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You know what's amazing in all
of this? God knows how depraved we are. God's aware of all of
our sinful nature and in spite of that, in spite of that, He
still loves us. We read in John 3.16, For God
so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God loves you. If you have never
been saved, it's not automatic. It is a gift. It starts with
taking our depravity by the horns and recognizing it and repenting
and receiving the grace of God. Have you done that? The Bible says that the gospel
of Christ is the power of God unto salvation. Welcome to Pulpit
Power featuring Pastor Tony Skeving, Senior Pastor of Fargo Baptist
Church in Fargo, North Dakota. Today's message was previously
preached before a church audience. And now, here's Pastor Skeving. Let's take our Bibles and turn
to the book of Romans in the third chapter. Romans chapter
3. There was a preacher years ago
by the name of Dr. Howard. He preached hard on sin. He named sin. And he had some
people in his church that were disturbed by this and they went
to see him. And they said, Dr. Howard, could you kind of lighten
up a little bit? Maybe when you talk of sin, refer
to it as a mistake, or confusion, or weakness, or an error. And he said, well, let me ask
you something. He pulled from his medicine chest
a bottle of strychnine, poison. He said, if I were to take and
put a label over this bottle and it said peppermint tea, Would
it be any less dangerous?" And they said, well, no, it would
still be dangerous. He said, would it be more dangerous?
He said, yes, it would actually be more dangerous. And he said,
so it is with relabeling sin and watering down sin. It becomes more dangerous when
we don't call it what it is. So today we're going to be calling
sin what it is. And I'm just going to warn you
ahead of time, we're looking at a passage here that deals
with sin. And I didn't write it. I'm just
the messenger. We're in a study in the book
of Romans, and we have come up to a very famous passage here. In Romans chapter 3, we begin
reading in verse number 9, Paul, a Jew speaking of non-Jews, he
says, Are we better than they? No, in no wise. For we have before
proved, both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin.
As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There
is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after
God. They are all gone out of the
way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that
doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulcher.
With their tongues they have used 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, and the way
of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before
their eyes. Now, we know that what thingsoever
the law saith, it saith to them 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, there shall no flesh be justified in His sight, for by
the law is the knowledge of sin." Now, you've heard before the
expression of taking the bull by the horns. Well, today we
need to take depravity by the horns. And we find it right here
in this passage, don't we? So let's do that, but let's pray
first, shall we? Our Heavenly Father, we ask You,
dear Lord, to bless now this time as we look into Your Word.
Help us to understand this passage, and more importantly, to make
an application to our lives spiritually. For we pray now and ask these
things in Jesus' name. Amen. The list we just looked
at is not very flattering, is it? But it's really an analysis
of human nature. And it's what the Bible teaches.
We are sinners. That's what God says. But did
you know that's also what studies have found out? In fact, there
was a study done, no less across the river in Minnesota back in
the early 1900s by the Minnesota Crime Commission. You know what
they decided? Here it is, quote, every baby
starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and
self-centered. He wants what he wants when he
wants it, his bottle, his mother's attention, his playmates' toys,
his uncle's watch or whatever. Deny him these things and he
sees with rage and aggressiveness, which would be murderous were
he not so helpless. He's dirty. He has no morals,
no knowledge, no developed skills. This means that all children,
not just certain children, but all children are born delinquent.
If permitted to continue in their self-centered world of infancy,
given free reign to their impulsive actions to satisfy every want,
every child would grow up a criminal, a thief, a killer, a rapist."
