The following sermon was delivered on Sunday evening, November 10th, 2013, at Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. A year ago, around this time of the year, I did a message in which I addressed the five foundation blocks of truth that stand and uphold all of the biblical teaching of salvation. And I gave you five five-letter words and a bonus word. I wonder how many can remember those five words, five letters. Bible, grace, Jesus, faith, glory, alone. We looked at those doctrines which are commonly called the five solas of the Reformation. Since that time, it's been boiling in my own thoughts and in my own heart to desire to preach a message on those doctrines of grace, so-called, which are the five blocks that, as I describe them, make up the door of that house of salvation. those five blocks often called the doctrines of grace. And so I set out to try to boil down all that I'd read and the messages I'd preached on those five points to try to make one message. No, we're not going to be here till morning. I'm not going to do it. I'm just going to preach one point tonight. I just couldn't do it. And this first point is a very, very important point. Now, before I go any further, I do need to acknowledge that I was greatly helped by a sermon by Pastor Martin, preached sometime in the 60s, I believe, on this vital truth. He called it the desperate plight of fallen man. So I give all credit to him, and if you happen to go online and find that sermon and listen to it, you say, ah, yes, I hear Pastor Martin in that. And I'm unashamed to say that. I wanted to do it right, and so I looked for a preacher who'd preached it right. After all I'd studied, I didn't want to give a lecture, I wanted to preach. And this was clear back a year ago when I prepared this for, two years ago when I prepared this for Haiti. So, without any further introduction, let me launch into this particular message addressing man's greatest problem. His greatest problem. It's not ignorance. It's not illness. It's not poverty. It's sin. Man is undeniably guilty before God and thoroughly contaminated. This is what I'm calling, my words, man's miserable problem. Man's miserable problem. Now, by saying that man has this miserable problem and that he is undeniably guilty and thoroughly contaminated, I'm not saying that man is as bad as he can be. Every one of the books that talk about this particular problem of the extent of sin in man make it very clear man is not as sinful as he can be. And if you were to turn to Romans chapter 1, and you don't need to turn there, you would read in verse 18 that man is under the wrath of God. And yet even being under the wrath of God and suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, that passage goes on to describe how men can get worse. And three times they are given over by God to greater measures of sinfulness. It also doesn't mean that man can do nothing good in any sense. Just look at all the tragedies, like this most recent storm that's happened in the Philippines. And men do good to their fellow man. They find them, they help them, they give to them, they seek to care for them in the midst of such tragedies. Now, in the fullest sense, those are not good works, in that they will not earn them anything before God. They will not earn them salvation in any way, shape, or form. And as a matter of fact, even those good works we're going to see are actually tainted. So, in Pastor Martin's words, there is nothing to commend man to God legally and nothing to move him to God personally. Man is guilty before God and contaminated by sin. So my first point, man is undeniably guilty before God. Undeniably guilty before God and I say undeniably because it's plainly taught in the scriptures It's one of the few things that I've ever taught at nursing homes Where I taught and it just doesn't matter about anybody that I'm speaking to but when I've gone to the nursing homes and asked the question How many of you are sinners? They all put their hands up They all know it. There's I've net idea. I've only met one person in my life who actually told me they never sinned and I actually sat next to a guy on the bus who told me he never sinned, and then proceeded to tell me how he redefined sin so that what he was sinning was not sin. But I couldn't convince him of that, for he didn't sin. But everybody knows it, and the scriptures plainly teach it. describing what Solomon found when he did his search for the meaning of life. One of the points that he said was, I have found only this, that God made men upright. God made them according to his standard, perfect. They had met the standard, they were keeping that standard, but they have sought out many devices. They are the ones who have deviated from that path. And so Paul, quoting the Psalms, could say in Romans chapter 3 in verse 10, there is none righteous, not even one. So we're guilty because we're unrighteous. We're not righteous according to God's standard. That means we're guilty. And everyone is. There is none who comes into this world that apart from Christ can say he is righteous. Not even one. And so Jesus didn't have to wonder whether or not He was saying