Scripture this morning to the book of Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 1. We'll read together the first 15 verses of Isaiah 1. The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken. I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib. But Israel doth not know. My people doth not consider. Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corruptors. They have forsaken the Lord. They have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger. They are gone away backward. Why should ye be stricken any more? Ye will revolt more and more, the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. They have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. Your country is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. Your land, strangers devoured in your presence. And it is desolate as overthrown by strangers. And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant. We should have been as Sodom and we should have been like unto Gomorrah. Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom. Give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me, saith the Lord? I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts, and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations. Incense is an abomination unto me. The new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with. It is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hateth. They are a trouble unto me. I am weary to bear them. And when he spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea, when he make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. As far as we read in Scripture this morning, in light of that reading, we consider the instruction of Lord's Day 3 of the Heidelberg Catechism. Continuing under the theme or the heading of man's misery, question 6 asks, Did God then create man so wicked and perverse By no means but God created man good and after his own image, in true righteousness and holiness, that he might rightly know God his creator, heartily love him, and live with him in eternal happiness to glorify and praise him. Whence then proceeds this depravity of human nature from the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in paradise? Hence our nature has become so corrupt that we are all conceived and born in sin. Are we then so corrupt that we are wholly incapable of doing any good and inclined to all wickedness? Indeed we are, except we are regenerated by the Spirit of God. Beloved congregation and our Lord Jesus Christ, the doctrine contained in Lord's Day 3 is crucial to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When I was attending a college religion class, it was said more and more often by the professor that such and such an issue was not a salvation issue. Whether there was a sixth day creation, whether there was a real man named Adam and a real woman named Eve, whether the earth is millions of years old or only thousands of years old, it doesn't really matter. But Lord's Day 3 says it does matter. If you mess this doctrine up, you will have a wrong idea of human nature. And if you have a wrong idea of human nature, you will have a wrong idea of how human nature is saved. So the doctrine in this Lord's Day is very much a salvation issue, or maybe better, what we would call a gospel issue. What this Lord's Day does then is to make clear two basic fundamental truths of the Christian faith. What it makes clear, first of all, is that salvation is all of God. Man is not the apex of an evolutionary process who is building a better society, as secular evolutionism implies. Man is not a basically good creature who just needs some help to be his best, as Pelagianism teaches. Man is not either free to choose good and evil, as Arminianism claims. No, man is totally depraved, that is, wholly incapable of doing any good and inclined to all evil. And therefore, his only hope to be saved is if God shows him mercy and restores him to life. Period. Salvation is all of God. What Lord's Day 3 makes clear, second of all then, is what that salvation that is all of God entails. And what it entails is regeneration. That is, a resurrection from the dead. What the salvation that God provides for His people entails is to be made whole and alive once again through the blood and spirit of the redeeming Christ. is the gospel and that gospel hinges on a right understanding of the depravity of man taught here in Lord's Day 3. So let's consider together the depravity of man. First we will see that it is a putrid disease So here we'll focus on the actual condition of the human race, apart from God's grace, that it is totally depraved. Secondly, that it is a hereditary condition. So here we'll look at how this condition is passed on from child to child and where it came from in Adam. And then finally, the divine cure that is the only way of salvation in God's regenerating grace. The depravity of man, a putrid disease, a hereditary condition, and a divine cure. Now the Bible uses quite a few pictures to illustrate for us the depravity of man. In the Gospels, for example, we read of those who were possessed by devils. There's a boy who is possessed by a devil, and in that possession, he froths at the mouth, and he throws himself into the fire and into the water. There's another man who lives alone among the tombs, and he's out of his mind, and he's possessed not just by one devil, but by a whole legion of devils, probably thousands of devils. And there we have a picture of sin in its domination over human nature and its connection to