the situation our modern world is in is because people have embraced this idea that man is naturally good, that they're born into the world without a sin nature. And any institution or any solution to society's problems that's based on the natural goodness of man is inherently not going to work. It's the reason socialism or communism doesn't work. But it's also the reason many of the things that we try in our own country, a lot of times people think, well, if man's naturally good, then all we have to do is give him the right education, or the right job skills, or the right amount of affluence, and then everything's going to be solved. tons of money into education over the last century, more so than any other century in the history of the world, really. And our problems are still evident if they have not even grown larger. And so I wanted to do a study that shows toll depravity needs to be taken into consideration in any human institution. And so I wanted to start off not with my PowerPoint yet, but reading a passage of scripture. And if you have your Bibles, look with me at Psalm 51. Psalm 51. Most of you are probably familiar with this text. This is after David's sin with Bathsheba. And after Nathan the prophet has approached David, David does have genuine repentance. Now, it took a while to bring this about, but as any believer, that has been born into the family of God, God will restore that person. There is a doctrine we have called the perseverance of the saints. Now, in my old church culture of Southern Baptists, it was often called once saved, always saved. And that is a truth, though not meant in the same way most people say it. The perseverance of the saints means God has elected his people, he has saved those people, the Holy Spirit has regenerated them and has come into their hearts and is living within them, indwelling them, and he will not allow them to permanently stray in doctrine or in practice. In fact, we have scripture after scripture that says those that continue in habitual sin have severe spiritual problems and may be giving signs of lostness, that they have never come to faith in Christ. And therefore, that's what we as a church exist for. We hold each other accountable. If we see someone in sin, we approach them and counsel them and tell them they need to come back to the Savior. And the Lord will use that to restore them. And so there is a good thing that the church exists for in that avenue. But David is repenting in this psalm. Psalm 51. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy. Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, You only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth and the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop. and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." And I want to stop there and just look at a couple of verses before I begin the actual study that I wanted to do. And we see in verse 5, David says, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Now, going back in David's history, There's no indication in scripture that Jesse and David's mother were in sin, living an adulterous relationship when David was conceived. So that's not what David means here. What David is referring to is the fact that as people who descend from Adam and Eve, we inherit a sin nature. We fell with Adam and Eve, our forefathers, in the garden. They were representatives of the whole human race. And yet, when they fell, they became sinners. They became estranged from God. And they died spiritually. And all their descendants, the whole human race, is born in that state. We're apart from God. We need salvation. We need a Savior, Jesus Christ. And for that reason, we're born sinners. We sin because we are sinners. We're not sinners because we sin. There's a little difference there. It's not like we just sin and then, oh, now you're a sinner. No, we are sinners because we're born that way. We inherit our ancestors depravity. And that's what David is referring to here. And that's the whole reason he's praying this, because you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. You purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be water than snow. David knows in his depravity, he is not the one to make himself clean. It's the Lord's work that makes David clean. He cannot clean himself. If he tries to clean his dirty hands from his sin, He's using dirty hands to try to clean those dirty hands, and he just makes himself dirtier. And so that's what we are in front of God. We are sinners who are guilty in our sin, and we need God to cleanse us. And so I wanted to look at how total depravity influences human institutions. And even in our depravity, we can see God's grace. even apart from the fact that he sent his own son to die for us, to save us out of our sins, we see institutions that God set up that actually restrain us in our depravity. When we say total depravity, we're not saying that we sin as much as we can. Each and every one of us was born in total depravity, but you didn't sin as much as you could growing up, did you? We could have sinned a lot more. Even someone as evil as an Adolf Hitler or a Joseph Stalin could have done worse than they did. That's unfathomable to some of us, but they could have, right? There are certain restraints we have in society that keep us from sinning as much as we can. And I wanted to start, first of all, by looking at how our confession of faith, the Second London Confession of 1689, defines depravity. Because I think it's helpful for us to understand where we're coming from. So I'm going to look at the confession. And chapter 6, it deals with the fall of man, of sin, and the punishment thereof. And paragraph 1 states this, and if you can read that, follow along with me, and I'll read through it with you. Although God created man upright and perfect and gave him a righteous law, which had been unto life had he kept it. Do not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If he had kept that, he could have lived and threatened death upon the breech thereof. If you eat it, you will die. You will surely die. Yet he did not long abide in this honor. Satan, using the subtlety of the serpent to subdue Eve, then by her seducing Adam, who without any compulsion did willfully transgress the law of their creation and the command given unto them. So no one made Adam sin. He did so willfully of his own free will. But notice the rest of this. In eating the forbidden fruit, which God