PROPHETIC EXHORTATION - There is a prophetic feel to this psalm as the writer indicts fools, humankind, and evildoers. The focus at verse 4 narrows the field of vision to the final category as it announces judgment on evildoers while announcing deliverance to the righteous.

THE FOOL - A word about this word might be useful; in the Hebrew language, nãbãl refers to a person who lacks moral sense; this is not a lack of knowledge but the failure to acknowledge God through trustful obedience. [1] As such, the "fool" will inevitably make choices that do not take God’s ways into consideration, nor the just treatment of God’s people.

A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD- this psalm is made difficult by the arrangement of the indictments; on one hand everyone is indicted (vv. 1-3): The lord looks down to see . . . they have all gone astray . . . no one who does good . . . no, not one. But one the other hand, at verse four, evildoers are singled out as the bad guys. Thus, the tension. Paul will later argue that all-everyone-me-you- are "under the power of sin (Ro. 3:9) by appealing to this very psalm. In a sense, many people-religious and non-religious alike-too often act like functional atheists, who through personal conduct and words play the fool who says, There is no God.

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Christian living that little depends upon God in the activities of life and those whose life motto is, there is no God, can have the same effect-a life lived independently of God. When have you acted in a way that obscured the reality of God in your life?

What knowledge of God or of God’s ways has helped you to remain faithful to God’s calling in your vocation?

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You’ll want to be in conversation with Paul-an earlier exegete who visited this passage-as you listen for truth about the human condition and the marks of discipleship.

You might want to play with our understanding of the first verse-the fool and the epitaph, There is no God. Visit the land of atheism and absorb some of the challenges they pose. But also move to what we might call functional atheism, the actions of even religious people that suggest that God is not even a minor consideration.

Shift to the petition for deliverance and include the deliverance from the kinds of atheism many of us in the church are guilty of-living our lives as if God did not matter nor exist.

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[1] The New Interpreter’s Bible IV (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), page 729.