the demonic world and to Satan. Then there are the pictures in the Bible that include the birth defects and deformities and various diseases that Jesus healed in the course of his earthly ministry. These all are illustrations of the damaging effects of sin. Like blind Bartimaeus, human beings in their depravity wander in spiritual darkness, unable even to see the kingdom of God. Like the lame man who was sitting by the pool of Bethesda, depraved human beings are unable to get themselves into the place where they can be healed. Like the deaf people that Jesus healed, depraved humans will not hear the Word of God until their ears are opened by the power of grace. The bleakest of all of the pictures that the Bible gives of the depravity of human nature is that of death itself. And not just death, but as dead as possibly dead can be. There's Ezekiel the prophet, for example, walking in a dry and dusty valley that's full of dead men's bones. And it's emphasized, if you read Ezekiel 37, just how many bones there are and just how dry they are sitting out there in the desert, being bleached by the sun. Ezekiel 37, verse 2, And behold, there were very many in the open valley, that is, very many bones, and behold, they were very dry. Ye who are dead in trespasses and sins is how Ephesians 2 puts it in New Testament language. Depraved man, therefore, is like a skeleton in a coffin, unmoving, unthinking, unwilling, unable to do anything good. Yet the picture of man's depravity that Isaiah draws our attention to is specifically that of a wretched, putrid, and disgusting disease. He says in verse 5, The whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint. Verse 6, From the sole of the foot even unto the head. There is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores that have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. There are sores that are open and festering with no bandages hiding them and no medicinal ointments that are helpful to cure them. One thinks when considering Isaiah's description of the lepers who lived outside the walls of the city, Jerusalem, with flesh that was white and rotting and falling off their body, banished out of the sight of God, banished from the society of human beings. And the picture of that putrefying disease is a picture of wretchedness and misery So there are all these pictures that the Bible gives to us to give us a sense of the depravity of human nature. And yet the truth is you can't just look at any one of these pictures in isolation, but you have to look at all of these pictures and take them together. And then you will get a full understanding of the depravity of man. Depravity is death. That's true. Ye who are dead in trespasses and sins, Paul says in Ephesians 2. But it's not just death. It's a kind of living death. It's a death that eats away at a person like some wretched disease. It's a death that leaves a person scrabbling around in the dark like a blind man. It's a death that is at the same time dry and dusty like a valley full of dead men's bones. And yet it's also a death that leaves a person in conscious misery like a festering wound. It's a death that renders a man into a groveling slave of the very same devil who killed him. That's the picture that the Bible gives to us of man's depravity. And what we must understand is that this is only a picture that is given to us to make a point clear. It's a picture. And that picture is necessary because if you look at the human race today, It's not always going to look like the picture of living death that we have just described. There is plenty of death and ugliness to go around to be sure. There's plenty of open, gross sin that you can read about in the news and that you can find in your local community. But for the most part, the people that we see around us look like nice and respectful society. These are just decent, regular, ordinary people who just want to live their lives and get on with things. Those awful diseases like leprosy have disappeared with the advent of modern medicine. Demon possession is something that only happens on the remote outer fringes of the world. If it happens at all, Even dead bodies are rarely seen by us today. And when we do see them, we see them dressed up in nice clothes and makeup to sanitize the effect. But the point of the Bible is not to tell us what man looks like or even what he may feel himself to be at any given moment. The point is to tell us what he is. When the Bible gives us all of these pictures, of the defects and the deformities and the diseases and the death and the thoroughness of that death. The point is not to tell us what human beings may feel themselves to be or aspire themselves to be. The point is to tell us this is what man is, whether he understands it or not, whether he feels it or not. This is what he is as he stands before the face of a righteous and a holy God. All the things that he does, all the things that he thinks, all the things that he says, all his feelings, desires, and dreams, is so much pus oozing out of a festering sore. And to God who created man alive spiritually and healthy and whole, and lived with him at that time in holiness, walked with him in the garden, For God to come down and look on the human race today is like walking into a spiritual graveyard full of dead bodies. It's ugly, it's corrupt, it's abominable, it's rotten. It's the good creation that God made in the beginning, only now it's been twisted and turned into ugliness and darkness and death. And what is rotten to God is not so