the right thing. Remember when He sat there and the Pharisees brought that woman to Him who had been caught in adultery? He didn't have to wonder whether or not this was going to be true when He persisted in asking them and pressing them, and then straightened up and said to them. He didn't fear anybody throwing a stone when He said this. He who is without sin among you, let him throw the first stone at her. He knew that if anybody was honest, they could not throw a stone. For as Solomon says in another place, who can say I have cleansed my heart? I am pure from my sin. No, we have to say with Paul, regardless of economic status, regardless of position, regardless of upbringing, regardless of nationality in which we are born, all men apart from Christ, even with Christ, all men have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. That is true of every man. It is plainly taught man is undeniably guilty before God. And then second, to say that all have sinned is to say that we are criminals. That is, we're lawbreakers, because sin is lawlessness. So we've all committed sin, and sin is lawlessness. Therefore, we're all lawbreakers, we're all criminals, we're all guilty. And you could say, well, I've kept all the other laws. Well, James talks about that, right? Well, you say, I'm not an adult or I'm not a murderer. Well, he points out, if you've broken even one, he who stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. He is a lawbreaker. So when anyone is confronted with the law of God, the perfect standard of God's righteousness for men, when anyone faces that law, his mouth is shut. He has no answer. He cannot say that he has not sinned. For the law shows us our sin. And therefore Paul says in Romans chapter 3 and verse 19, now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, that is everyone. that every mouth may be closed, and all the world may become accountable to God." That's the new American standard, and that word accountable is translated guilty in the New King James, or the King James, and the lexicons go back and forth as to what the term means, but it seems that it means something like this. It's a legal, technical term of one who has lost all possibility of disproving a charge against him. and thus has already lost his case. A number of years ago, some of you know about this. I was driving here to school to teach, and I looked down to punch the button on my tape deck to flip from side A to side B. That's back when we had tape decks, and I didn't have an automatic rewind, so hit the button. And when I looked up, the car in front of me had stopped. Oh, yes, right there on Changebridge Road, right there during every time when everybody's driving to school. And I hit the person in front of me. And so the police came and pulled us over and everybody waved, oh, hi, Mr. Carlson. And I got the ticket, and I was told by the police officer, well, you know, the roads are a little slippery. Maybe he gave me all kinds of reasons that I might be able to get off on the ticket. So the day came, and I went down to court, and I went into the room and talked to the lawyer there for the state. And I gave him my reasons for why I thought Ticket was invalid, or I shouldn't have to have the ticket. Could he remove the points? La dee da da. And he looked at me in my suit and tie with my brief bag, thought I was a lawyer, and said no. So after standing in line for two hours, then I had to go sit in court for another two hours, wasted a whole evening. And I got up before the judge when it was all said and done. And the judge read the charges. And what could I say? I was guilty. I'd done it. I had rear-ended somebody. I could not get out of it. I'd already told the lawyer I was guilty. I'd done it. I stood there, all my shame, and said guilty. Paid the fine, paid the court fees, and all that went with it. When the law came, there was no doubt I was guilty. When the law of God comes, There is no doubt, we are all found short. We all lack this righteousness in order to be acceptable to God. We are criminals before this God. We are sinners, we are criminals, and we can do nothing in the sight of God that can wash it away. We can do nothing that in any way could be called good that could keep us, that could give us some bonus points as it were with God. For the scriptures again plainly teach in Isaiah chapter 64 and verse 6, all our righteous deeds are like filthy garments. Even the sacrifice of the wicked, the religious activity appointed by God for men to do, men who do it without believing in God, men who do it with an evil intent, men who do it for reasons other than true worship of God, believing on God, their sacrifice is an abomination. And their prayer is unacceptable to God. And that's because their mind is not subject to the law of God and cannot be. So men are undeniably guilty before God. But second, man is thoroughly contaminated by sin. We've already mentioned that every man fits into this category. This is something which is true of the whole human race from Adam onward. But every faculty of man coming into this world, every faculty of sinful man has been affected by sin. I recently used an illustration