For those who may wish to ‘study’ this chapter, the following simple resources are provided for you. Each passage has a four-Part approach to help you take in and think further about what you have read.

Passage: Psalm 53

1 The fool says in his heart,
    ‘There is no God.’
They are corrupt, and their ways are vile;
    there is no one who does good.

2 God looks down from heaven
    on all mankind
to see if there are any who understand,
    any who seek God.
3 Everyone has turned away, all have become corrupt;
    there is no one who does good,
    not even one.

4 Do all these evildoers know nothing?

They devour my people as though eating bread;
    they never call on God.
5 But there they are, overwhelmed with dread,
    where there was nothing to dread.
God scattered the bones of those who attacked you;
    you put them to shame, for God despised them.

6 Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion!
    When God restores his people,
    let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad!

A. Find Out:    

1. What is the starting point of the fool? v.1a
2. What is the general way of men? v.1b,3
3. What did God look to see and find? v.2
4. What should have happened? v.4
5. What had happened? v.5
6. What did David want to happen? v.6

B. Think:

1. How does unrighteousness follow from ungodliness?
2. What did David expect to have happened, but didn’t?
3. Why had he expected that?

C. Comment:

     This psalm is a song about the folly of mankind. The one who says there is no God is a fool. Conversely find a fool, and he says there is no God. Godlessness is the first stage of folly. Because they are godless they have no means of restraint and so very soon godlessness is followed but corrupt (going bad, veering away from the good) behaviour. As a result, when you look around, you find there is no good anywhere.

     Now David looks at their state and observes a situation involving the people of Jerusalem, and sees that their godlessness is shown in another form of behaviour – fearfulness. An enemy had come and had been defeated by the Lord, but the people were overwhelmed by their dread of what might yet happen. They had no security because they had no relationship with God. Well that’s crazy, says David (almost implied in what he does say), because if they did feel like that you would have expected them to seek God for help in their distress, but no, they’ve all turned away and no one is seeking God for help. How stupid! If only, he goes on, salvation would come to Jerusalem again, if only the Lord would restore Jerusalem to Himself, then they would be able to rejoice again in the knowledge of the goodness of God!

D. Application:

1. Godlessness is at the heart of all folly. Do we, as Christians, seek God daily,  or are we in reality godless in daily behaviour?
2. When things go wrong, is the natural thing to do to seek God?