Minnesota Crime Convention. That's not the Book of Isaiah. That is what a secular board
determined. They said this problem is born
within, and it is. In fact, we read in Psalm 58.3
that they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. You don't have to teach a child
how to lie, do you? You parents, you know that's
true. You don't have to teach a child how to be selfish with
their toys, how to fight with their playmates, how to be greedy
and stingy, or any of those things. You sometimes wonder who taught
them those things, but it is born within them. They know all
those things. If you've ever seen an apple
with a worm in it, you probably figure there's a worm inside
of it at the time. But the truth is, the worm has
already crawled out of it. You see, the eggs are laid by
an insect there in the blossom, and the apple grows around the
worm, and the worm has to actually eat its way out of the apple,
and that's what puts the hole there. It's within already. And so it is with our sin nature,
folks. We're born with it. It is there. It is within already. The text we just read a moment
ago, it's not flattering. And people don't like to hear
it. And in most churches, you would not hear it. You would
not hear it in secular universities or the halls of higher learning.
In fact, I beg you this morning, don't walk out before we're done.
Hang in there. I think you will be encouraged
by the outcome. But this passage here talks about
our wretchedness. It really does. It was John Newton
who wrote the great hymn, Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound, that
saved a what? Wretch like me. You're looking
at a wretch. By the way, I'm looking at a
bunch of wretches right now. I'll guarantee you that. But
we are truly wretches, and that's what we see, what I call first
of all, in the universal analysis. We are all sinners. We find that
as we begin in verse number nine, Paul says, what then? Are we
better than they? Speaking of Jews being better
than Gentiles, he says, no, and no wise. For we have before proved,
both Jew and Gentiles, that they are all under sin, as it is written,
there is none righteous, no, not one, there is none that understandeth,
there is none that seeketh after God, they are all gone out of
the way, they are together become unprofitable, there is none that
doeth good, no, not one. Have you noticed some of those
terms which Paul is writing there? He says all under sin at the
end of verse number nine. He says there's none righteous
in verse number 10. No, not one. He says in verse
11, notice the word, none that understandeth. Again, none that
seeketh after God. Notice in verse 12, the word
all. They are all gone out of the way. Notice that word together.
They are together. You put them all together, they're
unprofitable. Notice in verse 12, the word
none again. And at the end of verse 12, no,
not one. He keeps saying all and none
and all together. You notice those terms. It spells
universal depravity. There are no exceptions. Why
do people do the things that they do? in the Bronx some years
ago of New York City, somebody one day pulled a fire alarm just
for kicks, and on the way to the fire the truck took a sharp
corner and one of the firemen went flying off and he was killed
in the accident. Suddenly the person who did that,
who pulled that alarm, was wanted for manslaughter. Why do people
do stuff like that? How many of you have a computer
here? How many of you have virus protection for your computer?
You should, you better. Now, why do you have to have
that? Isn't it dumb that there are people out there and they
have nothing better to do but to make these viruses and introduce
them and you have to buy this software to keep it from harming
your computer and erasing your hard drive? What's wrong with
people? Is that how they get their jollies? What's wrong with
them? Why is it that people do stuff like that? It's total depravity. I have a preacher friend on the
mission field and he had his computer stolen and years of
work with it. Now why do people steal? Why
don't they go get a job? Why don't they make money and
buy things for themselves? Why do they have to do stuff
like that? Why is it that kids take guns to school and shoot
their playmates? Why was it that back in April
of 99, I believe it was, a couple of boys by the name of Eric and
Dylan took guns to school down in greater Colorado and killed
12 of their classmates, one teacher, injured 24 others. Why do people
do stuff like that? What's the sense in that? Why
is it when you open the newspaper you read of rape and war and
murder and thievery and all kinds of crime? Why do people do stuff
like that? Well, we're sinners. You say,
well, Pastor, I don't do stuff like that. It doesn't include
me. Well, notice verse 9. Paul says, what then? Are we
better than they? No, in no wise. For we have before
