We're in the book of Romans, and we are in chapter three this morning, and we are going to look at verses nine through 20. Romans three, verses nine through 20. What then, are we better than they? Not at all, for we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written, there is none righteous. No, not one. There's none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. They have all gone out of the way. They have together become unprofitable. There is none who does good. No, not one. Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues, they have practiced deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways. In the way of peace they have not known. There's no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. This is the holy, inspired, inerrant word of God. It is life-giving, it is powerful, and it does search the hearts. Open your heart to the Lord and let us pray. Father, thank you that you have given us the truth in the scriptures, every word, It's true. Thy word is truth. We ask Lord that you would now sanctify us by that truth in Jesus name. Amen. So in these early chapters in the book of Romans, Paul is laying a foundation. He began by giving us the theme in Romans 1 16. I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it's the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes so. He's going to explain the gospel and its implications for our lives. But again, he must lay that foundation. He's still doing that. And the foundation that he is laying is the true knowledge of sin today. If we don't rightly understand our problem, If we don't rightly diagnose our condition, then we will not understand the remedy very well. So Paul lays a foundation, but he also tears down certain things. He tears down the foundation of our own works. We see that in the last the last verse of our passage, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified. So he tears down our self-righteousness, our own works which are worthless in God's sight. And in this passage today, he demonstrates what some have called the total depravity of man. And his conclusion is that all the world is guilty before God. But what do we mean when we speak of the total depravity of man? We do not mean By total depravity, we do not mean utter depravity. It doesn't mean that man is as bad as he could be. We know that all men are sinners and all men are bad, but some are worse. There are worse sinners and have done worse things. And yet, what total depravity means is that we are thoroughly depraved. That is, we are sinful in all areas of life. Sin affects everything in our lives. If you have a glass of water and you put a drop of deadly poison in it, the whole glass of water is poisoned. And so that's what's happened in our lives. And we know that people in general, and that includes us, don't really believe that we're all that bad. like to think that we're that awful. We certainly don't think, people don't tend to think that they deserve to be eternally condemned and cast into hell because of their sin. And we think that there's some goodness in us and that God would look on that and that we have done better than others. And certainly God will judge us on a curve and we'll be okay. But Paul tears down these kinds of thoughts in these first three chapters of Romans, particularly the passage we're looking at today. And he shows us we're not as good as we thought, and that God is much more serious about sin than we realize. So we think that because God is a God of love, and this is the truth, that he must wink at sin somehow. He must say, well, there are mitigating circumstances and I'll overlook it, and so on. But that's not the way God deals with sin. He's very serious. And it's not easy for us to want to see the truth about ourselves in the sight of God. It's not a pretty sight. And it's only when God opens our eyes that we're able to see that, because we resist it naturally, this truth about ourselves, about our sin. But this is the first and very important step toward salvation, to see what we are, apart from the grace of God, to see what we are in and of ourselves. In verse nine, Paul asks the Jews, are we better than they, the Greeks, the Gentiles? And he says, not at all. Jews and Greeks are alike under sin. Well, you could fill in the blank. Are we Christians? Are we better than the others? Paul would say, no, no, not at all. We're all alike under sin. As we come into this world, every one of us was born under sin. We are under its control by nature. We are under its influence, under the weight and guilt of sin. In verses 19 and 20, the conclusion he reaches is that all the world is guilty before God and cannot be justified by the deeds of the law. And so he proves this statement by the verses we're looking at. before that. And he draws from numerous passages in the Old Testament. We read the response of reading with Psalm 53 and you probably realize there was some repetition after you heard the Romans reading today because he's quoting from that Psalm as well as several others. And notice in verse 9 he says, we. He includes himself. He's not above this terrible condition, this sinful and guilty condition. You see, all of us are leveled by our sinfulness. None of us escape this reality. And the following six characteristics that I want us to look at of sinful man, you see, they are true of each and every one of us, apart from the grace of God in Christ. So six points today. I figure your normal three-point sermon, just double it. But it will be more brief than normal. So the first characteristic of sin is sin is unrighteousness. Sin is unrighteousness. There is none righteous. No, not one. And there's an unrighteous like Adam was in his state of innocence. Adam and Eve, as they came into the world, were They had a righteous standing, a righteous character before they fell. But