THE DEPRAVITY OF MAN
ROMANS 3:9-20
An old preacher was dying. He sent a message for his Doctor and his Lawyer, both church members, to come to his home. When they arrived, they were ushered up to his bedroom. As they entered the room, the preacher held out his hands and motioned for them to sit on each side of the bed. The preacher grasped their hands, sighed contentedly, smiled and stared at the ceiling. For a time, no one said anything. Both the doctor and lawyer were touched and flattered that the old preacher would ask them to be with him during his final moment. They were also puzzled; the preacher had never given them any indication that he particularly liked either of them. They both remembered his many long, uncomfortable sermons about greed, covetousness and their avaricious behavior that made them squirm in their seats.
Finally the doctor said, ‘Preacher, why did you ask the two of us to come?’ The old preacher mustered up some strength , then said weakly, ‘Jesus died between two thieves and that’s how I want to go too’.
When God created the world He looked around and said, ‘That is good’. Paul reflects on the world/mankind through the eyes of God now, ‘This is bad’.
• You may have a high estimation of yourself but others may look at you and have a different opinion.
1) Picture: Look at ourselves and almost always feel it is a bad picture. Someone else looks and says, ‘It looks like you’.
2) This morning: Ultimate opinion of us. What God says about mankind. A stark revelation of what God’s holy eyes see when He looks at sinful man.
3) DEPRAVITY OF MAN: (Word bothers us) Feel there are a lot worse people than us. We could also be a lot worse than we are.
a) DOES NOT MEAN THAT WE ARE AS BAD AS WE CAN BE BUT THAT WE ARE AS BAD OFF AS WE CAN BE
b) Every part of our nature is TAINTED BY SIN. Sin runs through us at every level. Effects everything we do and every thought we think.
SIN- Interesting word that has ‘I’ at it’s middle. This morning we are going to consider not so much the sin problem in the world but the sin problem in the heart. The heart of every man.
October 7, 1969 the Montreal, Canada police force went on strike. Because of what resulted, the day has been called Black Tuesday. A burglar and a policeman were slain. Forty-nine persons were wounded or injured in rioting. Nine bank holdups were committed, almost a tenth of the total number of holdups the previous year along with 17 robberies at gunpoint. Usually disciplined, peaceful citizens joined the riffraff and went wild, smashing some 1,000 plate glass windows in a stretch of 21 business blocks in the heart of the city, hauling away stereo units, radios, TVs and wearing apparel. While looters stripped windows of valuable merchandise, professional burglars entered stores by doors and made off with truckloads of goods. A smartly dressed man scampered down a street with a fur coat over each arm with no police around, anarchy took over.
In the words of that grand old philosopher Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is us." There aren’t just a few rotten apples in the basket, all of them are flawed.
• God’s Diagnosis of Man: The Great Physician speaks! There is no cure without an accurate diagnosis.
1) A doctor is not cruel who tells you the truth: He might use words we hate like stroke, pneumonia, cancer, disease but we need to hear them to treat the problem.
2) Generation today doesn’t want to hear the diagnosis God gives of the disease that is destroying many lives.
According to a recent poll] 88% of Catholics and a majority of Presbyterian and Methodist evangelizers [those who actively try to share their "faith"] believe that "if people are generally good, or do enough good things for others during their lives, they will earn a place in heaven."
a) Symptoms are everywhere: Crime, language, entertainment(Three R’s no longer in schoolhouse), decline in church attendance, lack of giving or serving by most who do attend, lack of Bible knowledge by average Christian.
b) ALL SYMPTOMS OF A DEADLY DISEASE: SIN
3) DOCTOR VISIT:
a) Cold & Chills: Lack of spiritual passion
b) Cough & Sneeze: Lack of obedience(reject God’s Word)
c) Tired & Fatigued: Lack of energy to serve God
d) No appetite: Lack of desire for meet of God’s Word
Big thing today is ‘SEEKER SENSITIVE’ services. Services geared to not be confrontive or too strong in Biblical teaching. Attempt to reach those who are easily offended and/or do not want to hear indepth Bible teaching. We need to be sensitive to the SEEKER we are told.
I agree we need to be SENSITIVE to the SEEKER but the SEEKER I believe we should be SENSITIVE to is the ONE Who came to SEEK and to SAVE the lost. Be sensitive that His Word is not compromised. FAITH, true saving faith, comes by hearing and hearing the Word of God.
• STEP INTO GOD’S Courtroom: God’s vrs Humanity. What is God’s case against every man or woman.
