Our
Hope is in the Lord
Keith
McFarren
September
14, 2025
Psalm
14
    One of the greatest gifts God has given to
us is hope.  Hope for today and hope for
tomorrow.  After all, that is what God’s
promises are designed to do…inspire hope.
As Christians, hope gives us the ability to look at any situation and
know that regardless of how it may appear at any given point in time, God is
going to come through for us in some way or another.  This is the essence of what hope is.  
    We need hope.  We need to have hope because so many of the challenges
that we are faced with or the situations we find ourselves in as we go through
life are simply overwhelming and mindboggling.
We all know that because we have all faced those kinds of challenges at
some point in our lives.  We’ve all been
down that road.  And when these overwhelming
challenges attack us, the first thing they come after is our hope.  Without hope…all we have left is despair.  Without hope, we have nothing.
    But as people of faith, as people who
believe in the promises of God, no matter what’s going on in our life, we
continue to hope as if anything is possible, as if there could be or their
might be a source of hope out there on the horizon or right around the corner, no
matter what is going on around us.
   How do we find hope?  How do we keep hope.  In Psalm 14, we find our hope somewhere in
the space between the comma and the word “but.”
“The wicked would confound the plans of the poor, but God is their
refuge.”  Or as the New Living
Translation puts it, “The wicked would frustrate the plans of the oppressed,
but…God is their refuge.”
    But God.
But the Good News.  But love and
compassion.  We find hope and we keep
hope when we are faced with all that is difficult and hard and hurtful in our
world.  We’re overwhelmed with what we’re
faced with, but we take a deep breath, and then we remember God.    
    Racial hatred.  Religious hatred.  Ethnic hatred.  Political hatred.  Violence.
Killing.  Retribution.  Bullying. Name calling.  Constant turmoil.  
    If you are struggling with all that’s
going on in the world around you like I am, if the world around you has caused
you to fall to your knees, then you have found a soul mate in the writer of the
14th Psalm.  Here is someone who
is struggling, like many of us, to find anything positive or anything of much value
going on in the world around us.  
    Here is someone who believes that there isn’t
anyone, not one person, who looks at life through the eyes of faith anymore. That’s
what he tells us in verse one, “Only fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no
God.’ They are corrupt, and their actions are evil, not one of them does good.”
    This is someone whom is fed up with what’s
going on in the world.  From the rich to
the poor, there is no one who seems to do any good.  We’ve all turned away from God.  You know that feeling.  You know that response.  
    The writer of the 14th Psalm is
showing the despair of a man who after looking at all that is going on in the
world around him is ready to give up.  This
is the definition of the word “lament” that is used so often in the Bible.
    But then again, maybe Psalm 14 is more
polemic and not meant so much a final lament.
Maybe Psalm 14 is meant to be more of a prophetic utterance against the
failing of the people of God.
    If we go back and look at his opening
words, “Fools say in their heart,” we can see that he’s not ranting and raving
about atheists.  We know he’s not talking
about atheists because a true atheist doesn’t believe in God at all. Not in
their heart…not anywhere.  A true atheist
chooses to ignore all the evidence that points toward a God that even exists,
as do heretics and secular humanists.
    The writer of the 14th Psalm,
whom historians say is David, is talking about people who in the past and in
the present claim to believe in God but go around living their lives as if
there is no God.  He’s talking about
people that are what we might call “functional atheists.”  
    He’s talking about people who like to put
on a show for the rest of us.  He’s
talking about people who are hypocrites.
He’s talking about people who stand in front of others and profess to
believe in God.  He’s talking about those
who say that they follow God…people who might be able to recite all sorts of
scripture, but if we examine their lifestyle, we’ll find that they show no
evidence that God even exists in their lives.

    The fruits that they produce fail to show
that God is anywhere near to them let alone are they living any type of life
that shows God has any authority in their lives.  
    These people that he’s talking about aren’t
maybe who you think he’s talking about.  Sure,
he’s talking about those who don’t know God or have turned their backs on God
and have decided to live an ungodly life.
    But he’s also talking about those in the
upper echelon of life.  He’s talking
about those at the top of the totem pole.
He’s talking about leaders.  He’s
talking about leaders of churches and synagogues, of businesses, of towns and
cities and countries.  He’s talking about
priests and he’s talking about pastors.