when Adam fell into sin, he became corrupt. We all fell with him and we inherited a sinful nature that's corrupt and it's opposed to doing what is right. And that's what righteousness is. It's doing what is right. It's being right. And so since Adam's sin, there has been no one born of ordinary generation, as we say, who is righteous. So to be righteous, it means to be upright, to be virtuous, to keep the commands, to do right and to be right. Clearly, there's non-righteous, not even one. Because we're talking about perfect righteousness, which is what God requires. We think God, like I said, grays on a curve and he doesn't require perfection, but he does. And James put it this way, that if you break the law in one part, you've broken it all. So it's worse than we think. It's worse than we think. Clearly no one is righteous, but we think, this is how we think. Well, we know nobody's perfect. What's the big deal? Well, you know, God understands. Nobody's perfect. He can't expect perfection because we can't be perfect. Oh, yes, he can. Yes, he can. And he does. And what does God think? Oh, the fact that we are unrighteous. He does understand it. Yeah. But what does he think? Deuteronomy 25, 16. For all that do such things, all that do unrighteousness are hateful to the Lord, your God. Okay, so God hates and despises our unrighteousness. And some, again, will say, well, I thought God was a God of love. He is, but before you can understand that love, which is God, you must know something about his hatred. He hates unrighteousness. And if no one is righteous, we're all unrighteous, then we all deserve his hatred because of that. Yes, he is a God of love. But we must see his hatred. Well, how does God, how is it that he hates unrighteousness? How bad is it? Well, he hates it enough so that he will not allow any unrighteousness into his eternal presence, into his heaven. 1 Corinthians 6, 9 is, you know, that passage there. lists a number of sins that people commit. He says, do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? That's how serious it is. On the Day of Judgment, according to Luke 13, 27, Jesus will say, I tell you, I do not know you. Depart from me, all workers of unrighteousness. And we already read in Romans 1, 18, a few weeks back, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. So this issue of righteousness and unrighteousness is a big one in scripture. And the bad news, no one is righteous, not even one. How can we avoid the condemnation that we deserve for our unrighteousness? I'll tell you how. It is to plead for God's mercy. Start with a prayer like the prayer of the publican in the temple that Jesus talked about, who would not even look up to heaven and he prayed as he beat his breasts, God be merciful to me, a sinner. But do we have any reason to believe that God would hear such a prayer? Well, Jesus commended the man, he says, this man left the temple justified. That's one example, Jesus' own words. But Hebrews 8, 12, God says, I will be merciful to their unrighteousness. Now, realizing the depth of our unrighteousness and hatred that God has for it, when we hear these words from God himself, I will be merciful to their unrighteousness. If that does not give you a sense of relief and hope, then you somehow haven't gotten it. I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their iniquities, I will remember no more. That's amazing. First John 1.9, if we confess our sins, he's faithful unto us to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all, what? Unrighteousness. So start with confession of sins, start with confessing your unrighteousness, ask for mercy, and he's promised to be merciful. And how is it that God can be merciful? Because 1 Peter 3.18 says Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous, Christ was perfectly righteous, the righteous for the unrighteous that he might bring us to God. He took our place. He took our sins, our unrighteousness so that we might become righteous before him. Well, that's sin as unrighteousness. Secondly, Another characteristic of sin is that sin is ignorance, ignorance particularly of God. Verse 11 says, there's none who understands. Sin affects the mind and the sinner does not know God or right. Ephesians 4.18 says, the understanding of man has been darkened and we have been alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in us. Ignorance is sin. And the Bible says the natural man does not receive the things of God for their foolishness unto him. He's ignorant. He can't understand them. The late Carl Sagan, which we don't hear much about him, he's died and gone on to his reward. And he wrote a book called Cosmos. And in that book, he showed his ignorance. In the opening line, he said, the cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. And for Sagan, the cosmos was God. The universe was God. The universe was eternal. The universe is all there was. Well, he said pre-scientific beliefs, basically about a personal God, were simply the dreams of men. So as intelligent as someone like Carl Sagan was, his mind was ignorant of the truth of God. Why? Because of the sinful depravity that was inherent in his nature. It's the same depravity that's inherent in our nature as we come into this world. In the parable of the sower, the radical distinctions that Jesus makes between those who finally reject the word and those who, on the other hand, receive it and bear fruit, the difference, Jesus says, between those two groups is that one understands, hears the word and understands it. and the other hears the word and doesn't understand it. And that's interesting. The Bible says, Jesus wrote, you know, or recorded that he who hears the word and understands and bears fruit produces a hundredfold, 160 and 130. So all men are naturally ignorant of God and we have no spiritual understanding. The