[0:00] On April 3rd, 2014, Brandon Icke was forced to step down of CEO of Mozilla after less than two weeks on the job.
[0:21] Now, you're probably asking, who is Brandon Icke's and why is this significant? You probably know who Brandon Icke is or what he's invented.
[0:34] He is the creator of JavaScript, which is involved with most of our computer systems. He's co-founder and inventor of Mozilla Firefox browser.
[0:44] Some people use that. As well as one of the original inventors of Netscape. For all you millennials, that was the first program that you used to get online.
[0:55] And I was kind of reading on it. I said, unlike Microsoft Explorer, which nobody seems to use now today anyway. But he was a pretty big deal back in the day.
[1:07] As you can read from what I've just told you or see, this man was not incompetent. And at less than two weeks on the job, he certainly could not have failed in any significant way that would lead to his firing.
[1:20] So why was Mr. Icke forced to step down from the position as CEO from a company whose motto is, doing good is part of our code?
[1:32] Well, the reason is someone found out six years previously, he donated $1,000 to Proposition 8 in the state of California.
[1:43] Proposition 8 was a ballot initiative to keep marriage between a man and a woman. In 2008, the amendment passed overwhelmingly, and the California government immediately enforced it.
[2:01] After donating $1,000 to initiative that Barack Obama, the President of the United States at the time, supported, Brendan Icke was severely bullied, unlike anyone had ever seen.
[2:17] And what was created, commentators said, was an internet lynch mob. What made this more ironic is that Silicon Valley prided itself on being in a marketplace full of diverse views and thoughts.
[2:32] As one newspaper stated, it seems we have arrived at a place in our society where there can be more pressure to refuse employment to those who decline to conform their view to the new orthodoxy.
[2:49] That it was simply enough to have, it's not enough to have some equal rights, but we need to squash the rights of others so they agree with ours. The question many people asked is, how did it get this way?
[3:08] Sometimes, I think when we watch the news or read the newspaper, we try to make sense of this world and it doesn't look like a sane world.
[3:19] We seem to live in a crazy, topsy-turvy culture. We now live, and the news just reported that there is now 7,000 binary people in the U.S.
[3:30] Those are people who are not male or female, apparently, who now officially label themselves as such. It is now a supposed human right violation to call a person, but what they want to identify rather than what reality tells them.
[3:48] Recently, there was a sad story of a young girl in Ontario by the age of seven years of age who was quite happy, but her teacher told her that she might not be a girl. The parents did not know this was going on, but the young girl was having a lot of sleepless nights and was very disturbed.
[4:07] The parents finally dug down what's going on, and she said, Daddy, I might not be a girl because my teacher told me so. The parents complained it fell on deaf ears, and they were forced to move their child to another school.
[4:23] For some of us, we've seen this. We've seen this at Trinity Western, a completely voluntary program offered for a law degree that by right there's many other law schools to choose.
[4:36] They are not allowed to have this because simply what they hold to is a biblical view of marriage. It's crazy, isn't it?
[4:49] Just this past week, there was a tragic story of a woman who went to the hospital pregnant. The nurse didn't do anything with her.
[5:00] They tried to sue the hospital, or they're in the process of trying to sue the hospital, that they didn't do enough. Well, the problem was she told the nurse that she was a man.
[5:11] She went in. She kind of looked like a man. Apparently, the person was quite obese. And the nurse simply said, when they told me they had a sore stomach or their abdominal plane, and they said they were a man, why would I think any different?
[5:24] And they're starting to see that there is a cost to this view of identity, of who we really are. And then, of course, there's the funny side of the story.
[5:38] It would take a very industrious older man in the Netherlands. It would only be a Dutch who would try this. I don't know. But he's trying to get his age changed as the official record.
[5:52] Why? Because on the dating app Tinder, nobody pays attention to him at 69, but he feels like he'll have a great opportunity at 49. It's before the courts on whether or not he can change.