was pleased, according to his wise and holy counsel to permit, having purposed to order it to his own glory." So Adam's sin, God did not force Adam to do that. Adam chose to do this. No one made Adam sin, but it was still part of God's plan. He knew Adam was going to sin before Adam ever sinned. And not only that, it was part of his decree. This was what he created Adam to be, not making him sin, but for the purpose of his glory so that he could show his mercy and his grace through sending a Savior. All right, the second paragraph. Our first parents, by this sin, fell from their original righteousness in communion with God, they walked with God in the garden, and we in them, whereby death came upon all, all became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body. Now again, we're totally depraved, but that doesn't mean we're utterly depraved. Everything we do has sin attached to it. But we can still do good actions even as lost people. Sometimes we do them with the wrong motives, or we have sinful thoughts with those good deeds. So we can still do those actions, but we cannot make ourselves right with God. We cannot even desire God. We cannot even have faith in God, apart from God's working in our heart to give us that faith, that repentance, that desire. So everything we have is inclined toward evil, toward our own self-interest, to what we think is best for us, even though everything we think that's best for us in our natural law state is actually bad for us. and God's commands that they're what's good for us. Third paragraph. They being the root and by God's appointment standing in the room instead of all mankind, there's a doctrine called the federal headship of Adam, which is related to this. The guilt of the sin was imputed, meaning we inherit original sin from Adam. and corrupted nature conveyed. The reason babies are born sinners is because they inherit that original sin. The reason babies die is because they have that guilt of original sin. I'm not going to necessarily go into babies in heaven because I do think God can choose whomever he wants to, elect whomever he wants to, including all babies and save them. But that's a different study for a different time. To all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation, now being conceived in sin, as we saw in Psalm 51, and by nature, children of wrath, the servants of sin, the subjects of death, and all other miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal, unless the Lord Jesus set them free. This is part of being dead. When God promised death upon disobedience to that first command, when Adam and Eve ate, they did die. God is not a liar. They needed salvation at that time. They became estranged from God. They hid themselves. They had perfect communion with God in the garden, but they hid themselves in the garden because now that communion has been broken. They died spiritually. They started dying temporally. From that point on, death had entered the world, and sooner or later, Adam and Eve was going to return to the dust from which they came. Death comes upon us all as a result of our sin in Adam. An eternal death. Without a work of salvation, we have destruction ahead of us. There is a hell, and that's where all those apart from Christ go. All right, paragraph four. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions. That gets to the point I made earlier. We sin because we are sinners. It's our nature. Then paragraph five. The corruption of nature During this life, death remain in all those who are regenerated. Yeah, God gives us new birth, but we still have sinful natures. There is a clarification here, though. And although it be through Christ pardoned, we are forgiven of our sin, original and what we commit before and after our conversions. Also, our sin nature has been mortified. has been slain. We have been made dead in Christ and His death. Our old natures were buried with Christ and we have been raised to newness of life to follow after Christ. But we still have the flesh remaining and we still struggle with those sinful inclinations. And the first motions thereof are truly and properly sin. Yes, we continue to sin because we have this earthly flesh that we struggle with. That's the reason we need sanctification. That's the reason the Holy Spirit has not left us to our own, because we would all fall from grace if God didn't keep us. And it's God's keeping us is the reason we can persevere. It's not by our works, even though our works are worked there by the Holy Spirit and are a sign that we are children of God. All right. So, all that's the bad stuff, right? We don't like to hear that, that we are depraved beings, that we are apart from God, that we're sinners and completely dependent upon His grace. Especially in our natural states, we don't want to hear that. But the fact of the matter is, that is what we are. What we need to do, though, is see God's grace even in the midst of that. And part of this is the gospel. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. That is something that he does to rectify this and to change us and to save his people that he's chosen in eternity past. And without that work, we would never be saved. However, even for all of society, God is still merciful, and he still has what's called common grace. I don't know if you've heard that before, but God has common grace upon believer and unbeliever alike. He sends the rain, replenishes the earth, he causes the crops to grow, and believers and unbelievers alike eat that. He's created marriage, and even unbelievers get to share in the joys of marriage and parenthood and all that. Those are parts of God's common grace to us. So I was listening to John MacArthur answer a question at one of the conferences he was in, and he was asked certain things about modern society, and he points out the breakdown of society is caused by an attack on three things that God has given us to restrain our sin. So I've got a little bit from him, but then I've added a lot more. This slide gives pretty much what I got from him. And that is, number one is the conscience. God has created a conscience within every living human being. And I added scripture as well that I didn't hear MacArthur give, but he was basing his ideology from this on scriptures like this. And if you look at Romans 2, 14 through 15, and I apologize, I know this is small. I'm used to a bigger screen in my Sunday school room that I usually do the PowerPoints for. But Romans 2, 