talking about this and I said I'm going to make some brownies. Maybe you've heard this illustration before. I'm going to make some brownies, and I'm going to distribute them to everyone. I'll put them in the teacher's lounge. I'll put them down by the coffee machine. We'll have them out in the evening. You can go into the multipurpose room. But I just want to tell you that there's a secret ingredient in there. And I went out, and I got a little bit of Fido's leftovers in the yard. And I just mixed a little bit in. Just a little bit. Very small. Not much. Just a little bit. And I mixed it all in thoroughly and washed it down in just a little bit. You gonna have some of my brownies? I'm not having too many takers for those brownies. Because it's throughout. Now I know scientifically you could find places that the illustration falls apart. But the point of the matter is this. If there's anything in it, it's all affected. And the fact is that's true with man. Man is thoroughly contaminated. We were made in the image of God to glorify God and we have fallen short of that glory at every point. Sin has affected our physical bodies. Just look around, brethren. They're getting weak. They're decaying. They're diseased. They're problems. And we're all headed for death. And the reason that we know sin has permeated the whole human race is because the whole human race is dying. Romans 5 and verse 12, we sinned with and in Adam, therefore we're all dying. We're all sinners. And everything leading up to that, that outer man decaying that's all leading up to that final death, it's all the result of this. Our bodies are affected. But more than our bodies. Our mind is affected. the way we think. Man's mind has developed amazing technologies. We've been able to do incredible things. Things which used to take whole rooms. Some of us who can remember back when we were punching cards for our computer decks, for our computer programs. We can remember how big the rooms were that the computers were in. And now we've got these little things in our pocket that have more memory in them and more power in them than those whole rooms. It's amazing what man can do. That man can send satellites out to the ends of the, not the universe, but the ends of the galaxy. Take pictures of things out there. Find these amazing finds out there. Land rovers on Mars and pick up things and analyze things from a distance and send back data. I mean, it blows my mind. medical treatments, you name it, the things that man has been capable of doing. It's incredible! And yet, and yet, we read in Romans chapter 3 and verse 11, that there is none that understands. There is none that understands. There is none who seeks for God. Going back to chapter 1 and verse 18, even more so, they're not just unable to understand men who are sinners, men who are bound in their sins are seeking to suppress the truth in unrighteousness. By their sin, they're seeking to push down the truth and hide the truth. And the brighter the light, the more they seek to bury it. by greater and greater mounds of unrighteousness. It says in verse 25 of Romans chapter 1 that they exchanged the truth of God for a lie. This is how the mind is affected. Brethren, we think of remaining sin or we think of sin affecting people, we oftentimes think of the affections. We'll come to that in a minute. The lusts, right? But it's affected the mind as well. So that the mind has a tendency to lay hold of error rather than truth. Has a propensity to find error and think that's what it ought to latch on to and believe rather than believing the truth as God has said it. So much so that even Christians can get caught up in errors, such as evolution, and try to force it into the Scriptures. Why? Because my mind has this tendency to want to lay hold of error and somehow fit it in. It doesn't work. Sin has affected our minds. Turn with me to Ephesians 4, verses 17 and 18. so that you can see some of this with your own eyes. undeniably guilty before God, and man is thoroughly contaminated by sin. It has affected our physical bodies. It has affected our minds. And we read here, as Paul describes the Ephesians, he says, I say therefore and affirm together with the Lord that you walk no longer as the Gentiles also walk. That is, those who are still Gentiles. They're not come to Christ. They're not submitting to Christ. Just as the Gentiles also walk, those outsiders out there, in the futility of their mind, their minds are vain, empty, taken up with all kinds of frivolity and uselessness. They are futility in their minds, being darkened in their understanding. Excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart. This is what man is like, suppressing the truth, exchanging the truth of God for a lie. They do not understand. None understands. What is it they don't understand? Well, they don't have an intimate and saving knowledge of God. They don't have an intimate and saving knowledge of God. That is, they have not embraced what God has said about Himself. What God has said about them, they have not embraced that and believed that to be true. John 17 in verse 3. And this is eternal life. that they may know you." And