proved, both Jew and Gentile, that they are all under sin. That's the universal analysis
We are all sinners. It doesn't matter. Now, the first
reaction when you address a group of people and you point out their
sin nature, they say, well, at least I'm not as bad as this
other person. And we always have somebody that
we can compare ourselves to, don't we? I'm not as bad as so-and-so. Well, in Isaiah 65.5, God says
of them, they say, "'Stand by thyself, come not near to me,
for I am holier than thou.'" God says, these are smoke in
my nose. Self-righteousness makes us think we are not as bad as
somebody else. And we get the air and the attitude,
hey, don't get too close to me. I'm holier than thou. And God
looks down and He says, oh, that is a smoke in my nose. You ever
got smoke in your nose and your eyes? That's what God sees and
thinks when He sees all that. Verse 9 here says, all are under
sin. Plain and simple. In fact, Galatians
3.22 says, but the Scripture hath concluded, all under sin. We are all sinners. In fact,
if you put everybody in the same environment with the same circumstances,
the same pressure, the same setting, the same parents, We'd be cannibals,
basically. We can look down on the aboriginals
and say, oh, look at those poor people. But it's called us in
nature. You know what Albert Einstein
had to say about this? Einstein said the real problem
is in the hearts and minds of men. It is not a problem of physics,
but of ethics. It is easier to denature plutonium
than to denounce the evil spirit of man. That's what Einstein
said. You know that even researchers
figured that out. In fact, back in the 50s, let
me just read this to you. In the 1950s, a psychologist,
Stanton Samnen, and a psychiatrist, Samuel Yackelson, sharing the
conventional wisdom that crime is caused by environment, set
out to prove their point. They began a 17-year study involving
thousands of hours of clinical testing of 250 inmates here in
the District of Columbia. To their astonishment, they discovered
that the cause of crime cannot be traced to environment, poverty,
or oppression. Instead, crime is the result
of individuals making, as they put it, wrong moral choices. Well, isn't that what God says?
It goes on. In their 1977 work, The Criminal
Personality, they concluded that the answer to crime is a conversion
of the wrongdoer to a more responsible lifestyle. In 1987, Harvard professors
James Q. Wilson and Richard J. Herrnstein
came to similar conclusions in their book, Crime and Human Nature.
They determined that the cause of crime is a lack of proper
moral training among young people during the morally formative
years, particularly ages one to six. Well, that is what God
says. That's what God has said all
along. In fact, that brings us to the very famous Romans 3.10.
Let's look at it together. It says, as it is written, there
is none righteous, no, not one. We find this universal analysis
of God. There is none righteous, no,
not one. The prophet Jeremiah put it this
way in Jeremiah 17.9, the Bible says, Who can know it? Above all things,
the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. Who can know? Who can
really understand it? Jiminy Cricket said, always let
your heart or your conscience be your guide. God says that's
folly. Who can know the heart? The heart is a liar. The heart
will mislead us. It is desperately wicked, in
fact, above all things, the Bible says. You say, well, I'm not
so bad, Pastor. Well, notice all these indictments
toward us. By the way, where we see the
words in the Bible as it is written, what are we looking at? Well, we're looking at something
that is quoting the Old Testament, right? As it is written, the
New Testament wasn't written yet. So what Paul is doing is
he's going back to the Old Testament, and he's about to quote some
things from the Old Testament. And verses 10 through 18 are
like beads on a string of a necklace. He just strings them all together,
one after another, all these Scriptures. And he cuts and he
paces them together here, and really a lot of it is actually
found in the first three verses of Psalm 14 of the Old Testament,
which says, they are corrupt, they have done abominable works,
there is none that doeth good. The Lord looked down from heaven
upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand
and seek God. they are all gone aside, they
are altogether become filthy, there is none that doeth good,
no, not one." Does that sound familiar? It's what we're reading
right here, and much of it is what Paul is quoting. Now, it's
not flattering, but let's move on. In verse number 11, There
is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after
God. None that seeketh after God.
Have you heard of being a seeker-sensitive church? Well, the Bible says
there's none that seeketh after God. And first and foremost,
Fargo Baptist Church is trying to attract God. Not people. Alright? That is our priority.