ignorance is a willful ignorance as we saw from Romans 1 and The question is, is there hope for man's ignorance? Can that change? Yes, but only by the power of God, only by the Lord Jesus Christ opening our eyes and revealing himself to us. And after we become Christians, the Bible says, that in Christ we are being renewed in knowledge after the image of him who created him. So the only way to know is to know Jesus and then your eyes are opened to the truth. So we thank God for his spirit who gives us the understanding of his word. We have his word but we can't understand it unless we have the spirit of God to open our eyes And then we begin to understand the things of God. So we talked about God's grace being greater than all our sin. His grace is greater than our ignorance. Third, sin can be characterized as apathy, as apathy. There is none who seeks after God. All people by nature are apathetic or indifferent to God. And of course, many will agree, man's a sinner, yes. alienated from God, we deserve his wrath. And yet we will say that, well, the lost person has the ability to seek God. But Paul says, no one seeks God. Now, do you want to contradict the Bible when you see you don't want to do that? So we have to try to understand it and figure this out. And we say, don't we know unbelievers? that are seeking God, so it seems to be a contradiction. Well, many, I would say, appear to be seeking God, when in reality they're only seeking a way out of a crisis, perhaps. Or many say they're searching for God, but they do so according to human wisdom and not in the way that God has outlined in His Word. Many say they're seeking God, but it's not by faith or humility. they think they can find him on their own. And those who seek God apart from Jesus Christ, we heard about a testimony of someone who died recently, and this person said that they knew God, but they did not believe in Jesus Christ. And so they didn't really know God. And the Bible says this too, it says, you will seek me and find me when you seek for me, with all your heart. But because of sin, no one does that. You see, when it says that no one seeks God, we're talking about the kind of seeking that God describes in the Bible, with all the heart. And none of us does that. To really seek God is to make His glory your chief concern. It's to be more concerned about God than yourself. But we, by nature, love ourselves supremely. and the unregenerate person is an enemy of God. And if you're an enemy of God, you don't really want to find him because he's a powerful enemy. He's your enemy, and you're his enemy until you are converted. You don't want to find God. Same reason a criminal doesn't want to find a policeman. But if a person appears to be seeking God, and if a person does seek God, you can be sure that it's God who has given them a new heart and giving them the desire to seek Him. There's a difference between seeking our own relief and seeking God for the sake of God. Someone has said that man seeks for the benefits of God while fleeing from the person of God. When we seek the benefits of God, we're not seeking God. we need to seek the person of God. So what about you? Do you seek God? Do you seek Him early, earnestly, continuously? Is that what characterizes your life? Could it be said of you like was said of David? He's a man after God's own heart. He's seeking God. Many who call themselves Christians, it couldn't be said that they seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Because truth is, We often seek God only a little. We give him a nod on Sunday morning. We give him a nod maybe every morning, just a nod, but are we truly seeking God? Is that the thing that characterizes our life 24-7? Well, if not, then we are falling under the sin We have given into the sin of apathy, which is, again, what we are by nature. But in Christ, we're being renewed. And so we shouldn't be apathetic. So the first question then is, is there hope for the unbeliever who does not want to seek God? Yes, there's hope that God will give him a new heart. And there's hope for such persons as we pray for them. There's hope for them because even though they are not seeking God, Jesus Christ said, I came to seek and save that which is lost. Now, Jesus did not save everyone when he came to this earth, but he sought out certain people. He sought out Zacchaeus, he sought out the disciples, the twelve, and so on. He sought out you and me. That's our hope, that God seeks those who are not seeking him. And if you are, as a believer, if you've grown cold and are not as fervent toward God, you've become indifferent, Towards seeking him, what should you do? You should just be reminded of what scripture tells us over and over. For example, Isaiah 55, seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Take advantage of the moment. of that perking of interest, perhaps the sermon gets you to think, I need to seek God. Well, do it. Do it. Seek the Lord while he may be found, while your heart is tender and while you have that desire. Don't put it all. Now, when you repent of your sins and again, ask for the mercy of God, then you will be forgiven. You will be strengthened. You will be enabled to seek him and you will find him. Another characteristic of sin, number four, is that sin is unprofitable. Sin is unprofitable. All they together have together become unprofitable. And that word means to make useless, to render unserviceable. And so sin makes us useless and unserviceable to our maker. Take a glass of This one hasn't been poisoned, but you drop it on the sidewalk and it cracks and is shattered into 100 pieces. And the only thing to do at that point is to sweep it up and throw it in the trash. Well, sin has shattered the image of God in man and we're unprofitable and useless in our unregenerate state and we deserve to be thrown away and discarded. We're