[6:06] How did we get to this place? How far? It's crazy, right? It's insane. How did we get here?
[6:18] How do we make sense of this? Are we supposed to be in despair? Well, the good news is that we are able to make sense of this.
[6:29] It is possible to have a Christian worldview, which will help us accurately assess these situations around us. In fact, by only having the right paradigm of biblical truth will result in a right perspective.
[6:46] In fact, today's sermon provides for us God's answer to how did we get this way? How did we as a society get to this place?
[6:59] In fact, he doesn't give us pages and pages and pages of information in regards to this. It's actually addressed quite clearly in Psalm chapter 14.
[7:11] In this Psalm, we are going to see three things. One, we are going to learn God's diagnosis of man. We're going to learn what God thinks of us. Two, we're going to learn what God's judgment of man is.
[7:25] And the third thing we're going to learn is that truly God is the only hope for man in this world. So please turn with me to Psalm 14 and read along with me on this.
[7:36] Psalm 14 and read along with me on this.
[8:06] Psalm 14 and read along with me on this.
[8:36] Psalm 14 and read along with me on this.
[9:06] Word for word from the Hebrew. It simply state, the fool says in his heart, no God. No God. What's interesting here is that David doesn't qualify this statement.
[9:20] He doesn't say some of the people who say there is no God are fools. He doesn't say, of course there are fools who say this sort and sort of thing. But on the other hand, there are great and educated people who say it too.
[9:36] No, David simply says, every one of them. It is a universal statement. There are no qualifications.
[9:49] There are no exceptions. The fool says in his heart, there is no God. So now what is a fool?
[10:02] Now we often think it is someone who is prone to making bad decisions in life, right? There's a few of them listed in the Bible. Remember Esau? There is the father of Noah sold his inheritance to his brother for a pot of stew.
[10:17] There's the prodigal son who gave up his rich inheritance for an absolute seasons of sin, which led him to be eventually eating with the pigs.
[10:29] We often think that the opposite of fool must be wise, shrewd. Perhaps you know a few fools. Perhaps you know some who threw away money, sacrificed relationships, lost jobs over very foolish decisions.
[10:45] And you simply say to yourself or maybe to your spouse, that person is a fool. Often we equate a fool with someone who is mentally deficient, that they're somehow not able to comprehend.
[11:01] However, God has a different opinion. You know God, God Elohim, God the creator of the universe, God the ruler of the universe, the one who sustains and holds all things together with but a word tells us something quite different.
[11:20] And it's something hard for us to accept. The fool is the one who denies God.
[11:33] You see, a fool lacks understanding. A fool lacks reason and insight. Now some of you might be saying, that's a bit harsh, BK. How could David say such a thing?
[11:47] Well, when we were at university, we had this, in case you don't know, I did my BA in religious studies. It was actually at a Catholic institution, and we studied the man named Thomas Aquinas.
[11:59] And Thomas Aquinas, who some debate whether or not he was Catholic at the time, simply tried to prove God just from what we are able to observe.
[12:10] And if you were here the last couple of weeks, we learned about natural revelation. But he points to these words that Paul writes in Romans 1. Romans 1, 19 to 20 says, For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
[12:33] For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made.
[12:47] So they, man, is without excuse. You see, the fact that God is has never really been a mystery. Natural revelation clearly acknowledged that there is a God.
[13:02] So before we go any further, I think we need to understand what a fool is. And I'm going to go over five different types of fools that we run into in our world. And I hope by the end of it, we can come to an understanding of what God says is true, but we can actually able to show them what truth means and what it really is.
[13:26] So the first fool is those that deny what they clearly see. The first fool is one who denies what he or she clearly see. The reality is only a fool would argue that this universe, this world, this body of ours is a complete accident.
[13:44] I don't know if you know, but there was a recent article about how they're now discussing whether Darwin might have been wrong. They're finally starting to admit that things really don't add up in his science.