We want God to be pleased here. We just preach truth and let
God sort it out. But the second thing about being
seeker sensitive is the Bible says there's none that seeketh
after God. And Christ said, no man cometh
unto me except the Father draw him. I was talking to somebody
this last week. And it was very evident that
God was working in their heart and in their life and drawing
them. Now, God is about to peer down
from heaven and do this investigation into the heart of mankind. He's
gonna lay it out for us here. He's gonna be candid, he's going
to be blunt, he's going to be frank in his analysis, but he's
gonna be honest. And so in verse number 12, he
starts out by saying, they are all gone out of the way. They
are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good,
no, not one." Not one. He says, they've all gone out
of the way. I heard many years ago where
these shepherds in Istanbul, Turkey, were tending to their
flocks. I mean, there were hundreds of
sheep there, and they stopped to have lunch, and while they're
having lunch, one sheep went over and jumped off a cliff.
And they went, oh my, but that wasn't all. Another one followed
them, and another one followed them, and they got up and they
started to try and stop it here, but they just kept going over
the cliff, one at a time, over 1,500 of them. Over 400 of them
died in that fall. And more would have died, but
they kept landing on the pile that was getting soft and higher
by that point. But it's really a good picture
of all gone out of the way. And we find that hurt instinct
taking place. Now, in verse number 12, note those words, they're
all gone out of the way. All, all of us. And the going
out of the way here speaks of us getting off of God's course,
and it doesn't take long with human nature. Remember when God
miraculously showed the Jewish people in Egyptian bondage all
these miracles, ten of them in all. I mean, He sent blood and
frogs and lice and darkness and all these plagues upon Egypt.
And finally, the Passover takes place, and they get out of there. I mean, the Red Sea parts, God's
following them with this cloud and this fire, and they know
God's there, but what do they decide to do? to make a couple
of golden calves and worship them. And God says to Moses in
Exodus 32.8, they have turned aside quickly out of the way
which I commanded them. That's what we do. We turn aside
quickly. That's why we come to church,
by the way. It keeps us on course, even to save people. Because
as the songwriter so rightly said, prone to wander, Lord,
I feel it. I don't know about you, I feel
it. Now, we miss that point. We don't
catch that point. In fact, when it comes to sin,
we rename it. Here's what happens. Man calls
it an accident. God calls it an abomination.
Man calls it a defect. God calls it a disease. Man calls
it an error. God calls it an enmity. Man calls
it liberty. God calls it lawlessness. Man
calls it a trifle. God calls it a tragedy. Man calls
it a mistake, but God calls it madness. Man calls it weakness,
God calls it willfulness. You know what Jesus Christ said
in Matthew 15, 19? He said, for out of the heart
proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts. False witness, blasphemies, the
list goes on. That's what the Savior said.
So we see, first of all, this universal analysis. Secondly,
we see this unflattering autopsy. What God does is He just lays
out human nature here, and He does an autopsy on it. And it's
not flattering. And it's taken from Psalm 5,
it's taken from Psalm 10, Psalm 14, Psalm 36, Psalm 140, it's
taken from Isaiah 59. And the point that God is trying
to make here is what the Jewish people, who are so self-righteous
and always justifying themselves, and he was trying to tell them
through this passage, no, you are equally dependent upon my
grace. You are equally dependent upon my mercy. You are no less
sinners than the Gentiles. And so he lays it out for him
here. And he gives him a number of issues that we have. He starts
with the head. He mentions four things and he
doesn't even leave the head. Notice the first part of verse
13. Their throat is an open sepulcher. That's a grave, an open grave. And with their tongues they have
used deceit. The poison of asps is under their
lips. So he says here, you have issues. He speaks here, first of all,
of a flattering tongue. And he speaks here of really
the two-faced nature that we often have. You say, well, I'm
not a two-faced person, aren't you? Aren't you really? You married
people here, have you ever been in a tiff and a spat and kind
of ragging on each other? And all of a sudden the phone
rang. and you answer the phone, hello? Oh, yes, oh yes, we're planning on
being there, you know, and we can just like flip a switch.