much the sight of a dead body or an infected sore as such, but what is rotten to God is the constant stream of curses that are flung into His face by human beings. What is rotten to God is the determination of man to ignore Him and to worship idols instead. What is rotten to God is the murder and the adultery and the robbing and the stealing and the cheating that happens even though God has written His will clearly in the consciences of all men and articulated it in stone. And then those same people who rob and cheat and steal, turn around and burn incense in God's temple and offer sacrifices on His altar, as if that would make up for the endless barrage of insults and disgrace, as if all of those Evil deeds that are pouring out of mankind like a stream of foul transgression can just be canceled out if we show up in God's temple once a week and do some rituals and listen to some good words. That's why the Lord says what He says in verse 15 to the Jews in Jerusalem. And when He's spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea, when ye make many prayers I will not hear, because your hands are full of blood." Oh, but some say and some will say in answer to this description, it's not really that bad, is it? You're exaggerating when you describe the human condition that way. You're exaggerating when you take all of those pictures and combine them together and present us with an image of man in utter rottenness and depravity and death. It's not really that bad. There's still some good in man, isn't there? When the Heidelberg Catechism was written, the Roman Catholic theologians said, there's still some good in man. You Protestants are extreme in your characterization of the human condition. There's still some good in man. He's sick, yes, oh yes. He's sick. Very sick, in fact. So sick that without the help of grace, he will not be able to recover from his sickness. He needs help, and yet there is still some goodness in him that enables him to cooperate with grace. and work together with God for His own healing. He has some spiritual antibodies in Him still that He can use to fight off the disease if God will just pour in the medicine of His grace by way of the priest. He has some willingness to take His medicine and to swallow it down and to receive the prescription of the doctor. That's the Roman Catholic view. which is called semi-Pelagianism. Semi-Pelagianism because it does not say that man is a moral blank slate who can either go one way or the other, which is what full-blown Pelagianism argued. There's nothing wrong with man as he's born. There's no inheriting of corruption from Adam. Every child who's born can either go one way or the other. And it depends on their environment or their parents to pull them in one direction or another. That's Pelagianism. The Roman Catholic Church doesn't have that extreme of a view. But they do have semi-Pelagianism. And it is Pelagianism of a sort because ultimately what saves man is his own goodness with the help of grace. with the help of grace. Grace that now the man gets when he goes to the Roman Catholic Cathedral, receives the mass, goes through the confessions with the priest, partakes of the sacraments. He's getting his medicine and the medicine makes him better over time until finally he will reach the point where God says, ah, you're perfect. Now you can come to heaven. You see how your understanding of the condition of man affects your understanding of the salvation that is necessary. Your understanding of the disease affects your understanding of the cure of the disease. In the Roman Catholic Church, man is sick, but he's only sick. He can still take his medicine, and therefore, he can be healed that way. Arminianism takes that same basic idea, just in a slightly narrower field. The Roman Catholic theologians would say there is some good in the mind of man, and in the heart of man, and in the will of man, and in the soul of man. If man's nature can be compared to a barrel full of apples, and the Roman Catholic understanding, the semi-Pelagian understanding, every part of man's spiritual inner life is partly rotten, but not entirely rotten. There's still some goodness in every one of those apples. The Arminian theologian would say, now that's too generous. There's no good in man's mind. There's no good in his heart. There's no good in his soul. But there is one of those apples in the barrel that still has a little bit of greenness to it, a little bit of goodness. And that one apple that still has some goodness in it is the will of man. There's a little bit of life left in the will of man so that he at least is able not to resist God's grace. If Jesus wants to save this person, then that person is able, with that little bit of goodness left in their will, not to resist his grace and therefore to open up their heart so that Jesus can come in and pour in the medicine and save him. So you see, man is not wholly incapable of any good and inclined to all evil. He's at least capable of one good thing, which is not to resist Jesus as his Lord and Savior. But from the perspective of Isaiah, that's like saying there is some good in a putrid abscess in your skin. It's full of pus. It's festering and stinking and all the medicines you have tried have failed to treat it. It's like dead flesh clinging to your body. Oh, but there's some good in there that's going to help you fight off the infection and recover from the illness. No. It's not that kind of disease. It's not like the cold. It's not like the flu. It's not the kind of