[14:00] Some argue that we are the result of a collision of gases suddenly condensing. All of a sudden, that created a planet which was full of goo.
[14:11] And through the process of evolution, time and chance, some single-celled organism, perhaps hit by lightning or whatever evolved into some kind of fish.
[14:23] And that fish into some kind of crawling thing that eventually ended up to be us. This beauty that surrounds us, to deny that there is a creator, is foolish.
[14:36] It's as foolish as being in the middle of a fire and trying to deny there's a fire. You still burn. Denying that something is not true does not make it so.
[14:50] Especially when it is so obvious. The second fool is one who denies what they clearly know. What they clearly knew. A fool is one who does not listen to the sense that is within them.
[15:05] The reality is every man and woman ever born into this world has a sense of God. The reality is the Bible clearly teaches us in Genesis 2 that we were born in the image of God.
[15:21] Nature reveals his powerful presence in his personhood. The reality is we relate, we feel. We think that a God cannot do these things would be totally illogical.
[15:33] But man actually tries to deny this truth. They try to put it down in their mind. They argue it. Anthropologists have proven time and time again, no matter where the discovery is, there is a God who is worshipped.
[15:52] In all times, in all cultures, there is always a God behind everything else. They may worship stones, wood carvings, or animals, but they have this sense that there is a supreme God who is backing everything up.
[16:12] Man tries to do away with this truth by creating gods that are just like them, like the same things, have the same principles, and who, of course, is very pleased with them.
[16:24] They do this so they can lead the kind of life they want to live. These people the Bible calls are fools. Anyone who dismisses something is an innate part of us, and our personality can only be described as a fool.
[16:41] To say there is no God is to deny the voice inside of ourselves. The third fool is the one who denies their conscience. Denies their conscience.
[16:54] We all have a conscience within us. I think we knew from a very early age there were certain things that we did. We automatically felt bad about. That it was wrong to do.
[17:08] We often wish, let's be honest, we didn't have a conscience, right? We wish we were able to do anything that we want at any time. Because sometimes our conscience makes us feel miserable.
[17:21] We may pass through an agony of remorse, if not repentance. And that is the voice of the conscience speaking. The voice that says, you should not have done that. That was wrong.
[17:33] That isn't true. To deny God is to deny the existence of something other than ourselves. A man begins to deny the conscience when he or she desires to live a life they know they should not.
[17:49] We've been there, right? We make excuses. We might even draw up in our minds a pros and cons list. And we know that everything on the cons list is right and everything on the pros list is wrong.
[18:06] But we are marvelous negotiators with ourselves. Romans 1.18.21.22 says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who, by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth.
[18:25] The truth is known to man but is purposely suppressed. Those that deny the sense of God within them and their conscience are guilty of violating the knowledge that was in them.
[18:37] Check out verse 4 here. It says, Have they no knowledge? On the subject of knowledge, some have tried to make the argument that because they have knowledge, they cannot believe in God.
[18:53] Remember the Enlightenment period. That was the greatest argument. That belief in a God meant inferior knowledge. That one would have to be mentally incapacitated.
[19:06] That would mean that every person with less knowledge would not believe in God. The pastor, they would state that if this line was correct, that mean anyone who was not educated or intelligent would believe in God.
[19:25] Well, we know that's not true. In the same way, if this line of thinking were true, there would be no educated Christians, no men and women of the arts, cultural intellect.
[19:38] But we know this to be false as well. Spurgeon simply stated, It is madness to stifle the conscience. The fourth fool, who I believe to be the most foolish of all, are the ones who arrive at momentous conclusions on insufficient evidence.
[19:57] Who are the ones who arrive at momentous conclusions on insufficient evidence. These are the people who jump to conclusions and are led by their prejudice, lusts or desires.
[20:09] It is the mark of a fool to draw conclusions from inadequate evidence. You all know these people. Who are these people?
[20:21] If there is a God, why are there wars? If there is a God, why are there disabled children? If there is a God, why are there earthquakes?