unprofitable to God in that state. The good news is God can put us back together and has and will in Jesus Christ. Another translation says that instead of using The term useless or unprofitable says worthless. Now, that's hard for us to hear. We've all become worthless. Apart from Jesus Christ, we are worthless and unprofitable to God. Now, practically speaking, we might be profitable and useful to other people and in certain ways, but not to God. Jonathan Edwards as he preached to sinners, one of his sermons, he says, you have been a mere earthworm that is never in its element, but when groveling and buried in the earth. Well, thanks be to God that he dies for worms such as you and me. Isaiah 41, 14, do not fear worm of Jacob and men of Israel. I will help you says the Lord and your redeemer, the Holy one of Israel. And so, You see, we need to tell sinners not about their great value, but God's infinite love in spite of our worthlessness as sinners. And so Jesus died on the cross, not because we were of infinite value to him. Yes, he loved us, but because he is love, not because we were lovable. We certainly were not. He loves us in spite of our worthlessness, our uselessness, and He makes us worth something. He renews us in the image of His Son. No, there is none who does good, not even one, but there is one who is good. His name is Jesus Christ, and He promises eternal life to all those who repent of their sins and trust in Him. That is the good news of the Gospel that Paul is going to explain very soon in Romans. Another characteristic of sin, number five, sin is destructive. Verses 13 to 16, it shows how sin and unrighteousness are manifested in how people harm each other. And he said, he describes humanity, their throat is an open I picture the idea of swallowing up, devouring other people. But you see, this idea of an open tomb, this was very disgusting imagery, particularly to the Jews. And they were required to be very cautious and careful in dealing with corpses. There was biological danger. Certainly, disease was easily transferred to a living person from a dead body. And the Old Testament declared that if you handled a corpse, you had become unclean, ceremonially unclean. And so when Paul said their throat is an open grave, he was using the most disgusting imagery available. And that's what man is on the inside. In his heart, he's an open grave, and there's this rottenness within. And this inner rottenness is manifested in a number of ways. It's manifested in what we think, and what we say, and what we do. And so Paul gets into this matter of the use of the tongue. How do we know that man is rotten? Because his speech is rotten. Isaiah said, I dwell among a people. He said, I'm a man of unclean lips. He realized how filthy His tongue, his words were, when he was in the presence of God, I dwell among a people of unclean lips. Paul said, with their tongues they practice deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips. So the tongue is a very powerful thing. James said it in his epistle, and it can do much harm. It's set on fire by hell, and it sets other things on fire. And we use the tongue, Paul says, to deceive. We deceive people. How do we do that? Well, one way that it's done is by flattering. We deceive people by flattering them. And we flatter people, as many false teachers do today, by telling them that you're not so bad after all. You're basically a good person. Sin is not such a great problem. It's not so awful. You're not as bad as other people. You're okay. God doesn't care about those things. Well, that's a false gospel. It's deceptive. It's telling the lie. It's telling people to believe a lie, that there's goodness in them, that God will accept them based on that goodness. No, that's a lie. And people deceive others by preaching the false gospel of works, salvation, thinking that we can add works to our faith, and yet we're being deceived by such teaching. And that deceit is no small matter. Paul compares it to the poison of a deadly snake. And a poisonous snake, of course, as we know, has power to do great harm. It can kill a person. It's said that the venom of one Taipan snake that lives in Australia is enough to kill 50 people, just one snake. And if you get bit by one, you better hurry and get the anti-venom because you won't last very long. Well, see, the poison of sin, it brings death to the souls of men and women. It leads us to the very pit of hell. It's a very dangerous thing, this poisonous sin in our hearts. And again, false teachers are spreading that poison by their lies. They hate the message of the cross, they hate the blood of Jesus Christ, they despise, they don't agree and won't teach the doctrine of depravity. You see, to deceive about this matter is critical because if you don't get this right, you won't get the gospel right. Paul goes on to say, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. You see, some destroyed by flattery and smooth talk. Others, it's more direct. There's cursing and a bitter stream of criticism that comes out of their mouth. There's harshness. There's verbal attacks. And again, Jonathan Edwards preached this to a group of people. And he didn't mince words here. He said, what foul-mouthed person some of you have been, often in lewd and lavish talk and unclean songs wherein were things not fit to be spoken, and such company where such conversation has been carried on has been your delight. You see, people, the sad reality is is that some sing hymns on Sunday. And they curse like a sailor during the week. And they think there's nothing wrong. James said, of our mouth come blessing and cursing, my brethren, these things should not be. And so when cursing and bitterness of speech characterizes someone's life, when anger is out of control, you see that opens the door to other things. It opens