disease that you have something within you, an immune system, that can fight that off. It's more like a cancer. It's like a cancer that spreads its little tendrils all throughout your body and grows and grows and increases until it takes the whole thing over and all it can do is grow and spread and eventually destroy. And what's the only solution to a disease like that? The only solution is to kill it. There's nothing good in it whatsoever. It has to be cut out or pulverized through radiation. And that's the nature of the human condition as well. There's nothing good in it whatsoever. And there's no healing that can be procured through the inventions of men. Do you believe that, beloved? Do you believe that the description that I have just given of the human condition, based off of what the Lord's Day is teaching us about total depravity, do you believe that that's true? Or do you believe that that's too extreme and you bristle a little bit? You believe that the human race is so corrupt that man is wholly incapable of any good and inclined to all wickedness, notwithstanding the many good works of art that he has produced, the many good novels that he has written, all things that we can enjoy with a sanctified and renewed understanding. But nevertheless, at his heart, at his core, that man is spiritually dead and depraved. Do you believe that? Do you believe that about yourself and about the nature in which you were born when you came into this world? Do you believe that about the people that you bump elbows with every day at work and in the grocery store? Well, keep in mind that the whole gospel hinges on our ability to believe this truth about our condition and the condition of the human race. Jesus says that those who are whole do not need a physician, it's those who are sick who need a physician. Those who have the ability in themselves to save themselves, even if it's just a little bit of an ability, do not need Jesus to save them. Only those who are totally depraved need Jesus to save them. But there's more to this. We've not fully finished identifying the disease. The Lord's Day asks another question. verse, or rather question seven, whence then proceeds this depravity of human nature, or where does it come from? If you want to fully identify and understand what a disease is, then you have to understand where that disease came from because that gets at the nature of the disease itself. So where did this depravity come from? And the answer to the question, first of all, according to answer seven is this from the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve in paradise. Now, right away, I want to notice a couple of important points that are assumed by the answer that is given there by question and answer seven. First of all, it is assumed that there was a real place called paradise, and that in this real place called paradise, a historical event took place called the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve. And that means that it is assumed that there was a real Adam and a real Eve who fell and disobeyed in paradise. And it is assumed that this Adam and Eve are our first parents, not the latest in a genealogy of pre-human hominid ancestors that eventually reached a certain point of development in the evolutionary process, so that now we could say that these ones are human beings and they can represent us in some way, which is what various forms of theistic evolution have to imply and teach. But no, Adam and Eve are our first parents. There is no other parent before them. In other words, the entire presentation of Genesis 1 through 3 is assumed by the Lord's Day to be historical. So if you are going to subscribe to Lord's Day 3 and its teaching, you also have to make that assumption. Otherwise, you are in conflict with the creeds. And this history then is taken as determinative for understanding the truth of the human condition. The doctrine of creation is not a peripheral matter that can easily be disregarded as many do in the Christian church today. The doctrine of creation rather is intricately woven together with the understanding of sin and grace. At stake in this issue, in fact, is God's own integrity. People try to write this off and say, well, it's not a salvation issue. It's not a serious issue, whether you believe in evolutionism or whether you believe in creationism or whether you believe in some form of theistic evolutionism and try to meld the two together. But the truth is, it's extremely important, extremely significant. Not only is it a gospel issue, but the very integrity of God Himself as a righteous God is at stake here. Part of what the Lord's Day is doing at this point is making clear who is to blame for bringing sin into the world. And who is to blame, therefore, for bringing all of the other misery that is connected to sin into the world. Whence cometh this depravity of the human nature? Well, if we believe that God created us, and if we find today that we are totally depraved, we may ask this question in our own mind. What gives? Is it God then who created man so wicked and perverse, as question 6 put it? God created us, and yet here we find ourselves in this miserable condition We're going to die someday. We're going to have all of these diseases and we're spiritually depraved. So did God create us that way? And the answer to all forms of evolutionism, whether you try to meld it with the Christian faith or not, has to be yes, an answer to that question. God created man this way. For evolutionism is not just a doctrine about