that's an intimate know, like a man knows his wife and a wife knows her husband, that intimate relationship that exists between human beings, the closest intimacy that there is, that language is being used here to describe the way that one knows God, the intimate relationship there is with God. and the sinner that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." That's what they don't understand. That's part of what they haven't grasped. Sinful men are ignorant of the glory of God in the face of Christ that comes to them in the gospel. They don't hear the gospel and say, oh, that's about Jesus. Oh, Jesus, He's the one who is the exact representation of God. He gives me a perfect picture of the perfect God. I don't see that. That's what they don't see. That's what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4. Look there. 2 Corinthians 4, verses 3 through 6. Sin has affected the mind. Satan working along with that sin of unbelief. 2nd Corinthians 4 verse 3 and even if our gospel is veiled it is veiled to those who are perishing in whose case The God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving. So it's both. You see, it's not just Satan doing this. They are unbelieving. They do not embrace what God has said to be true. They are unbelieving, and yet Satan works with their unbelief and alongside their unbelief to blind them. They are blinded in their minds, the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. That glory which He displayed when He came into this world. That glory is the light of mankind. That glory is the Savior of man. That glory as of the only begotten of the Father. that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. And he talks about What they do in this context of darkness, he says, for we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your bondservants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said light shall shine out of darkness, is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. What does it take for somebody to be unblinded? What does it take for somebody to believe? It takes God coming into the darkness and causing light to shine out of the darkness. Men cannot see the glory of God any more than a blind man can see the Son. Sin has affected the mind, but sin has also affected our ability to love and to desire. or what the writers of psychology and theology call our affections. Our affections. Romans chapter 1 verses 21 and 24 describe that continued effect of sin as men are given up into their sin. And this passage becomes more and more alive as we see what's going on in our country. Romans chapter 1 and verse 21, those who suppress the truth and unrighteousness, who deny the existence of God that they know to be there, It says, verse 21, even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. And then in verse 24, therefore God gave them over in the lusts, in their affections, in their desires, in their passions of their hearts to impurity. that their bodies might be dishonored among them. So their affections, want, desire, that which is polluted, that which is displeasing to God. put it this way John 3 verses 19 and 20 men loved darkness rather than light everyone who does evil hates to the light hates the light and does not come to the light why because they love darkness rather than the light so they're not going to come to the light their affections are not set upon these things and therefore out of such affections come forth all kinds of evil as Jesus describes in Mark chapter 7. verses 21 and 22. Out of these affections, out of this mind that is set on evil and affected by evil, what comes forth? What's the fruit that we can expect? Mark chapter 7 verses 21 and 22. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness. as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within. This pollution starts within and it comes out and defiles the man. From the moment of conception throughout the history of man, man has been contaminated in his desires, affections, even in the intentions, even in the depths of the thoughts and the plannings of the hearts. And therefore, Jeremiah describes the heart as desperately wicked, deceitful. Paul describes it as being rebellious against God. Sin has affected our affections, our desires, our ability to love. But sin has also affected the will and the conscience. It's affected all of us, including the will and the conscience. Now this is where a lot of people miss the point. They believe that the will and the conscience were somehow unaffected by the fall, unaffected by sin, And so these faculties of man are not twisted by sin. They are not dead. They're merely asleep or they're just slightly bent by sin. But somehow they stand outside and unaffected by the mind like the mind and the affections are. Now, Pastor Martin here had an excellent illustration. I'm just going to use his illustration. I'm borrowing it. I'm using it because it's good, right? And I want to make the point. I don't want to try to think up something myself and maybe miss the point. This captured it. Imagine that a man has come to a table and on the table are two plates of food. One plate is a well-made meal, like many