1) THE INDICTMENT: Verse 10 ‘There is none righteous, no not one…’
2) PAUL: God’s prosecuting attorney has already argued two facts.
a. Chapter 1: Gentiles are lost
b. Chapter 2: Jews are lost
(9) What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have ALREADY CHARGED that BOTH JEWS AND GREEKS are ALL UNDER SIN; Paul’s case has been made against both Gentiles and Jews.
(UNDER: idea that sin is on top of us, pressing down on us, we can’t escape it, like a wrestling match and sin has us pinned: In every life sin has won, it has a death grip on every person)
c. Summation: There is none righteous, no not one… and the final argument continues thru verse 20
(19) Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, that EVERY MOUTH MAY BE CLOSED and ALL THE WORLD MAY BECOME ACCOUNTABLE TO GOD; (20) because by the works of the Law NO FLESH WILL BE JUSTIFIED in His sight; for through the Law comes the KNOWLEDGE OF SIN.
(If you did not know what a healthy body looked like you would not know what a sick one would be. The Law defines health, the Sermon on the Mount identifies spiritual wellness.) The standard we have fallen short of, the mark we have missed.
• Paul describes a spiritually sick life in verses 11-18. Paul uses OT passages from the Psalms, the Proverbs, and from Isaiah to demonstrate man’s true condition: Ps 53:1-3, 5:9, 10:7, Isaiah 53; 59:7-8, Ps 36:1
(11) There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God;
(12) All have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one.
(13) Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving, the poison of asps is under their lips.
(14) Whose mouth is full of cursing and bittereness;
(15) Their feet are swift to shed blood,
(16) Destruction and misery are in their paths,
(17) And the path of peace have they not known.
(18) There is no fear of God before their eyes.
FIVE WAYS PAUL SHOWS OUR SPIRITUAL CONDITION
WE HAVE A CORRUPT WISDOM: (14) There is none who understands
• I Cor 2:14 ‘The natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him, he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised’.
• AMAZED AT INVENTIONS TODAY: Human ingenuity, machines, computers, rockets, medicine, architecture. It is amazing what man can do. We stand in awe at what man can continue to do.
1) We also stand amazed at how warped by sin man is. How man cannot understand the most simple thing that God is trying to communicate to him. OUR SIN & HIS HOLINESS(Message man can’t seem to get)
2) None get it without the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives. Can’t get it by just picking up a Bible. FRESHMAN READING OF BIBLE
BARNHOUSE story of preaching in London during blackouts. Lights back on and all responded except on blind man on front row. Demonstrates that it takes more than light to see. It takes sight! JOHN 1 says ‘Light has come into the world…BUT men loved darkness rather than the light because of their evil hearts and deeds
• There is a corruptness in our depravity that keeps us from seeing the truth.
We all have a brain: Our brains differ somewhat in size or wattage or whatever makes one smarter than another. Some have higher IQ while others will have a stronger common sense.
When God comes into your life and we become brand new creatures we don’t get a new brain. The bible says we get a NEW MIND, a new heart. THE MIND OF CHRIST.
The person outside of Christ has a DEPRAVED MIND(Absent of the true knowledge of God)
Not a depraved brain, they may have a very good brain. When God comes in He begins to illuminate our understandings and use our brains(Smart or not) and give us a brand new mind.
SOMEONE HAS SAID: The mind is to the brain like a song is to organ/piano. The instrument may be very good but what is played is dependent on who is allowed to play.
The Holy Spirit wants to play through your life a song the world needs to hear. Fill your heart and mind with the truths of Scripture and play them out through your words, attitudes, actions. Behavior,
HOLY SPIRIT’S TOP HITS: LOVE(Not matter how much you know is don’t use it to touch other lives) JOY, PEACE, PATIENCE, KINDNESS, GENTLENESS, FAITHFULNESS, GOODNESS, & kindness, patience, self-control
Becoming a Christian should have such a radical effect on you that it feels like you have received a BRAIN TRANSPLANT: You longer think the same, feel the same, want the same things, live the same way…ALL THING ARE NEW, Old things have passed away.
The lights are on now, now I see it, now I understand
PICTURES that were popular some years ago: stare at, distort your eyes, finally, ‘Now I see it..’
The most dangerous person in the world is a person who has a good brain and a bad mind. Know how to make argument after argument but their understanding is darkened.
OUR UNDERSTANDING IS CORRUPTED
OUR WILL IS CORRUPTED: There is none who seeks for God; (12) All have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one.
• If you look at the world today would you say that: That there is no one who seeks after God? Religions are everywhere, churches on every street, religious temples in all lands YET God looks at all that activity and says, ‘NO ONE IS SEEKING ME’.