14 through 15 says, for when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them. So we have this innate law We know right and wrong. We know it's wrong to kill, to murder, to harm the innocent. We know it's wrong to take property that does not belong to us. We know it's wrong to cheat on our spouses. All those things are in our conscience. And yes, we can disregard our conscience long enough, it becomes seared and hard. But even any unbeliever born into this world knows a basic right and wrong morality that God has given in their conscience. And it's what accuses us, too. Often people say, well, if God didn't reveal His law to someone, then they're not guilty of sin, but they are because they have gone against their conscience. They've gone against the written law that God has given on their hearts. And so everybody in this world is guilty before God because we all have sinned. The second institution that God gives us to restrain sin is the family. Now, as with the conscience and with the government that we're about to talk about, We live in a fallen world, so we do not do things perfectly. And these things, even though they restrain us from sin, sometimes they're better than others. We've all witnessed families in which the father or the mother is not doing what they're supposed to do or broken families or whatever you have. There's brokenness in the system, but there's also goodness in it. Families nurture their children. They raise their children, they protect their children, they train their children so that they can walk in godliness and know their Lord. Proverbs 22, 15 says, folly is bound up in the heart of a child. We're naturally foolish in our hearts, but the rod of discipline drives it far from them. I think this is specifically talking about corporal punishment, but it could be talking about any kind of discipline in a family's life. It doesn't necessarily have to be a spanking or something. We love our children, we don't want them to continue to do wrong, so we train them, we teach them, and we use discipline. And those that do not care about the children, they don't care what the children do. It's what God has given us, the family. And then thirdly, it's the civil authority, the police. How much crime would be done if there wasn't the threat of being arrested for it? That is one of the constraining influences of society. Now the police, they're sinners too. They do things wrong at times. They're not perfect, just like families are not perfect, and just like our consciences are not perfect because we can sear them and harden them. But they are meant for good. They punish evil, and they keep us relatively safe and intact in our security and our freedom. 1 Peter 2, 13 through 14 says, be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. We could also look at Romans 13, and there are a multitude of other passages where God says, he is my man I have sent as a governmental official to restrain evil. And so God helped that society that turns on its police, ultimately. I wanted to add a fourth to MacArthur's three, because I believe for believers, something that restrains evil in our own lives is the church. If we were left alone, and this is the reason I encourage you, come to church, be with fellow believers, because if you try to live this life alone out there, you will succumb to temptations and fall into sin, and it happens. You can fall into sin in the church, of course, but it does have a restraining effect on our sin natures. There are two types of church discipline. There's formative church discipline, which means making disciples. Hebrews 10, 24 through 25 says, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day draw near. So we meet together, we assemble together so that We encourage one another to do what's right. We encourage one another to love God and follow his ways. That's part of what the teaching ministry of a church should be doing, is training disciples. 2 Timothy 4.2 says, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. So part of the preaching ministry is reproving, rebuking, exhorting, so that we can make the hearers those that follow Christ and are molded into his image. Then the second type of church discipline is corrective church discipline. This is the thing that's extremely hard to do. But it's something that is commanded of us, no matter how hard it is to do. And we see one instance of it in Matthew 18. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector, someone that's not a part of the people of God. So church discipline is important. It's commanded. But it's also for the good of our brother. If he's sinning, that's the reason even if I sin, I am still glad that I belong to a church that will come to me and will not leave me erring, because that's to the danger of my soul. If I'm not a believer and I think I'm safe because I'm a church member, I need to be awakened to the fact that I need Christ. If I refuse to listen to the church, then that should be the first red flag in my mind that there's something wrong with me spiritually. But if I am a believer, the Holy Spirit uses other believers in their words to change our actions, to change our thoughts, to get us back to what we should be. That's the reason churches are so important. Or if you're Satan and you're going to try to destroy a culture, you've got to attack these things, do you not? First of all, the conscience. How do you attack the conscience? You replace the morality that God has written on every heart and in his law with a new morality. You make what's right wrong, and what's wrong becomes right. And we can kind of see that culturally all around us. The very ones that are being ridiculed are those that try to hold to God's standard today. Romans 1.32 says, though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, they give approval to those who practice them. So Satan's strategy for our society and any culture throughout the history of the world is to get people to say, hey, not only do I want to do that, I'm going to applaud those people that do. It is something that's good. Let's lift this up and say what noble people they are. Isaiah 520 says something very similar. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Why does Isaiah have to pronounce this woe? Because people do this. They make what's good evil and evil good. The second thing he attacks is the family. And I think We see this in our society. Satan undermines the sanctity of marriage and particularly the authority of fathers. Now, he does so for parents, but I think we see especially the attack on fatherhood that goes on. Let's talk about marriage first. In Malachi, it's the last Old Testament prophetic book right before we get to Matthew, but one of the sins that was reflective among the Israelites when Malachi is writing this is the fact that they profess to worship God, yet they don't care about their spouses. They put them away. They divorce them. This is the same passage which later says God hates divorce. But listen to this. And the second thing you do, the first thing is not giving to God, by the way. The very first thing that Malachi says, you rob my temple by not giving your offerings by not giving to the Lord's work. The second thing you do, you cover the Lord's altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because no longer does he regard the offerings or accept it with favor from your hand. And you say, why does he not accept my offering? Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth to whom you have been faithless. Though she is your companion and your wife by covenant, you have covenanted with your wife to be married with her till death do you part. Did he not make them one with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God's seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit and do not be faithless. This is just a side point. Studies have been done on why we have so many people in prison today. And a lot of people will say that it's due to the lack of education, or lack of wealth, or lack of property, or lack of good jobs, or something of that nature. Probably the number one cause of it is being raised in broken homes, statistically. It's the number one common factor. And so for that reason, God has designed homes for the good of society. And to break that up, it is a wrong thing. I'm not going to go into the exceptions God gives us in divorce, because he does give us exceptions like adultery or abandonment. Well, second thing, Satan undermines the authority of fathers. the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, a man's enemies are the men of his own house." And 2nd Timothy 3 says, but understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty, for people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents. And there I think we see two things that relate to what I'm talking about, the family, right? What are fathers supposed to do toward their children? Love them and take care of them and do not provoke them. And what do we see today? A lot of abuse in our society. But secondly, we see children who are disobedient to parents. So both of those things are working together, and I think it's satanic. It is part of Satan's attack on our modern culture, is to destroy not only marriages, but family relationships as well. And then it goes on to state a lot more of those litany of sins that are reflective of such a culture. But the two I wanted to point out, we've already done. You think about All right, I know that we had problems in the 50s culture. There are lots of different issues. Racism and all that is something that needed to be repented of and changed. But if you look at our dominant media, our TV shows, our movies, fatherhood was reflected with at least admiration. Now fathers were not perfect in the 50s either. But the ideal of fatherhood was still held up in high esteem. Today, we have Homer Simpson, and that's probably dated, I know. But we have American Dad and other things that really ridicule, especially fathers. We're nothing but buffoons. And then we have this whole growing culture of homosexual rights. We've redefined marriage. And if you read Romans 1, I'm not going to read all these verses to you, but you can go back and read them. When a culture abandons the worship of God and starts worshiping the creature instead of the creator, he gives them up to their own passions, their own desires. And this leads to homosexuality, it leads to a lot of other things that are listed at the end of Romans 1, but we don't only tolerate it now, we actually promote it. And then lastly, Satan challenges the authority of government as police. He either does so by creating a tyranny that abuses the rights of the people, Proverbs 28, 15 says, like a roaring lion or a charging bear is a wicked ruler over a poor people, or he turns the people against the governing authorities and its police force. He causes citizens to disregard the authority of the police, causing a breakdown of law and order. Judges 21-25 says, in those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes, reflective of a culture that does not have law enforcement or any governing officials over them to restrain evil. And I think we see a reflection of this today. God hasn't abandoned America necessarily. We still have churches that meet, we still have the freedom. We don't have to worry about someone knocking down our door here to arrest us and take us and kill us somewhere. So there's still hope. And God's word is being faithfully preached. And God will use that perhaps to bring revival. But there's still signs that God is abandoning us as far as giving us up to what we want. We don't want God? Well, this is what you have. And we see that reflective. And so I'm going to save this for next Sunday, Lord willing. And we'll talk about how do you look at human depravity in government or in economics? Because this is the Bible. How is it reflected in reality in our lives? So I hope that lays a good groundwork for us to do so. Let's pray. And we'll close Sunday school with this. Dear Heavenly Father, we are so thankful as undeserving centers that you still love this world. First of all, to save us who you have chosen. But second of all, you've learned the whole world enough to give us common grace. You still cause us to be able to eat food and to have families and to have governments as fallen as they may be. But Lord, we're also thankful that you restrain evil in this world through human institutions, whether it's the conscience, whether it's the family, whether it's our governments and police, or whether it's for us as believers, our churches. Thank you for not leaving us to ourselves. And Lord, we do pray for faithful ministers to preach your word that will have an impact because as people are one, To the gospel, it changes their lives. And that is really the only hope we have for our country or for our world. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.