of you ladies make on a regular basis in your homes, or like we eat here on the Lord's Day afternoons, or those of us who stay. And then next to it is this mash of stuff taken from the garbage. Food that's old, moldy, put through the blender, mashed up, set out there, flies hanging around. It's garbage. Now, as the man looks at those two things, he has to make a choice. He has to make a choice what he's going to eat. The will is going to be engaged. How is the will going to make its choice? Well, it's going to make its choice based on knowledge. of what it knows about what is healthy for me and what isn't healthy for me. It's going to make a choice based on what I see and perceive and how I process that perception, that which is coming in through the eyes and the nose. And I'm going to make a choice. Now, everybody here thinks, well, of course I'm going to choose the well-made meal, right? But if all your life, all you'd ever had was garbage, If all you ever had was a mosh that was set on your plate and you were always told from a youth that this is what you should eat and anything that doesn't look like this is poison. And if you had grown to really like this kind of food and had an affection for that kind of food, that garbage, But it never had steak or the best thing that New Jersey's known for, sausage and peppers. You know, if it didn't, it didn't, you know, it said that, it never, oh, that stuff's nasty. I love this mash, this mosh, this stuff that comes from the garbage can. I love the fuzzy green stuff that gets mixed in. I've grown to have an affection for that. and my mind tells me from what I've been taught that that's the good stuff, what am I going to choose? Is my will somehow going to be suspended above what the mind and the affections are telling me and somehow choose outside of that? No! It's going to choose based on what my mind tells me about what I see in front of me and about what my affections want in light of what's in front of me. And what is true in this illustration is true in our lives on a regular basis. In the illustration, you would have acted as a free agent, unforced by anything from outside yourself. You would act as a responsible creature with a will that acts consistently with the judgment of the mind and the affections. In the same way, sinners are never forced to sin against their will. Their will chooses in keeping with their nature. The mind, if it is darkened, and the affections, if they are perverted, will guide the will to choose that which is dark and perverse. The conscience does not come out unscathed, brethren. Titus 1.15 says, to the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. The mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God, and therefore is not subject to the law of God, and neither indeed can it be. The mind and the will go together. The one that loves darkness and hates light, as I said, does not come to the light. And so if the mind is darkened about the person and work of Christ, if the affections are set against this One called Jesus Christ, and turned toward the things of this world, and turned toward the things of ourselves, then will anybody ever choose Christ? Paul told us, didn't he? Until Christ comes, we are slaves of sin. And we're going to listen to our master. And we're going to choose the way our master tells us to choose. We are slaves of our master. And worse, worse, far worse, we're actually dead in our trespasses and sins. And I have yet to see a dead body choose anything for life. Now, I could conclude by reading the statement from the London Baptist Confession of 1689, Chapter 6, Paragraphs 3 and 4. But I'll save Pastor Smith having to interpret that. And instead, let me give you a graphic picture which comes from The Sovereignty of God by A. W. Pink. When addressing the unsaved, preachers often draw an analogy between God sending of the gospel to the sinner and a sick man in a bed. with some healing medicine on the table by his side. All he needs to do is reach forth his hand and take it. This is the way many preachers, many people describe sinful men. They're sick in a bed and there's medicine by their table. They just need to reach out and grab it. But in order for this illustration, Pink says, to be in any way true to the picture of Scripture, In speaking of the fallen and depraved sinner, the sick man in the bed must be described as one who is blind. Ephesians 4 verse 18 and 2 Corinthians 4, 4. So that he cannot see the medicine. His hand is paralyzed. Romans 5 and verse 6. So that he is unable to stretch it forth to take the medicine. And his heart is not only devoid of all confidence in the medicine, but is filled with hatred against the physician himself. And in fact, the man in the bed is dead. And there ain't no medicine that's going to help a dead man, nor is he ever going to take it. Pink says what superficial views of man's desperate plight are now entertained Christ came here not to help those who were willing to help themselves But to do for his people what they were incapable of doing for themselves that is he came to open the blind eyes to bring out the prisoners from the prison and