Mensa Otabil - What the Fool Says In His Heart (10/19/2025)
We’re back to the Psalms, and this week we’ll look at Psalms 14 and 15. We start with Psalm 14, verse 1. The fool has said in his heart, «There is no God.» They are corrupt; they have done abominable works. There is none who does good. The Hebrew word translated as «fool» here does not refer to low intelligence; it rather refers to a person who is morally depraved and has descended to the lowest levels of human behavior.
A person can be very educated, have high degrees, but be considered a fool if they are morally depraved. The fool here also refers to a person who is unconcerned about others and who just lives their life any way they want. So what does the Bible say about the fool? It says, «The fool has said in his heart.» Now that phrase means that the person has convinced himself. A person who says something in his heart is someone who knows that something is real but tells himself that it is not real. They are aware of something but deny or seek to deny its existence. Another way of describing such people is that they are wise in their own eyes.
What does the fool say in his heart? He says, «There is no God.» The fool is a person who knows there is a God but somehow denies God or tries to convince himself that there is no God. There is no human being on Earth, in any part of the Earth, who honestly believes there is no God. Every human being, at their core, knows there is a God, and the reason people spend a lot of time trying to prove there is no God is that they know there is a God.
Isn’t it interesting that most people who seek to disprove God are highly educated? Why? Because they know there is a God, but they want to use the tools of their knowledge to disprove what they know fully exists. If you believe something does not exist, you do not spend a lot of time trying to prove it doesn’t exist because you know it doesn’t exist. But the fool knows there is a God but says in his heart there is no God. The Bible says that because of this, they are corrupt. Why? Because one of the ways to corrupt anything is to say that the thing has no owner. If you find something and feel that nobody is responsible for it, it has no owner; you will use it however you like, and you’ll corrupt it.
If you want to live your life however you please, the first thing you want to do is prove that you have no owner and that nobody owns you-you own yourself. If you find something on the ground and it has no owner, you can kick it about. But once you acknowledge that something has an owner, then you have to seek how to use that thing the way the owner wants it to be used. That is why people, especially intellectuals, try so hard to prove there is no God-they want to live their lives as they please.
What the Bible calls corrupt is essentially taking something that should serve a purpose and using it for another purpose. The fool takes God’s creation, appreciates God’s creation-including their own lives-but turns it around and uses it differently from the way God wants their life to be lived. They will write copious theses, extensive notes, and conduct thorough research, all to convince themselves in their own hearts that they owe nobody any responsibility. But deep down in every human being’s heart, there is a space for God that cannot be filled with knowledge; only God can fill that place. The fool is the one who tries so hard to behave as if there is no God. We see more and more of our world turning in that direction, and we will talk more about it.
Let’s pray. Say with me: «Heavenly Father, I know You as my Creator and my Lord. Help me not to turn my heart away from You. In Jesus' name, Amen.» Well, I’ll catch you again tomorrow. I’m Pastor Mensa Otabil. Shalom, peace, and life to you.