how things came into the world. It's not just a doctrine of origins. It is a framework that comes preloaded with the idea that death and decay and violence are simply a part of life. Death and decay and violence and all of the things that we attribute to the misery of life in a fallen world, all of those things serve as the engine that drives the evolutionary process. We all know what evolution means, survival of the fittest. It's a dog-eat-dog world. That's just the world we live in according to the evolutionist and that's what is the catalyst for all of the changes that bring about the evolved state that we live in today and that we experience today. And even if you try to baptize this evolutionary framework by inserting God at the beginning of the process and then at various intervals that are important in order to have supernatural elements like the soul and so on, even if you try to do that, you cannot escape the fact that God now is the one who brought death and decay and violence into the world. which is to say that God created man so wicked and perverse. God created a world that is already under the curse, miserable and fallen. God is to blame for this. God is at fault for this. As for me, I was just born this way. I was created this way, so I might as well do what is in me, what is natural to me, what feels right to me, because God himself is the one who put that in me. That whole line of thinking, however, is cut off by the Lord's Day's grounding of its doctrine in the historical fall of Adam and Eve in paradise. The historical fall of Adam and Eve in paradise says that it is not God's fault that man is so wicked and perverse. It is humanity's own fault. It is Adam's fault and Eve's fault who listened to the serpent. And it is Adam's fault as your father and Eve's fault as your mother. It is the fault of Adam and Eve as the representatives of humanity that all of this misery and depravity has come into the world. It's very important to understand as we live in this world because increasingly, even among conservative Christians, these issues are considered to be peripheral, not very important. Creation, evolution, no, it matters. I want to pause here and highlight a couple other important truths about the biblical view of man that are important to understand in our current time and place. First, the biblical view of man is that there is one human race in Adam. Acts 17, verse 26 says that God has made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth. One human race in Adam. European, African, Asian, male, female, rich, poor, high, low, all share one human nature, all have one blood. One person I heard put it this way, if you cut into any person on the face of the earth, it's gonna be red blood that comes out because we all share one blood, an atom. It's important to notice this in a world that is torn apart by identity politics and the ideas of critical theory. The goal of identity politics, which is driven by the ideas of critical theory, is to take the emphasis off of the oneness of the human race. There is not one human race that can be evaluated and judged by God as a whole in Adam. There are instead a million identities, along the lines of race, gender, sexual lifestyle, and all kinds of other factors. But that's not the biblical view of man. Man is one race in Adam, evaluated and judged by God as one race. Second, the biblical view of man is that this one human race collectively shares in one guilt. That's why it's important not to break humanity apart into various tribes, but to see the unity in the one Father, Adam. That unity of the human race in Adam explains how the whole human race can share one guilt in Adam collectively. So it's not just individual human beings who are guilty of personal sin, but it's the human race that is guilty in the fall and disobedience of Adam and Eve in the garden. That's what Romans 5 verse 12 says when it says, Even if they've never lifted a finger, all have sinned in Adam. And so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. Again, a big part of the aim of identity politics and critical theory is to break apart this kind of thinking. It's not all men who have sinned. It's white people who have sinned. It's males who have sinned. It's straight people who have sinned. It's whatever person happens to be in the position of privilege and power over against this other group. These are the ones who have sinned and these ones are innocent. We hear a lot about identity politics today, I realize, to the point where it makes us nauseous. But we need to understand that this is not just about politics. It's not even, first of all, about politics. It's about a view of human nature. It's about a view of what sin is, and who is guilty of sin before God, and why they are guilty of sin before God. It's a different worldview. Identity politics and critical theory are informed by a different view of the world, of God, of ourselves. And it's a different view of the world that knows nothing about a shared guilt by all human beings, regardless of where you happen to fall on the spectrum of identities. But the biblical view is that all have sinned, all have fallen short of the glory of God, all are guilty, and Adam, whether white, black, male, female, gay, straight, all. And that leads to the second part of the answer to the question, whence then proceeds this depravity? Asked by question seven. The first part is, it proceeds from the fallen disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve. The second part is, hence our