and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house This is the description of man's miserable problem. Undeniably guilty before God and thoroughly contaminated. Every part of us, every faculty, every ability affected, twisted, marred by sin. That is the description of fallen man. Well, what's the implication of that? Well, for some of you, the implication is this. For those of you who sit here and do not believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, this is a picture of you. This is who you are. However moral you might be, however good you might be at home or at school or even in church, This is a picture of you. You are guilty before God. There's no way out in the sense of you're getting away from the fact that you're guilty. There's no way to deny that you're guilty. You've broken His law. Every one of you, just like every one of us, you're a criminal in the court of God. You're undeniably guilty. But you're also affected by sin. Sin has gotten a hold of your mind. Sin has gotten a hold of your affections. Sin has gotten into your body and it's causing it to decay. Sin has gotten into every aspect of your will and your conscience so that you call light darkness and darkness light. That is, it's hard to know between right and wrong and good and bad. Sin has made its way into you in every way, so that when you were born, you were dead. That is, dead in your trespasses and sins. Dead in terms of any kind of spiritual life. Dead in terms of any real knowledge of God. You were dead! And crippled! And sick! And blind. That's who you are. But I have wonderful news for you! Because Jesus came into the world for people like you! Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He did not come to call the righteous, those who thought themselves somehow good enough to do something for God. He came into this world for those who could not do anything righteous and pleasing unto God. He came into this world for those who were dead in their trespasses and sins. He was promised from the very beginning in Genesis when God said that He would send this one to crush the serpent's head. He's to send this one who would set the captives free. If you don't see anything good in the Gospel, it's not because the Gospel is not good. It's because this is your picture. This is who you are. And if that makes you feel really scared and desperate, then my friend, however young, however old, whatever state you might be in, cry out to God, turn to Jesus Christ, ask Him to give you life, to strengthen your hands, to open your blinded eyes, to make you able to walk, to give you new life in Jesus Christ, to take away your guilt before God, and to give you a righteousness that you can be accepted by God. Children, this is who you are, but Jesus can set you free. Jesus can give you life. Jesus can forgive your sins. Jesus is the answer to this miserable problem. You need a Savior? God has provided a Savior. You need righteousness? God has provided righteousness. You need life? He has provided one who is life. You need truth to penetrate your darkened mind? He has sent His Son who is the truth. You are lost and wandering in this world that is keeping you in darkness. He is the way to show you the direction and to set you free. You're in bondage. He came to pay the ransom. This is who He is. This is the answer. This is what you need to recognize about yourself and recognize you can't make yourself good enough. Now, you don't have to sit there and say, well, you know, if I just obey mommy and daddy for a week, then maybe I can look to Jesus and be saved. You don't have to do that. Now, you must obey mommy and daddy every single day, but you don't have to do that in order to believe on Jesus. You need to believe on Jesus in order that you might do that. I want to stop lying. It just comes out so easy. I lie and I just breathe out the lies. Christ Jesus came into the world to save liars. Whatever sin you find yourself guilty before the law of God, Jesus is the answer. Do you feel hopeless being without God in the world? Do you see yourself as God's enemy and you're losing the battle and one day you know you'll be utterly destroyed? Christ died for the helpless. Christ died for the ungodly. Christ died for sinners. Christ died for His enemies. Jesus is your answer. And what we have sung many, many, many times, we would say to you again tonight, Come ye sinners, poor and wretched, weak and wounded, sick and sore, Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pity and full of power. He has the heart to want to set sinners free, and He has the power to do it. You've heard these things before. Has it been a while, maybe, since you've meditated on the rock quarry from which you came? I believe that some of us may be stunted in our Christian walk because this picture of the sinful man is not a picture that we've ever really come to grips with about ourselves. Oh yes, we were little sinners and we believe that we're saved by Christ and Christ alone. I'm not doubting in that sense that you're saved. But from one who grew up in a Christian home and always saw his sins as relatively small, my growth is stunted in that I don't love Jesus as I should because