The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity; there is none that doeth good. Psalm 53:1
We are all fools, or at least we were. According to our text, a fool is one whose heart rejects God. We take this verse to point to atheists who deny the existence of God. But they are only a small portion of those to whom this verse applies. Look carefully at this verse in your Bible and you will see that the words ‘there is’ are in italics. This means they do not actually appear in the original text. So this verse applies to all who say in their hearts ‘no God’. That atheists are fools there is no doubt, the very greatest of fools. But what about those folks all around us who would never deny the existence of the Almighty, or even deny that the Bible is His Word? Most of these people live their lives in total isolation from any impact on God on themselves. They are fools. Those of us who are saved admit we once were fools, and may still be to a certain extent, but we have acknowledged God and His great plan of salvation.
Our verse tells us that only a fool denies God His place in our hearts. Is there an area of your heart, your life, where you do not allow God to penetrate, where His will is not supreme? To the extent that you and I exclude God from our plans, our actions, our experiences, we are fools. Our first parents lived hundreds of years of regret that they set God and His Word aside to be disobedient fools. In our lives, we often have to look back in regret at the foolishness that occurred because we ignored God or left Him out of our plans.
There is no excuse for being a fool. God’s Word is not hard to read. His people are not hard to associate with. His truth is not hard to accept; we are asked only to believe it. And yet, we stumble and grope our way through this world as though we were almost blind. All because of our own foolishness.
Just because we were fools yesterday does not mean we need to be so today. Our text tells us we need only to seek God. No God, no peace. Know God, know peace. -Jim MacIntosh