nature has become so corrupt that we are all conceived and born in sin. So what we have addressed so far has to do with guilt. When Adam fell into sin, we all fell and we all became guilty in Adam. That's because Adam was not a private individual acting only on behalf of himself, but he was a representative head acting in behalf of all of his children. If the king declares war on another country, all of the people declare war on that other country, regardless of what they may happen to think about the current situation. They never signed a document or made a personal decision, but this is the nature of representative headship. The Bible says Adam was our head when he decided to eat that fruit in violation of what God clearly told him because he listened to the devil. He was doing something in behalf of all of us as our father. And so when Adam became guilty, the guilt passed upon the whole human race who was born from him. But the thing about guilt is that guilt implies consequences. It doesn't just imply them, it necessitates consequences. Someone who is guilty must be punished. Because the very nature of guilt is that justice is out of balance. And if justice is out of balance, it needs to be set right. God made plain to Adam that if he disobeyed the law, justice would have to be satisfied. And there's only one way that justice will be satisfied. It's when you die. And the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. And die he did. Not because he dropped dead on the spot as if there was poison in the fruit. Well, he died spiritually. He became like the living dead. He became like our description from the first point with no soundness in his flesh, with wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. That ugly disease of spiritual corruption, of spiritual depravity was the punishment God placed upon Adam for his guilt. Now if the guilt of Adam transfers to all of us because Adam sinned as our representative head, then so must the punishment of Adam be transferred to all of us. And that's why the Lord today says, hence our nature has become so corrupt that we are all conceived and born in sin. The depravity of human nature passes on from father to son as a hereditary disease. And that's God carrying out the sentence that he first put on Adam. You shall die. And therefore all of his children who bear his guilt also die. The hereditary disease, children, is a disease that parents give to their children at birth. They don't contract that disease when they are born and maybe they get sneezed on or something like that, where a virus comes into them or a bacteria. But a hereditary disease is something that's in them from the moment that they're conceived. It's part of their DNA, something that their parents pass on to them through their DNA. There are physical diseases like that, which some children carry from birth, but the Bible says that every one of us inherits a spiritual disease from Adam and Eve, our first parents. to take everything that we have been unpacking this morning and to distill it and boil it down to one central point, it would be this. The biblical view of man, that is the whole human race, is not a very favorable picture. It's not very favorable at all. And when you look around in the world and you see gross acts of sin and corruption, murder and stealing and all kinds of evil deeds, these are not just random and unfortunate acts of a few isolated individuals who maybe got the wrong training or the wrong education when they were younger. But those acts of murder and corruption are an expression of what the human race itself is, depraved. Selfish, hating God and hating the neighbor. And that depravity has roots in our origins from our first parents. It's something that passes on to us. And that ought to humble us. And it ought to keep us from getting up on our little hills of self-righteousness when we look at all of the other people and we think about all of the evil things that those people are doing. Look at the evil things that so-and-so did. You can look at the worst of human behavior, the worst, the most vile and disgusting. And for all that it sickens you and upsets you, You also have to say, if you believe the Bible, you also have to say the same impulses that produce that wicked, vile, disgusting behavior is right in here. It's in me too. And but for the grace of God, I would do exactly what that person is doing. That's the truth. God abominates what we are by nature and he fights against it with everything that he is and he's going to judge it as well. The amazing thing about God is not only is he just, so that he will have an answer for all of the evil in the world. But he's also gracious. And in his graciousness, he also has a cure for this miserable disease of human depravity. The first thing we have to say about that cure is that it is a cure that can come only from God. The nature of the disease that we have makes it clear that the cure can only come from God. Human history is full of examples of men trying to cure themselves of their misery. Maybe even trying to cure themselves of their depravity. But you will always find, if you are a student of history, that it always ends in the same way. Not by helping anything, but by making things even worse than they were before. All we can do by nature is make ourselves more guilty, more rebellious, more offensive to God. That's what all of our cures will produce. Look at what Isaiah says in verse 3. The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib, but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider. There's