I've always seen my sins as something small. And if I'm saved from small sins, I'm going to have small love. And we need to come back to this picture and say as moral and as upright and as orthodox as I was from the day that I was born and all that I heard of the catechism and all the shapings by my parents that took place in my life, the fact of the matter is I was dead in my trespasses and sins. And in some sense I was worse off for I was sinning against light. But Jesus set me free. Jesus took a dead sinner and gave me life. Jesus took away my false sense of righteousness and gave me His righteousness. Cry to God for a clearer view of your sin. You might have a greater love for Christ. Having an increased knowledge of his love, you will be constrained, therefore, to serve him more earnestly. For Paul said, for him the love of Christ constrained, controlled him, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died. Did Jesus die for you? If it was a small sin that he died for, then that's not going to be much pressure on your heart to obey. But now my main reason for preaching this particular series of messages, what I'd hoped would be one message, is to show that these things that we call the doctrines of grace are not a hindrance to evangelism, they're a motivation to evangelism. You see, without this view of sinners, we're going to have a defective gospel. If man is just kind of twisted or a little bit off, then why go to all the trouble of sending Jesus, the second person of the Godhead, to die for them? Well, that was a waste. Just kind of come alongside them and help them out a bit. If all I need to do is somehow just convince something in their mind, just answer all their questions and then they'll be saved, well then I don't need to preach the gospel and I don't need to spend time with the law. All I need to do is answer all their questions and they'll be saved. But I can answer all their questions and I can bring the law to bear upon them and bring guilt to them to the point where they're cringing and crumpled in the aisle and still not save them. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. And therefore, if I have a defective view of what man is in his sinful state, I'm going to use other means other than the means that God has given me. If this is what man really is, then I'm going to spend a lot more time praying for my children who are this way. For my family members who are this way, for my work associates who are in this condition, this miserable problem is theirs, I'm going to be praying. Why? Because God is the only one who can save people like that. God is the only one who can break through to people like that. He's the only one who has the power. I'm going to be praying a whole lot more if that's the case. Salvation is far more than just making a decision for Jesus. It's far more than just getting all of your questions answered in a search for the historical Jesus. It's far more than finding all of the questions being answered or having a new lifestyle that makes things work well. It's far more than just having a little bit of religion to salve your conscience. For man to be saved. It'll take more than money. It'll take more than education. It'll take more than a transformed or a reordered lifestyle. It'll take more than making people feel good and sending them out happy. It'll take the gospel joined to the power of the Spirit coming to them and giving them new life in Christ and opening their blinded eyes to see the truth that they might embrace it. If this is the state of man and God is the only one who can save men in this state, then we better use the means ordained by God if we're going to see sinners saved. If we're going to have any hope of sinners ever being saved. preaching the gospel, praying for sinners, living a godly life before them, that in the day of visitation, when God does come to them, he'll say, I saw something of what the gospel does in that person, when they helped me, when I was mean to them. I've seen what the gospel looks like in the way those two love one another. That's what our marriages are supposed to be. One of our greatest evangelistic tools is a gospel-oriented marriage. Husbands loving their wives, wives respecting their husbands. That's what Paul says. So, my fellow evangelists, we have a great God and a glorious gospel. and a world full of dead sinners. May God help us to see them for the condition they're in and to bring to them what they most desperately need, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and pray that the Spirit would work through the gospel and save sinners. Let's pray. We pray that you would help us to think accurately about the world around us. This is why we must preach the gospel. People are dead in their trespasses and sins. They're guilty before you. Father, help us to live gospel lives and to speak gospel truth and bless those means and save sinners. Save our children. Save our grandchildren. Save our work associates. Be merciful, O God, to save everyone in this room. You have the power to do it. You saved 3,000 on one day. Would you come in saving power for the glory of our Savior In Jesus' name we pray, amen.