[20:34] So because of their conclusions, there must not be a God. One pastor I know when confronted with the statement by a man he met, stated he didn't believe in God because his wife had a very painful illness.
[20:50] To him, that was enough to prove that there was no God. The pastor asked him that perhaps the illness was being used to bring them closer to God. He simply asked, when you were well, did you live and respect God?
[21:05] The answer was, well, no. Did you worship God? Well, sometimes. They said, did you live in praise of God?
[21:18] And they said, no. You see, they lived for themselves. They rarely thought of God at all. They never attended church. They lived a godless life.
[21:29] And yet, because of the illness, all of a sudden believed that there was no God. If you guys were remembering, during the time of 9-11, the nation kept asking, where was God in all this?
[21:41] And I think it was Billy Graham's daughter had the best quote of it all. She says, oh, you guys threw God out of the country a long time ago. Now, all of a sudden, you expect him to show up. Right?
[21:52] You didn't want him, but now you do. The reality is, is not the Bible filled with men and women who underwent great afflictions only to be brought closer to God?
[22:07] I think some of us know that story in our own lives. That's a part of our testimony. That it was because of pain and affliction that I was brought closer to God.
[22:18] That God proved himself real. Someone, 1971, says, before I was afflicted, I went astray. The reality is, you and I struggle to know our own minds.
[22:31] How in the world could we ever understand the mind of God? And the fifth fool is the person who risks eternity for a moment.
[22:44] The person who risks eternity for a moment. Some might say they do not believe in life after death, and the question to ask them is, can you prove it? Can you prove that there is no life after death?
[22:59] Are you willing to proceed simply on the basis of your opinion alone, given all that we already know and have discussed?
[23:10] Are you really willing to risk it all? You, who you know to be imperfect. Let's be honest, we're stupid a lot of the times, right? But yet, we are willing to trust our own stupidness, foolishness, ridiculousness at times, that we can figure out if there is truly an afterlife.
[23:36] What if the Bible is right, and there is life after death? A life spent in heaven for those who worship the Lord Jesus Christ, and hell for those who reject his love?
[23:49] Are you really willing to jeopardize your whole eternal destiny on flimsy evidence, superstitious theories?
[24:02] Go ahead, point to evolution. Point to science. The reality is, science never proved a thing. Scientists have.
[24:14] Now, how foolish are scientists? I don't know if you read the newspaper several years ago, the California, it's called CSUN University Professor.
[24:26] They found the live flesh on the dinosaur. Do you guys remember that story that made the news? Basically, they had a bone that they had brought up, and when they did the dating, it showed that the flesh still on the bone was thousands of years old, not millions of years old.
[24:45] Not only did they let that professor go who made the argument, but they wanted to share, so they actually rewrote the test and say, well, this test doesn't work for anything under a million years old.
[24:59] So we have to say that when we only use it, we must know that it's a million years old. So any other number that comes up less than a million has to be wrong.
[25:13] So they just rewrote the rules to say that the tests don't work. What does this all tell us? We don't want God.
[25:28] We don't want God. We don't want to be responsible to anybody else. We want to be God. We want to determine what is right, what is wrong, what is, what isn't.
[25:45] Let's go back to our text. The fool says in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt. They do abominable deeds.
[25:57] There is none who does good. Now we might think that's an incredibly judgmental statement, but notice what verse two says. It says, the Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.
[26:14] Isn't that a graceful, loving thing to do? God isn't just casting this judgment on man. He's actually looking down on them. He searches and he looks.
[26:30] Then it says in verse three, they have all turned aside together. They have become corrupt. There is none who does good, not even one. Have they no knowledge?
[26:43] All the evil doers who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon the Lord. Simply saying, why are things the way they are?
[26:56] Why are Christians attacked? Why are civil liberties ignored? Well, Paul elaborates for us in Romans 1 21.
[27:08] He says, 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.
