Psalm 53: 1 – 6
See anything good lately?
To the Chief Musician. Set to “Mahalath.” A Contemplation of David.
1 The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt and have done abominable iniquity; There is none who does good. 2 God looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. 3 Every one of them has turned aside; They have together become corrupt; There is none who does good, no, not one. 4 Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon God? 5 There they are in great fear where no fear was, for God has scattered the bones of him who encamps against you; You have put them to shame, because God has despised them. 6 Oh, that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion! When God brings back the captivity of His people, let Jacob rejoice, and Israel be glad.
There are 10 secretaries and 10 Pastors on staff here. I receive all the walk in and phone calls. Ask yourself a question, ‘how many churches are there that you can just pick up your phone and immediately get a Pastor?’
Since our Senior Pastor is popular and well known we wind up getting calls from around the world.
So, as I looked at today’s Scripture one of the many phone calls stuck out in my thinking.
The guy on the other end of the call was upset. This seems to be about half the calls we get. So, he filled me in on what he was perturbed about. There is this Christian guy at his work who is driving him crazy.
He was telling me while at the same time inferring that he is asking me a question? This co-worker keeps on telling him that he needs to turn his life over to Jesus Christ and get saved or else he is destined for hell and not heaven.
Has this topic ever come up with you in your interactions with people? How would you answer this man?
You might respond that our Lord Jesus said as reported in the Gospel of John chapter 14 verse 6, “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” You would be right in telling him so, however, I believe the Holy Spirit refrained me from doing so. So, I asked him a question. I asked, ‘Do you believe that there is a heaven and hell? If so, then how does a person know that he or she can get to heaven and not to hell?’
The other end of the phone was quiet. So, I continued the conversation. I asked him, ‘If a person was ‘good’ would that qualify him or her to go to heaven? The guy finally spoke us and told me, ‘yes’.
I said ‘Okay’ then what would he consider or qualify a person as ‘Good’?
The guy remained quiet again. Boy was this turning into a one-sided conversation. So, I said, ‘There was an old nun by the name of Mother Theresa who gave her life to minister to poor and dying people. Would she be a person who did or was ‘Good’?
He spoke up and agreed that she was ‘good’ in his opinion.
‘Okay’, I said, then compare yourself to her and how do you come out?’ Here we go again, quiet.
I told the man in truth what I thought he was thinking and that was that he is ‘not good enough on his own to get to heaven.’ I then added, ‘neither am I’.
I continued, ‘Jesus Is alive. He Is real. He Is the Son of God Who loved us so much that He came to earth and died a tortuous death on the cross for us and that He arose victorious and Is back in Heaven. If we want to go to be with Him and hopefully all our loved ones than we need to agree that He gave His life for us and ask to be with Him forever. In the book of Romans chapter 10 it gives us the formula, “8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): 9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. 11 For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. 13 For “whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.”
So, knowing this truth I asked him what he was going to do?
He responded, ‘I will see you at church Sunday morning.’ I closed by saying, ‘I look forward to meeting a new brother in Christ Jesus our Lord.’
Today’s Psalm is mainly a repetition of Psalm 14 but here using ‘God’ all the way through. The other main change occurs in verse 5, a change which suggests that this Psalm is an adaptation of Psalm 14 written to celebrate the defeat of a particular enemy. But the adaptation is a careful one for the consonants used (in the Hebrew text) are very similar as though the writer wanted to keep as near to the original text as possible. It is a clever piece of adaptation.
1 The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt and have done abominable iniquity; There is none who does good.
The Psalm is once again dedicated to the Choirmaster or Chief Musician and is set to the tune of Mahalath (which possibly means ‘sickness’, and may be the opening word of another Psalm for which this tune was first composed. Or it may be a mournful tune bewailing the sickness of mankind in his sins). It is again a Maschil of David.
The man who is corrupt and sins in a way which is an abomination to God (a concept regularly found in Proverbs) is here described as ‘a fool. By his actions he has foolishly treated God as though He does not exist.
In these words a general verdict is passed by God on mankind. None are good. All are in one way or another corrupt. They behave like fools because they reject the idea of Him as the One Who Is, and the One to Whom they are accountable. They may do this by having many gods, and worshipping idols who but represent aspects of creation (Romans 1.18-23), or simply by gross disobedience to the covenant with God (the Law of Moses), but the underlying fact is that in their hearts they reject the living God who speaks to them through the wonder of creation and through their consciences. They say that there is no such God. It is expressive of those who do outwardly worship YHWH, but who in their hearts ignore Him. They worship Him outwardly in the Temple area, but in their lives, they live as though He does not exist.