1) Man is innately religious: But in all his religiousness God says man is seeking but he is always seeking alternatives to me to worship.
2) I Cor 10:20 I say that the things that the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. Religious activity does not mean that God is worshiped. JW MORMONS MUSLIMS
3) Every religion but true Christianity differs in one basic area that appeals to our human nature. They all have a work attitude. You work, and do, and achieve and maneuver yourself into a position where you make God your debtor. Only Christianity says ‘I am a sinner, I am depraved, I can only throw myself on the mercy of the court, if God doesn’t forgive me apart from the merits of Jesus Christ then I have no hope’.
All have turned aside(Isaiah 53) All we like sheep have gone astray. It is characteristic of sheep that when they lose their way, go astray, that they never stop and consider their direction but just keep going in the wrong direction. They never come to the understanding that ‘we are lost’.
DETOURED: Man detoured from God. God put Adam and Eve here to have a relationship with him and when sin entered man detoured and went his own way.
JEREMIAH 17:9 The heart is more deceitful than all else and desperately wicked, who can understand it. 10 I the Lord search the heart, I test the mind GOD HAS BEEN PURSUING MAN! If God could not run faster than you you would never have gotten saved.
Man has been running from God sin the Garden of Eden when God said to Adam and Eve, ‘Where art thou’. Sin has that effect.
CAUGHT US, CONFRONTED US WITH OUR SIN, PRESENTED JESUS TO US
• Together they have become useless; God looks at all of mankind and sees that mankind as a whole is constantly moving in a direction away from him.
If you took a group of children to an amusement park: Sunday school class, teacher in a school, or my family. Constant work to keep them corralled because are continually trying to move away from you in their own directions: One to this ride, one to that, one to the animals, one to the snow cones, one to the cotton candy, one to the midway.
THAT IS MAN with God. We all do it in many directions but our WILLS are set against His way. They are corrupt. TOGETHER WE HAVE BECOME USELESS.
• USELESS: A very scary word. Literally means to ‘become rancid’. Word was used to describe rotten fruit, sour milk(Vacation: Check fridge, MILK: taste this and see if it is bad NOOOO. I don’t want even to be near it. God looks at mankind and says they are like this.
1) Sin has spoiled mankind, our hearts are like soured milk or rotten eggs
2) Word used to describe the senseless laughter of a moron,
GROCERY STORE LADY: Packed belt just perfect, lots of order: heavy first. Lots of coupons, menu determined by what was on sale:
Woman before me noticed and began to giggle, I made a comment and she really laughed, said something else and she laughed. I didn’t think it was that funny but I must be on a role today. Really feeling good about myself as a funny person.
Lady paid left: Parked myself up at the register expecting the cashier to say, ‘You really are a funny guy’. She said, ‘I don’t know what is wrong with that lady, she comes in here and laughs for no reason at all’. SENSELESS LAUGHTER: No direction, no purpose, no use to it. THAT IS MAN
RINGO THE DUCK: Years ago in Canada Ringo lived on a local pond. Lots of picnic refuse was left from time to time and Ringo got his bill caught in a plastic pop can carrier. Was noticed that day after day Ringo was still stuck and unable to free himself. Some people became concerned.
Brainstormed ways to help RIngo: Net cannoned across pond – Skindiver(Ringo knows ducks) – Canada’s champion duck caller: every duck in 5 counties but Ringo filled the duck.
RINGO’s will was already set – his way was already determined. Man does that with God: every attempt God makes to reach out to man causes a reaction in an improper direction.
• When I come across something that is SPOILED & RACID: I have a place for it. It is out by the curb where it can be removed from my sight and nose forever. God didn’t do that with us. He sent His Son to die for us.
We would not pay for sour milk(buttermilk) but God paid the ultimate price
for sinful man.
When we were living in Belton Missouri during the mid-1990’s there was only one hospital in town. You would cross the bridge over the freeway and come to two sets of stoplights. The first turn was the on ramp to the freeway. The next set of lights was for the service road on which was that hospital. One night a lady in towns husband had a heart attack. She got him in the car and sped off to the hospital emergency room. It was dark and when she came to the stoplight she took a quick left onto what she thought was the service road to the hospital but she quickly discovered was the freeway on ramp. Instead of trying to back up 100 yards she directed the car through the ditch and headed to the service road. She became stuck in the ditch and it was there her husband breathed his last. A HORRIBLE DETOUR WITH TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES.
There is a way which seems right to a man BUT the end of it is death Prov 14:12
SUNDAY PM MESSAGE;
When I was growing up a popular slogan was, "You are what you eat." There’s some truth in that statement. It’s more accurate to say that you are what you think. Can you honestly say that your thought life is without flaw? If even one nasty thought has entered your mind, you’ve got an impurity.