Flattering tongue. Two-face. Then it mentions in
verse number 13, the poison of asps is under their lips. An asp is an adder. An adder
is a poisonous snake. And that snake was found in those
parts, especially in Egypt and Libya, it was sand-colored. And
along the sandy roads of that region of the world, the Middle
East, that snake would hang out there and a passerby would walk
through and get bit on the leg and it was like a two-stepper.
You were dead instantly if you got bit by that asp. In fact,
Cleopatra did not want to be taken hostage by Augustus back
to Rome, and so according to history, she allowed an asp to
bite her on the arm, and she died very quickly. In fact, did
you know that Jesus Christ compares sinners to snakes? In Matthew
23 and verse 33, He says, Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers,
how can ye escape the damnation of hell? That's not flattering,
is it? To be compared to a snake. Well,
it goes on in verse number 14. It says, Whose mouth is full
of cursing and bitterness. Yikes! We're not even below the
head yet. It's still up in the head and it mentions this mouth
that is full of cursing and bitterness. You ever curse? Now don't answer
that out loud. It's become an American pastime,
hasn't it? Our favorite indoor sport. And
we've just gotten used to it. Everybody curses. You hear it
on TV. You hear it at the office. It's
no biggie anymore. Everybody just cusses. But did
you know what Christ said in Matthew 12, 36? He said, Imagine
that being replayed, that blasphemy, that cussing, that blue streak,
that blue smoke in the air when you get done, using the mouth
God gave you to pray with, to cuss with instead. By the
way, the third commandment, God says, thou shalt not take the
name of the Lord thy God in vain. Do you take God's name in vain?
You know that passage goes on and God says, I will not hold
him guiltless that taketh my name in vain. That is all being
recorded. And God says, I will not hold
him guiltless that does that. You know, you find the apostle
here, and he's quoting Psalm 10 and verse 7. He says, his
mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud, and under his
tongue is mischief in vanity. That tongue can be such a mischievous
thing. In fact, verse 14 mentions bitterness,
which leads to gossip. We ever guilty of gossip? Do
we ever malign somebody? Do we ever spread the manure,
as I would often put it, of gossip? Because that's really what it
is. It's talking down somebody else. It's poisoning the mind
of somebody about this other person over here by slandering
them and defaming them and vilifying them. It's a poisoning of the
mind, the whispering, the spreading of gossip. And the sad thing
about gossip, folks, is once it's out there, it does keep
spreading. There was a country church years ago with a pastor
and his wife who were gossiped about by a lady in the church.
She was saying all kinds of terrible things. And finally, it caused
some real trouble. It split the church, and she
came to the pastor's house. He lived out in the country there
on a farm, and she said, I didn't realize it would do that much
damage. I'm sorry for what I did. He detected she wasn't real repentant
about it. He said, well, you've apologized,
and that's all well and fine. But let me show you the result
of gossip. And he reached into the chicken's
den there, and he pulled out a couple of handfuls of feather,
and it was a windy day, and he threw the feathers in the air,
and they just scattered everywhere, hundreds of them. And he said,
now ma'am, you need to go try and pick those all up, recover
all those. And she went, it's impossible. And he said, so it is with gossip.
It just spreads like that, and afterwards it's impossible to
fix the damage that is done by gossip. God help us with this. Guard that tongue. We read in
James chapter 3 and verse number 8 that the tongue can no man
tame. It is an unruly evil full of
poison. And it is. Now we leave the head
and we actually move on to some action here, all right? Notice
in verse number 15, it says their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in
their ways. We find here the Apostle Paul,
he's actually quoting from Isaiah 59.7, which says, "...their feet
run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood. Their
thoughts are thoughts of iniquity, wasting and destruction are in
their paths. The way of peace they know not."
And again, we find this unflattering autopsy, but it's our nature.
It's our nature. We're born with that nature.
