Psalms 14:4-6

Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge?

Conscience

I. Conscience informed. It is quite true that the workers of iniquity seem like brute beasts, as if they had no common sense, no conscience; but they had these gifts, and it is this fact which renders their conscience so dark.

1. We sin against our understanding. Our reason protests against sill.

2. We sin against conscience. Our moral sense echoes the words and thunders of Sinai, and protests against transgression.

3. We sin against experience. Our history shows how all that is desirable and honourable lies in the path of obedience, and how paths of transgression are paths of misery and shame. Sin is not a mistake or a misfortune, but a crime.

II. Conscience asleep.

1. Asleep as to men (Psalms 14:4).

2. Asleep as to God. “Call not upon the Lord.” Thus men stifle their moral sense, and live neither fearing God nor regarding man.

III. Conscience aroused (Psalms 14:5). Men awake to find that “God is in the generation of the righteous.” All is true that the righteous held, and the angry God is ready to avenge Himself on the proud sinner. (W. L. Watkinson.).

Psalms 15:1