Desiring to illustrate this point to his kids, a dad decided to bake a batch of cookies. He’d mixed all the ingredients together in a bowl. The kids were gathered round with their mouths watering. Then dad sent one of them on a strange assignment. He told them to go out into the back yard and scoop up just a little bit of their dog’s waste products and bring it into the house. The kid was confused at this strange request, but did it anyway. When the poop arrived in the house dad took just a particle of it and dropped it into the cookie dough. The kids were aghast when he actually baked the stuff. When they were done the cookies smelled great and he asked who wanted one. Of course, they all said, "Yuck, no." A tiny bit of impurity spoiled the whole batch.
Our thought life indicts us in the same way. It only takes one rotten thought to reveal what we truly are on the inside. Then there’s the next obvious piece of evidence.
WE HAVE CORRUPTED WISDOM WE HAVE CORRUPTED WILLS
WE HAVE CORRUPTED WORDS: (13) Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving, the poison of asps is under their lips. (14) Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
• Paul describes the communication aspect of mankind, how man expresses himself to one another with horrible language: open grave, deception, poison, cursing & bitterness.
1) Jesus said to the Pharisees in MT 12:34, ‘You brood of vipers, how can
you being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of
that which fills the heart’ MT 15;18 ‘But the things that proceed out
of the mouth come from the heart, and defile the man’.
2) We might say, ‘What is down in the well is what comes up in the
bucket’.
Suppose you go to your ENT(Ear, Nose, And Throat specialist) In his efforts to determine your state of health he will say, ‘Open your mouth’ ‘Let’s look at your throat’ ‘Stick out your tongue’. What if he said ‘Your throat is like an open grave…
Paul’s day before todays embalming: Bury someone quickly, cover the grave, LAZARUS “Stench…’. Lit it is YAWNING GRAVE(as if the grave opened up and exposed the contents)
That is what God sees on the inside of men. PHARISEES: Whited Seplecures
• With their tongues they keep deceiving When sinful man speaks there is always an agenda to it, an angle he is working. The truth is so hard to hear.
1) DECEIVING: Word for ‘BAIT’. It covered up the dangerous and deadly hook that was behind it.
2) When you speak with someone realize that the sin nature is always something you have to take into account.
• The poison of asps is under their lips
1) JAMES reminds us that almost any animal can be tamed but man cannot tame the tongue: It can set a forest ablaze.
a) Cannot even begin to realize the damage done by words: If you carry any influence over another life you will be accountable to God for how you use it. An opinion is something we all have:
b) CARPET COLOR, WALLPAPER, FLOOR COVERING. Honey you pick it. I might have an opinion but I realize that Lynne being happy is a greater goal.
c) What do you have an opinion about at LOBC? How are you using that opinion? To create unity or to drive a wedge? We don’t ask anybody to check their brains at the door but Christianity is about surrendering our rights, preferring others before ourselves, becoming servants instead of Lording over others.
Biblical unity is given a very high priority. Personal agendas, opinions, etc. must be sacrificed in order to allow Christ to lead His Church. We are not all alike . . . but we do agree on our commitment to Biblical unity. There is no place for division and unresolved conflict within the local church.
PAUL said in Phil 2:2 ‘make my joy complete(full net, perfume room) by ?. Building the best building, having the most attendance? Raising the most money? By being of the same mind, maintaining(guard like valuable possession or marriage) the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose(proclaiming Christ). (3) Do NOTHING from selfishness or empty conceit but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself.
Do you want to see just what power the tongue can have, even when it is “controlled”?
(Take 10-20 people and line them up then give them a simple sentence to repeat. Tell them to whisper it in the ear of the next person, one at a time, until the last person hears it. Then, have the last person repeat the statement for all to hear. Is the final statement close to the original? I venture to say that it will have changed drastically, and that’s under the best of conditions.)
Charles Swindoll has some pretty good recommendations about the tongue:
1. Think first…
2. Talk less…
3. Start today!
2) Never been to a circus to see a snake act. Trained snakes. Seen snake charmers but snakes are always likely to bite at any time.
a) Compare pictures of a snake with mouth closed and mouth open it is an amazing contrast. FANGS are so large you wonder how they fit inside the mouth.. HIDDEN INSIDE Backed by poison glands.
Man found a baby rattlesnake(Don’t look very threatening) Took it home and decided to make it a pet. Got loose in the house and could not find it for months. One day reaching behind couch for something he had dropped and the snake latched onto his arm. A snakes nature will come out: question is when and where? Sin nature may take time but it will strike.
