realm of fiction. The Lord did not look for great grace, only for
sincerity and right desire, but these he found not. He saw all people, and all
hearts in all people, and all motions of all hearts, but he saw neither a clear
head nor a clean heart among them all. Where God’s eyes see no favorable sign
we may rest assured there is none.
3. Every one of them is gone back. The whole mass of humanity, all of it, is gone back. In
Psalm 14 it was said to turn aside, which was bad enough, but here it is
described as running in a diametrically opposite direction. The life of
unregenerate humanity is in direct defiance of the law of God. They are
altogether become filthy. The whole lump is soured with an evil leaven.
Thus, in God’s sight, our atheistic nature is not the pardonable thing that we
think it to be. Errors as to God are not the mild diseases which some account
them; they are abominable evils. There is none that doeth good, no, not one.
This puts an end to the fictions of the innocent savage, the lone patriarch.
The fallen race of man, left to its own energy, has not produced a single lover
of God or doer of holiness, nor will it ever do so. Grace must interpose, or
not one specimen of humanity will be found to follow after the good and true.
This is God’s verdict after looking down upon the race.
4. Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge? They have no wisdom, certainly, but even so common a thing
as knowledge might have restrained them. Can they not see that there is a God,
that sin is an evil thing, that persecution recoils upon a man’s own head? Are
they such utter fools as not to know that they are their own enemies, and are
ruining themselves? Who eat up my people as they eat bread. Do they not
see that such food will be hard to digest, and will bring on them a horrible
vomit when God deals with them in justice? Can they imagine that the Lord will
allow them to devour his people with impunity? They have not called upon
God. They carry on their cruel enterprises against the saints, and use
every means but that which is essential to success in every case, namely, the
invocation of God. In this respect persecutors are rather more consistent than
Pharisees who devoured widows’ houses and prayed too. The natural man loves not
the spiritual, is very jealous of it, and wants to destroy it, because it is
beloved of God; yet the natural man does not seek after the like favor from
God. The carnal mind envies those who obtain mercy, and yet it will not seek
mercy itself. It plays the dog in the manger. Sinners will out of a malicious
jealousy devour those who pray, but yet they will not pray themselves.
5. They were in great fear, where no fear was. David sees the end of the ungodly, and the ultimate triumph
of the spiritual. The rebellious march in fury against the gracious, but
suddenly they are seized with a causeless panic. In this, Psalm 53 differs
much from Psalm 14. It expresses a higher state of realization in the poet; he
emphasizes the truth by stronger expressions. Without cause the wicked are
alarmed. He who denies God is at bottom a coward. For God hath scattered the
bones of him that encampeth against thee. When the wicked see the
destruction of their fellows they may well quail. Mighty were the hosts which
besieged Zion, but they were defeated, and their unburied carcasses proved the
prowess of the God whose being they dared to deny. Thou hast put them to
shame, because God hath despised them. God’s people may well look with
derision on their enemies since the Lord our God considers them as less than
nothing and vanity.
6. Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion. When will the long oppression of the saints come to its
close, and glory crown their heads? The word salvation is in the plural, to
show its greatness. When God bringeth back the captivity of his people,
Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad. Inasmuch as the yoke has
been heavy, and the bondage cruel, the liberty will be gladsome, and the
triumph joyous. The second advent and the restoration of Israel are our hope
and expectation.
Excerpt from:
The Treasury of David
By Charles H Spurgeon