no knowledge. There's not even a consideration in man. He is, I say this, with the bluntness of the sense of the text. Man in himself, in his natural folly, is dumber than an ox. Dumber than a donkey. Does not even know who is the hand that feeds him, but rebels against him and turns from him. That's all that man can produce in and of himself. That's the picture that we're given here. So it has to be from God. It has to be someone who is outside of our own depraved consciousness and therefore not affected by that depraved consciousness himself. The cure cannot come from within us. It can only come from without us, outside of us. The transcendent God must take pity on us as we scrabble around in the darkness and come down and open our eyes so that we see the truth. He must have mercy on us and cast the devils out because we can't cast them out of ourselves anymore than that little boy could when he was writhing around on the ground, frothing at the mouth. It has to be God because he's the only one who is unaffected by this depravity. And it has to be God because he's the only one who has the power to actually heal this wretched disease. Israel tried to use ointments and bandages, but the ointments and bandages did not mollify the putrefying sores. No, Israel needs a Redeemer, someone who can bind up the brokenhearted, someone who can restore sight to the blind, a physician who can create new ears where otherwise the ears are deaf and can turn the white and rotting skin of the leper back to wholeness. That is what we need and that is what our salvation is, beloved, before it's anything else. It's a work of grace. It's God having pity on us. Verse 9, except the Lord of hosts had left unto us A very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom and we should have been like unto Gomorrah. That's like in Ephesians 2. And you're reading through this description of our death and depravity. We were dead in trespasses and sins. And then it says, but. But God, who is rich in mercy for his great love for what he loved us. So here, all this description of the putrefying disease of the human beings, the people living in Jerusalem, the people living in the church, they would have been like Sodom and Gomorrah, the picture in the Old Testament of a city that is wholly given over to evil, ripe for destruction, except except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, except that God would show us mercy. Salvation is of the Lord. But then let's conclude by also noticing that this cure, which can only come from God, truly is a cure. The Lord's Day calls it regeneration. Is it really this bad, the Lord's Day asks? Are we wholly incapable of doing any good and inclined to all evil? Yes, indeed we are. And then we find that word again, except, except we are regenerated by the Spirit of God. And remember, this is a catechism that we're supposed to learn so that we confess this from our own mouths. Indeed, we are. Indeed, I am. That's the truth of me. I am wholly incapable of doing any good and inclined to all evil, except I am regenerated. We make that our personal confession. The idea of that personal confession is I am regenerated. God has come and he has applied the cure to me. He is applying it to me. I am being converted. I feel the power of grace working in me. My guilt for my sin in Adam and all of the other things that I have done and committed has an answer in Christ. And I perceive that by a true and living faith that I have, because God has worked that in me, in my mind and in my heart. The corruption of sin that has festered and ruled over me is breaking. The fever is breaking, as it were. The rottenness and the corruption is being healed and restored to wholeness. I feel that in me. I have been regenerated. That is the miracle of salvation. The fathers who wrote the catechism are not willing to tell us about this depravity and then simply leave us in darkness as to the cure. No, there is a cure. Depravity is not the end of the story. There is also life that comes out of this death by the grace of God. A new creation arises out of the ashes of the old one through the blood and spirit of Christ. For the Lord that we serve is not a weak Lord, a Lord who is powerless over this mighty stream of foul transgression. No, He has an answer to it. He has a cure for His people. He's the Lord and Giver of life. So believe that. Believe in the power of this God, not only to give you an accurate understanding of your condition, but also to change your condition on the basis of the finished work of Jesus Christ, to change your condition from dead to alive. From one who is covered from head to toe in putrefying sores to one who is being healed by the Spirit and grace of God. Trust in the power of that grace and begin to live that new life as those who have been regenerated. Amen. Let us pray. Father in heaven, Thank You for giving us an accurate self-understanding. We pray preserve us from all of the deceptions and lies that exist in the world today that seek to minimize or mitigate the seriousness and reality of our depravity or to draw our attention away from it. and give us clear eyes, a clear understanding of the truth so that we can also praise Thee and thank Thee the more for Thy greatness in giving us a cure in Jesus Christ and in His Spirit. And let that Spirit and let that new life of regeneration grow in us so that we are truly by Thy grace set apart from this world in Christ. Forgive our sins, hear our prayer for Jesus' sake, amen.