• Whose mouth is full of cursing…
1) How would you like to stand before a judge whose very name you have been using to curse and blaspheme all your life? Get angry in court and let his name fly in anger. What kind of judgment would you expect?
2) People who are going to stand before God someday who have used His name repeatedly in their lives but not to praise him.
CORRUPTED WISDOM CORRUPTED WILLS CORRUPTED WORDS
We Have CORRUPTED WAYS: (15) Their feet are swift to shed blood, (16) destruction and misery are in their paths, (17) And the path of peace have they not known.
Thomas Costain’s history, THE THREE EDWARDS, described the life of Raynald Ill, a fourteenth-century duke in what is now Belgium. Grossly overweight, Raynald was commonly called by his Latin nickname, Crassus, which means "fat." After a violent quarrel, Raynald’s younger brother Edward led a successful revolt against him. Edward captured Raynald but did not kill him. Instead, he built a room around Raynald in the Nieuwkerk castle and promised him he could regain his title and property as soon as he was able to leave the room.
This would not have been difficult for most people since the room had several windows and a door of near-normal size, and none was locked or barred. The problem was Raynald’s size. To regain his freedom, he needed to lose weight. But Edward knew his older brother, and each day he sent a variety of delicious foods. Instead of dieting his way out of prison, Raynald grew fatter.
When Duke Edward was accused of cruelty, he had a ready answer: "My brother is not a prisoner. He may leave when he so wills." Raynald stayed in that room for ten years and wasn’t released until after Edward died in battle. By then his health was so ruined he died within a year. . . a prisoner of his own appetite.
• Swift feet….Ready to run to every opportunity to enjoy sin. The end result is a life of destruction and misery
1) Destruction: total annialation; To stomp something until it is in the smallest piece possible.
Everything man does ends up like this: Build cities and ghettos appear/slums. Wake of sin in everything.
• Path of peace they have not known: How long have we been trying to achieve peace in this world? How many organization? How many treaties? How much money spent? How many lives lost?
1) UN today has the purpose of maintaining harmony around the world: Give attention to one area and another erupts. Deal with one bad leader and another rises up.
2) Peace is really only the opportunity to reload until the next conflict.
CORRUPTED WISDOM CORRUPTED WILLS CORRUPTED WORDS CORRUPTED WAYS
WE HAVE CORRUPTED WORSHIP: (18) There is no fear of God before their eyes.
• The ultimate problem out of which the others iminate: NO FEAR OF GOD
1) No respect, no awe, no sense of accountability to God.
2) SLOGAN TODAY: NO FEAR
• World is filled with people strutting their way to hell. Parading their sinfulness assuming there will never be a day of reckoning for their sin.
• REV 3: Church of Laodicea: Thought themselves rich and wealthy and in need of nothing. Through God’s eyes they were wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.
Line of animals: Bull getting ready to be a hamburger. Animal has no idea or clue what is awaiting it. Poor dumb animal has no sense to realize what is ahead. THAT IS MANKIND. The reason people act the way they do is that they don’t have enough sense to realize they will be ultimately be held accountable. In our depravity we are so blinded to our own sinfulness.
INDICTMENT: There is none righteous, no not one…
EVIDENCE: Verses 11-18
VERDICT: Verses 19-20 (19) Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, that
Every mouth may be closed,
And all the world may become accountable to God
Because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight;
For though the Law comes the knowledge of sin.
The Law was not give to save but to announce guilt.
• You know a person is close to getting saved when they stop arguing with God. Lit they ‘stop muttering’. The law stops our arguments so we throw ourselves on the mercy of the court.
• All the world: Not a single person escapes. All brought under same condition: hopeless without Christ.
• Grace is the only hope: by works…no flesh will be justified.
To hold onto the Law or good works to save you is like jumping out of a plane and grabbing onto a sack of cement to rescue you. It will take you down with even more speed. Greater condemnation.
SLAVE SHIP: King visited(men chained to oars, lash & drum/no languish in prison) Down below he asked each man, ‘Why are you here?’ Each had a reason: ‘Was in a crowd when crime commited and grabbed me’….enemies lied about me…..ONE MAN: ‘I deserve to be here, I am guilty and receiving what I deserve’… YOU RASCAL, YOU SCUM why are you here among so many honest and innocent men? Release this man and get him out of here’.
THAT IS WHAT GOD IS LOOKING FOR.
When a guilty man goes free then the JUDGE is condemned:
Sin will be punished in hell or pardoned in Christ but never overlooked.