The words ‘The fool’ is describing the morally perverse person who rejects the idea of living a godly life. ‘Folly’ in the Old Testament is a term used to describe the person who behaves foolishly in that he forgets or misrepresents God or refuses to do His will (Deuteronomy 32.6), he commits gross offences against morality (2 Samuel 13.12 -13) or sacrilege (Joshua 7.15), or he behaves ungraciously and unwisely (1 Samuel 25.25). Under other Hebrew words for ‘fool’ he is prominent in Proverbs. Inevitably he always sees himself as wise.
It is not his intellect that rejects the idea of God, but his mind, will and emotions - ‘In his heart.’ He may ‘believe in God’, but he does not want to have to face up to God because of what it might involve in a transformed life. He likes living as he is. (Jeremiah 5.12; Zephaniah 1.1)
‘They are corrupt, they have done abominable iniquity.’ They are corrupt within and their lives reveal what they really are, sinful, violent, idolatrous, and/or sexually perverted. (Romans 1.18-32)
We therefore see the truth in the statement ‘There is none who does good’ as the final verdict on the world. They are cited in Romans 3.10 to demonstrate that all men are sinners. All mankind are fools in this sense, for sin is folly. The difference is that some have found forgiveness and have begun to live in a new way. God is declaring that there is no true, positive, untainted goodness in the world. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3.23). All are likewise guilty.
2 God looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God.
But God would not judge men without a fair examination, and so He looked down to see if there were any who understood and who sought after Him. (In Jeremiah 5.1 He challenges Jeremiah to do the same). The vivid description brings out the truth of God’s constant examination and assessment of the human race and His call to accountability. He examines men in depth testing out, not what they say to Him, but their true understanding, and response
3 Every one of them has turned aside; They have together become corrupt; There is none who does good, no, not one.
He declares that all have turned aside, even the best; all have walked in ways that are sinful, all have become morally tainted. There was not one man on earth who continually did good and did not sin (Ecclesiastes 7.20).
4 Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon God?
Our Holy Father God brings out to us His sadness that mankind will not accept that they are lacking in wisdom and common sense. Do they have no knowledge and understanding? Do they not recognize that those who are in covenant with Him are His people? They neither call on God nor treat well those who do truly call on Him.
‘My people’ refers to Israel/Judah, but especially to those who truly call on Him, the faithful in Israel (Micah 2.9; 3.5). For while ‘my people’ is used of Israel it is always with the understanding that they are potentially responding to the covenant. Those who fail to do so in the end cease to be ‘His people’. They are then seen as combined with the enemy (this is made clear in the Book of Ezra). Devouring or eating up His people refers both to depriving them of their possessions, devouring their wealth, and to oppressing them, giving them a hard time and even doing violence to them (Micah 3.1-3; Isaiah 3.14-15; Ezra 4-5). So, the world is seen as in deliberate antagonism against God, and against true righteousness as personified in His true people.
‘The workers of iniquity’ are thus those who deliberately continue in the way of sin having refused to become one of His people. They have turned away from the covenant. They are not necessarily great sinners as the world would view it, but they are from God’s viewpoint, because they fail to truly respond to Him.
5 There they are in great fear where no fear was, for God has scattered the bones of him who encamps against you; You have put them to shame, because God has despised them.
In Psalm14.5 the great fear was that of Israel’s enemies. Here it is Israel’s fear because of their enemies. But the Psalmist points out that there was no need for that fear, because God was with them. And therefore, He had scattered the bones of their enemies who had encamped against them.
6 Oh, that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion! When God brings back the captivity of His people, let Jacob rejoice, and Israel be glad.
The psalmist finishes on a note of longing for Israel’s final deliverance when their king will rule to the ends of the earth (Psalm 2.8) and they will thus experience such invasions no more. ‘O that Israel’s deliverance had come’.
The prayer is finally not just for deliverance but for final deliverance when God’s final purpose of deliverance for His people comes about through the establishing of God’s everlasting rule. And because of the restoring of their fortunes Jacob (Israel) will rejoice, and Israel will be glad.
So, the message of the Psalm is of God’s calling to account the folly of the nations, both as regards Himself, and especially as revealed in their attitude towards His people, having very much in mind here His true people. The thought is that His being and nature are so obvious in the light of creation and conscience, and His people so precious, that humanly speaking, from the psalmist’s point of view, God could only question the behavior of the world in its treatment of Him and His people and see it as folly. It ends on the positive note that salvation is yet coming for His people.