the door, potentially, to violence. This is what Paul mentions in verse 15, their feet are swift to shed blood. And so a hostile and angry attitude, angry words can lead to violent actions. In the book of Genesis, when God said to Noah, he said, I'm going to destroy the earth with a flood because the earth is filled with violence. Is the earth filled with violence today? It certainly is. It's one of the characteristics of sin is a violent way. Well, and it's one of the reasons God's going to destroy the earth by fire when Christ returns. Now, in verses 16 and 17, Paul goes on. He says, destruction and misery are in their ways in the way of peace they have not known. So sin, you see, it breeds destruction and misery. It causes pain. It destroys relationships. Think of marriages. that have been destroyed by sin and some of the misery that spouses put each other through. And I think we have to ask ourselves, if we're married especially, are we miserable to live with? No, not me. Am I peaceful or am I always arguing? Am I encouraging or am I always negative and critical? Well, we have to examine our own lives. Let the Lord speak to you, whatever God has to say to you about that matter. But Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers. And the only way to become a peacemaker is to put your faith in the Prince of Peace, who is Jesus himself. And through Christ, you can have peace with God and you can become a peacemaker. Now, it's hard. It's hard because your sinful, corrupt nature, the remains of that, the remaining sin in your life is going to want to make war instead of peace. But through Christ, you can become a peacemaker. And one final characteristic of sin that Paul mentions is the irreverence, that sin is irreverent. There's no fear of God before their eyes. John Calvin said that every wickedness flows from a disregard of God. In other words, from a lack of the fear of God. Every sin is due to that fact that we don't fear God as we should. And where there's no fear of God, you're not going to find any righteousness in the other areas of life. So this is the root of the matter here. And here's what we see in life. Lots and lots of people. More and more people, evidently, statistically, live their lives as if God doesn't exist. Maybe they say that they're atheists, maybe they don't say it, but they live as if He doesn't exist. And they live as if they will never have to give an account to Him. But the Bible says we'll have to give an account for everything in our lives. So when the fear of God is absent, then all kinds of horrible things result. Dr. Sproul said the human race is an irreverent race. Lots of religious people, but few who truly fear God, I fear. And so the fear of God, how do you know if you have it? Well, you'll have it and you'll know because you humble yourself before God and you repent of your sins. You do like 2 Chronicles says, you turn from your wicked ways and you plead the mercy of God and you know that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. You don't seek God on your own wisdom or on man's wisdom. You understand that just to bow before him in humble adoration and reverence, that God is God and not you. then you will learn. Well, the fear of the Lord is something we can learn. King David said in Psalm 34 11, come you children and I will teach you the fear of the Lord. And so if we come to the Lord humbly, if we come to David's greater son, Jesus Christ, we will learn the fear of God. And we have to, this is a lesson like so many lessons that we have to learn over and over. We don't learn it once and then we got it. We usually have to learn continually about these things. Well Paul has just shown us in these verses that the whole human race is depraved and under sin. By nature we're under the corruption of sin and the guilt of sin. It's a great weight and the only way to be relieved of that weight is to bow before the cross of Jesus Christ and accept him as your Lord and your Savior. Paul said, our disobedience to God's law results in our condemnation before God. The law condemns us so that every mouth, as verse 19 says, every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God. What does he mean that every mouth may be stopped? You see, what we do, especially with each other, but I think we do it with God too, is that when we admit our sin, we add certain things that rationalize it, right? That tend to excuse it. Yes, I did such and such, but... And then we have some extenuating circumstance or reason why. So to stop your mouth is to say, I'm guilty. Zip it. Admit it. Don't excuse it. This is what God wants. And when we do that, That's when he meets us, where we are, when we start opening our mouth and trying to justify ourselves. When you justify yourself, you can't be just, God's not going to justify you, because you're trying to explain things away. Well, have you realized the depth of your depravity? Probably not. I know I haven't. Even though I read these things, and even though I read these things about, it's like, well, that's not really me, is it? It is. It is. And it's hard, again, it's hard for me to accept that. And Paul said in verse 20, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified. So we have to be justified another way. We're going to learn about that very soon as we continue in Romans. Well, I hope you have a better knowledge of sin today. You have to meditate on these things. You have to humble yourself before God. And I would urge you to pray a prayer or something like this, Lord, show me what I am apart from you in myself. And then show me who you are and what you would do for me in this condition, in my sinful and depraved condition. Show me Jesus Christ and God, your grace in the gospel. I pray that the Lord opens your eyes and I believe that he will hear and answer that prayer. Let's pray together.