You know, if you took a lion and you let him into a cage and
there was a big slab of raw meat over here and there was a pile
of grain over there, where would he go? Well, it's a no-brainer. He has no interest in that pile
of grain. He would go straight for the
meat. That's His nature. There's that inward nature, that
inward brutality, if you will. And so there is with us. You
know, the problem is, we can become accustomed to it. And
our conscience can become seared over a period of time. You've
heard of Blackbeard. He was an actual person. He was
actually a pirate who robbed and plundered and murdered on
the open seas. And finally he was caught and
he was brought to trial in New York, and there on trial he admitted
that when he plundered his first ship as a young sailor, when
he shot and killed his first victim, he said he couldn't eat
for days. He went for nights without sleeping.
It bothered him so. But he continued to do it, and
do it, and do it. And in time, he said, I could
plunder, and murder, and pillage, and commit all kinds of atrocities,
and go have a big meal afterwards, and go to bed after that, and
sleep like a baby. What happened? his conscience
became seared and hardened and defiled and even deadened. And
these are words that the Bible uses. You know, how could it
be that Roman citizens could go to the Colosseum and they
could watch these gladiators come out who had been fed this
succulent diet to enlarge their veins and make them bleed more
and watch them kill each other person after person by the hundreds. And here would be these delicate
women cheering for this sort of thing. They're in the Colosseum.
Well, they'd gotten calloused. How could it be that a little
delicate, dimpled girl with pigtails and a dolly in her hand would
go skipping into the Colosseum to watch this kind of stuff go
on? Well, they had gotten hardened as a society. You know, if God
wasn't on this earth right now, if the Spirit of God was not
restraining evil, You couldn't believe what it'll be like. In
fact, during the tribulation period, a seven-year bloodbath
on this earth, a time of chaos, the Holy Spirit is going to be
lifted, according to 2 Thessalonians 2. And the restraining that He's
now doing won't take place anymore. The Spirit of God will leave
with the rapture of the saints, and this earth, I'm telling you,
it'll be an ugly place to live at that time, and you'll really
see human nature. You know, we had a missionary
last Sunday stand in this pulpit from the Philippines, and he
said, over there you can hire a hitman for as little as $50.
I was telling this preacher down here about this last week. He
said, oh, I know a guy over in the Philippines. He was a hitman. He said, I must have killed over
a hundred men. for 50 bucks. Can you imagine that? Imagine
what it's going to be like during the tribulation period when God's
not around anymore. This society is going to get
its wish. They want God out of the picture. Well, they're going
to get Him out of the picture eventually, and they're not going to like
it. Now, we find in verses 15 and 16, it says their feet are
swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in
their ways. And then notice verse 17, and
the way of peace. have they not known? The way
of peace have they not known? They cannot keep the peace. You know anyone like that? Troublemakers. They like to stir it up. Christ
said, blessed are the peacemakers. But they're troublemakers. You
know what's sad is you find them even in churches, don't you?
Troublemakers within good churches. You hear about the church that
had a revival service, and afterwards the pastor and his assistant
were talking it over, and the assistant said, Oh, we had great
victories! We added three families to the church! And the preacher
spoke up and he said, Yeah, and we got rid of four. It was a
revival. There are some troublemakers
you don't even want them around anymore. You know, Paul mentioned
Alexander the coppersmith, didn't he? John mentioned Diotrephes. Even in Bible times, they had
him. Somebody said most trouble is
produced by those who don't produce anything else. Isn't that the
truth? When it's within a church, the
troublemakers that are producing the trouble normally aren't producing
anything else. We read this, 2 Timothy 2.23,
it says, But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that
they do Gender strifes. Think of that expression. You
know what it means to gender and strifes. There are those
who gender strifes. It is hard to go forward in a
church with troublemakers within a local church. I was talking
to the preacher down here this last week about how as a church
grows, changes are necessary. It has to happen. And there are
those who resist that progress. I'm not talking about bad changes.
