The Atheist's Buffet and the God-Haunted Terror Text: Psalm 53:4-5
Introduction: The Cannibalism of the Godless
We are considering a psalm that is nearly identical to Psalm 14, and the Holy Spirit's decision to have us sing this song twice in our psalter should tell us something. Some truths are so fundamental, so central to the great conflict of history, that they must be repeated. And the central truth here is the profound and willful stupidity of godlessness. This is not an intellectual problem in the first instance, but a moral one. The fool has said in his heart, not his head, that there is no God. And because he has banished God from his heart, he has banished all knowledge, all understanding, from his life. He is a functional atheist, and this functional atheism has consequences.
This is not a theoretical atheism debated in sterile university halls. This is a bloody, practical atheism that works itself out in the world. And what does it do? It devours. The psalmist here uncovers the basic operating principle of all godless societies, all workers of iniquity. They are cannibals. They eat God's people. This is not some overwrought metaphor; it is the basic spiritual reality of the world. The Christ-hating world is a saint-eating world. And they do it with the same casual, thoughtless necessity as eating a meal.
But the story does not end with the saints as the blue plate special. The story takes a sharp, sudden turn. The ones who had no fear of God, who operated with a cool, materialistic calculus, are suddenly seized by a terror that comes out of nowhere. The God they suppressed in their hearts erupts into their history, and the result is panic, rout, and utter disgrace. This is the great reversal that God loves to perform throughout history, and it is a preview of the final great reversal at the end of all things.
So we have two scenes before us in these two verses. First, the arrogant ignorance of the wicked as they feast. Second, the sudden, bone-scattering judgment of God that turns their feast into a festival of fear.
The Text
Do the workers of iniquity not know,
Who eat up my people as they eat bread
And do not call upon God?
There they were in great dread where no dread had been;
For God scattered the bones of him who encamped against you;
You put them to shame, because God had rejected them.
(Psalm 53:4-5 LSB)
The Willful Stupidity of the Wicked (v. 4)
The psalmist begins with a rhetorical question that drips with holy astonishment.
"Do the workers of iniquity not know, Who eat up my people as they eat bread And do not call upon God?" (Psalm 53:4)
The question is, "Have they no knowledge?" This is not a question about their IQ. The workers of iniquity can be very clever. They can build empires, write symphonies, and develop sophisticated technologies. The knowledge they lack is a moral and spiritual knowledge. They are blind to the fundamental grammar of the universe: that there is a God, that He is holy, and that He has a people whom He cherishes. Their ignorance is culpable. It is a chosen ignorance, a willful stupidity. They have suppressed the truth in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18).
And what is the primary evidence of this profound ignorance? "They eat up my people as they eat bread." Notice the possessive pronoun: "my people." The wicked think they are persecuting a marginal, despised group of religious fanatics. God says they are touching the apple of His eye. They are assaulting His personal property. This is the great blind spot of every persecutor in every age, from Pharaoh to Caiaphas to Caesar to the modern secular state. They do not know whose people they are messing with.
The image of eating them like bread is striking. It speaks of a casual, routine, and thoughtless consumption. It is not a crime of passion; it is their daily diet. Oppression, exploitation, slander, and persecution are simply how they fuel their godless project. They devour the livelihoods of the righteous through unjust laws. They consume their reputations through slander. They shed their blood in persecutions. And they do it all with a clear conscience because their functional atheism has removed the great obstacle of a holy God who sees and judges.
The final charge lays the foundation for all of it: "And do not call upon God." This is the root of the tree. Because they do not pray, they prey. Because they have no communion with the living God, they must feed on His children. Their lives are characterized by a prayerless self-sufficiency. They are their own gods, their own providers, their own lawgivers. To call upon God would be to admit need, to acknowledge a higher authority, to confess dependence. And the proud worker of iniquity will never do that. His refusal to pray is the very thing that enables his cannibalism.