[27:20] So you're asking, how can a society accept the testimony that someone is a man when they're really a woman? That is the answer right there. God said, you wanted it that way.
[27:32] I'm going to hand you over to your sin. I'm going to hand you over to your depraved, futile minds. And I'll tell you, this forms the basis when we evangelize people.
[27:44] We try to argue. We try to, and I say argue in a good way, right? We want a reason. We think we're coming to the same table and I'm going to express my truth.
[27:55] They're going to express their truth. And my truth will be so strong and powerful. It'll overwhelm their truth. That was me in university. That's what I tried to do. I tried to show all this evidence that led to God.
[28:09] It doesn't work because it tells us right now, right here, they have become futile in their thinking. One plus one equals fish now.
[28:25] It's how crazy it is. This is verse 22, claiming to be wise, they became fools. And exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men and birds and animals and creeping things.
[28:45] Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever.
[29:07] Amen. You see, the reality is sin is always foolishness. And the most craziest, foolish sin that man can do is deny the existence of God.
[29:26] That's what our society is trying to do. It's trying to delete man created in the image of God. Notice verse 5.
[29:39] There they are in great terror. Does that not describe our society as well? There's more fear than anything else. For God is with the generation of the righteous.
[29:51] You would shame the plans of the poor, but the Lord is his refuge. Even though they walk in their deeds of darkness, they still walk in fear of God, because they know they cannot escape him.
[30:07] And in verse 7, we find that there is one hope, man's only hope. Verse 7. Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion when the Lord restores the fortunes of his people.
[30:23] Let Jacob rejoice. Let Israel be glad. For us, remember last week, we talked about David, his rock and redeemer. That is where our hope is to be placed.
[30:36] That there will come a time when Jesus Christ will come and make all things right again. Now, if you were paying attention, you will note that I skipped a phrase in the opening verse.
[30:49] It said, the fool says in his heart, there is no God. You see, David is not addressing those who vocally state there is no God.
[31:08] David is actually not addressing the atheists that speak with their mouths. Those guys, in fact, are so foolish, they don't even need to be addressed.
[31:19] Why? Because their foolishness is plain to see. You see, the commonality that every fool has is that they listen to their heart.
[31:31] They are governed by their desires. Their truth is determined by what they find within. Contrary to what Jeremiah tells us that the heart is deceitful above all things.
[31:48] We can say all we want, my heart was in the right place. I love her or I love him does not make it good. My question is, how many people listen to their heart over their senses, their consciousness, their minds?
[32:10] The Bible teaches us that we are at war against God. You either with God or against God. There is no neutral. You see, this is where it hits home for us.
[32:26] A man or woman may state they believe with their mouth that they believe in God, but not with their heart.
[32:39] People who are indwelt by the Spirit are really easy to see. They love Jesus. How do you know?
[32:52] Because they love the things that Jesus loved. Amen? Now my question for you is, are you a fool? I mean, is your faith defined by loving the things that Jesus loves?
[33:15] Or is your faith defined by talking about the things that Jesus loves, but actually pursuing in your heart what you love?
[33:34] That's the real fool. Do you know Jesus? Jesus? I mean, the devil tells us, or the Bible tells us that even demons believed in Jesus.
[33:52] Will we see demons in heaven? No. You can believe all you want about Jesus, but do you know Jesus?
[34:08] do you know God enough to change you? I'm not asking you if Jesus made a difference in how or what you believe, but does Jesus make a difference in how you act?
[34:28] not. Because if he doesn't, you're the fool who we described here in the pages of Psalm 14.
[34:52] Galatians 4.8, Paul says, formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those by nature are not gods.
[35:05] But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn your back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world whose slaves you want to be once more.
[35:25] You see, in order to be a Christian, it's not enough to declare that you believe, but your heart needs to drive your life in a way that shows that you love Jesus.
[35:45] Anything else, and you're simply a fool. Let me pray. Let me pray.