He’s talking about business owners, and politicians and celeberities.  He's talking about people who claim to follow
Jesus, but in reality, these same people, as evidenced by their actions and
their values and their choices in life, are opposing the very God that they
claim to follow.
    These are the people, these are the
“fools” that the writer of the 14th Psalm is talking about.  Not the fool that makes mistake after
mistake.  Not the fool who we look at as
a bumbling idiot who can’t put one foot in front of the other…or the guy who constantly
blows his mouth off or the guy who can’t stay sober and makes a fool of himself
everywhere he goes.  Not our average
everyday fool, but upper echelon fools…high society fools.  
    These fools are the ones who have chosen
to oppose the will of God.  These are the
ones who have put themselves and their own purposes and their own self centered
agendas ahead of the God they profess to follow and the God whose will they
refuse to adhere to.
    The voices of these people sound like
wisdom to those in the world that follow them.
And people who don’t seem to know any better are willing to follow them
regardless of where they go or what they do or say.  And why shouldn’t people follow them, after
all they are successful and whatever they do always seems to work out for
them.  Yet the wisdom that God seeks is
totally different…because the measure of real success is much, much different
in God’s kingdom.
    The Psalmist goes on and on finding fault
with how the real world works and complaining about those who rise to the top by
stepping on others, and about all those claiming to be full of wisdom getting
all the glory as they go about undermining the lives of those less fortunate
and less powerful than they are.  
    In all reality we aren’t a whole lot
different from the Psalmist.  We are all
known to get on our own soap box every so often and rant and rave about who’s
doing what in our world and point fingers at this person and that person who we
don’t agree with.  And there is probably
nothing wrong with standing up for others and pointing out some of the
foolishness that’s going on around us, but at the same time, in this day and
age one unfortunately needs to be prepared for some type of retribution or for
someone to try to get even with you…that’s just how life is nowadays.
    But know this: “…a burning wind is blowing
in from the desert, and it’s not a gentle breeze useful for winnowing
grain.  It is a roaring blast sent by
God” (Jeremiah 4:11-12).  Know that God
will stand up for the poor and the oppressed…and know that God will punish
those who knowingly sin against the poor and the oppressed and sin against
those who harm their advocates.
    If “God is with those who obey him,” (v.
5), then those who attack God’s followers are also attacking God.  And we all know that to attack God is a futile
effort.  So while we may feel like we’re
losing the battle and are ready to give up, hope springs eternal, and there
must be no doubt that our ultimate victory is in the hands of God.
    Say what you want and think what you
want…but our first priority, our first duty as Christians and as disciples of
Jesus Christ is to continue to be proclaimers of the good news of the
Gospel.  That is our defining
identity.  
    We, like the psalmist, can tell the world of
the pain we feel and the injustice that we witness, all while living in a
broken world, a world filled with fools and the foolishness that accompanies
them.  But at the same time, like the
psalmist, we must be able to return to the hope that we claim and share it with
everyone.
    The hope that we claim, of course, is in
the identity of God.  The God we
represent; the God we make space for in our hearts for.  The God who serves as hope for the poor and
the oppressed.  The God we call upon is a
God who promises deliverance and restoration for those who have let him into
their hearts and who truly desire to live the Godly life.  
    So, in the meantime, we continue to preach
and teach about the God of hope, the God of today and the God of the future.  We preach and teach about the God of today as
we live and share all the blessings that God has given each of us.  The blessings of living in a faith filled
community and developing relationships with those within that community.  The blessing of forgiveness and life changing
blessings of spiritual transformation.  
    These are fruits of the Spirit.  These are the signs of God being at work
within us…and these are the signs that the psalmist wants to see shared with
all people, signs that work as a ripple effect for all people.
    Despite all of what the psalmist calls “foolishness”
that is constantly going on around us in our world, the foolishness of those proclaiming
to follow Jesus and then putting their own personal agendas before others and
before God’s agenda and God’s will, our only hope lies in the promises of
God.  
    This is the hope that equips us and gives
us strength for today and strength for tomorrow so that we don’t fall into
total despair because of what we hear and what we see going on around us.  We call upon the God of hope, knowing that he
is with us and knowing that the God of hope will ultimately win the battle.