The Sudden Reversal (v. 5)
But then, in verse 5, the scene shifts with cinematic abruptness. The casual dinner party of the wicked is interrupted by a terror from another world.
"There they were in great dread where no dread had been; For God scattered the bones of him who encamped against you; You put them to shame, because God had rejected them." (Psalm 53:5)
One moment, they are feasting. The next, they are in "great dread." The text emphasizes the shocking suddenness of it all: "where no dread had been." From their perspective, there was no reason to be afraid. Their armies were strong, their treasuries were full, their philosophical justifications were airtight. They had successfully suppressed the fear of God. But you cannot eliminate the fear of God; you can only suppress it. And when God decides to act, that suppressed terror comes roaring back as a soul-destroying panic.
This is a God-haunted fear. It is the kind of dread that fell on the army of the Midianites before Gideon, or on the Assyrians before the angel of the Lord. It is a fear that has no earthly explanation. It is the direct result of a divine intervention. The reason for their dread is given plainly: "For God scattered the bones of him who encamped against you."
The image of scattering bones is one of ultimate defeat and deepest shame. In the ancient world, to leave a body unburied, to let the bones be scattered and picked over by scavengers, was the height of dishonor. It signified a complete and total rout. God does not just defeat His enemies; He humiliates them. He dismantles them down to the bone. He shows the universe that their proud rebellion ends in a pile of sun-bleached bones on the battlefield of history.
And notice who does the scattering. God does. The saints, the ones being eaten, are not the primary actors here. Their role is simply to be the occasion for God's judgment. God takes the attacks on His people personally. He is the one who rises to defend them. And when He does, the results are catastrophic for the opposition.
The final two clauses drive the point home. "You put them to shame." Here, the people of God are brought back into the action. Once God has broken the back of the enemy, He calls His people to walk through the camp and witness the victory. They are the instruments of the final shaming. They see the defeated bullies, the terrified cannibals, and they understand the victory belongs to their God.
And why? What is the ultimate reason for this great reversal? "Because God had rejected them." This is the bedrock reality. The workers of iniquity were not defeated because they had a flawed military strategy or a weak economy. They were defeated because they were rejected by God. God had looked upon them, their projects, their pride, and their prayerlessness, and He had despised them. He had cast them away. All their apparent success was temporary, a long rope given to them before the final, decisive judgment. Their rejection by God was the ultimate fact, and their historical defeat was merely that fact breaking out into the open for all to see.
Conclusion: The Cross as the Ultimate Feast and Fear
As with all the psalms, we must read this through the lens of the Lord Jesus Christ. For there was one moment in history when the workers of iniquity gathered for their greatest feast. At the cross, the rulers of the age, both Jewish and Gentile, gathered to eat the Son of God. They devoured His reputation with their lies, they consumed His flesh with their whips and nails. They did it all without calling upon God, and in fact, they did it in the name of their false gods of religion and empire. It was the ultimate act of cosmic cannibalism.
And for a moment, it seemed they had succeeded. For three hours, a great dread fell over the land, but it seemed to be a dread centered on the victim, not the perpetrators. They saw no reason for fear. They had won.
But on the third day, God acted. He did not scatter the bones of His Son. Rather, He raised them up in glorious resurrection. And in that act, He scattered the spiritual bones of every principality and power that had encamped against Him. He put them to open shame, triumphing over them in the cross (Col. 2:15). The greatest feast of the wicked was turned into their ultimate and everlasting defeat. The rejection of the Son by men resulted in the rejection of those men by God.
This is our comfort and our confidence. The world still seeks to eat us as they eat bread. But we know the end of the story. A day is coming when a great dread will fall upon all who have not called upon the name of the Lord. Their bones will be scattered in the final judgment. But for us, who have been delivered from their teeth by the one who was Himself devoured for us, we will be brought forth to see the victory, to put our feet on the necks of our conquered enemies, and to praise the God who rejects the proud and saves His people.