I'm not talking about changing the truth. We have the same truth
we've had here for decades. But having to make those adjustments
in order to go higher and forward, and there are some that just
hate it. They hate the changes. Woodrow Wilson said, if you want
to make enemies, try to change something. Isn't that the truth?
And we might have them here. You're stuck in the 90's or something,
and you're just stewing about these changes around here. God
help you. God help you to get on board.
And God help you not to be a troublemaker. We need to go forward. You ought
to be thankful you are in a growing church, in a nation where most
of them are going in the opposite direction. Don't get to heaven
before you realize, boy, we had something special there. Get
on board. Pull on this end of the rope.
Get with us here. We're trying to go forward and
get something done for God. Now, we might not agree on everything,
and as I said this last week, we might be brothers, but we're
not identical brothers. We're not twin brothers, right?
And we don't have to be. I'm okay with that. You know,
two Christians are better than one, when they're one. when they're
one, when they're on the same page. You know what Vance Havner
said, that preacher of yesteryears? He said, Christians are like
snowflakes. He said, they're frail by themselves,
but you put them together, and if they stick together, they
can stop traffic. And how true that is. God help
us as a church to be on the same page. Paul here is using some
strong language. And by the way, he's quoting
David, he's quoting Isaiah. These were heroes of the Jews,
and he's making his point. There's this universal analysis. It's not flattering. It's an
unflattering autopsy. And thirdly, we see what I call
the unfortunate assumption. This is where most people arrive
at. He moves on in verse number 19, and he says, Now we know
that what thinks whoever the law saith, it saith to them who
are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all
the world may become guilty before God. But, but, but, I'm a good
person. Every mouth stop. But, but, but,
I go to church. Every mouth stop. But, but, but,
I've been baptized. Every mouth stop. But I help
little old ladies across the street. And I buy Girl Scout
cookies. And I do all these good things.
And the Bible says every mouth needs to be stopped and all the
world become guilty. before God. God says that self-righteousness
needs to stop. Why is it that people are self-righteous?
Well, normally because they're comparing themselves to somebody
else. There is always somebody worse than us, isn't there? There
is always somebody that we can look down on. And so we compare
ourselves to somebody else. And the Bible says in 2 Corinthians
10, that's not wise. They comparing themselves among
themselves are not wise. That's what the Pharisee did
when he went into the temple with the publican. You remember
the story? And he said, Lord, I thank you that I'm not like
that guy. What a loser. What a zero with the ring rubbed
out. What a sinner. And the publican
actually is the one who repented and got right there in the temple
and left converted. Psalm 143 verse 2, we read the
psalmist saying, No man living shall be justified
before God. The psalmist says, I don't want
to enter into judgment with you, Lord. In your sight, nobody could
be justified. And that's it. We all have issues.
Now notice verse number 19. It says, Now we know that what
thingsoever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the
law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become
guilty before God. Notice that word guilty. That
means subject to the judgment of God in the Greek. Guilty and
subject to the judgment of God. That is the thought that this
world hates. And that is the fact they're
accountable to God. The whole issue is accountability
to God. This whole evolution issue, that is man doing anything
he can to explain away God so he doesn't have to stand before
Him one day in his own mind. The so-called free thinkers,
the humanism, all that, it really boils down to an accountability
issue. I don't want to have to answer
to God and stand guilty before God one day. That is the hardness
of the human heart. One of my best friends after
I got saved, I went back to them and I witnessed to them. I was
talking about Revelation 4.11 where it mentions that we were
created for God's glory and pleasure. And boy, he stopped me and he
said, wait a minute, are you telling me that I'm just some
creation of God like a chess piece that God's going to move
around? And I thought to myself, what a hard heart. I have seen
the meat get ugly when you bring up this thought of accountability
and standing guilty before God. That's what verse number 19 says.
Now, it mentions here the law, and the law is the Ten Commandments,
but it's so many other commandments, hundreds of commandments. It's
really talking about God's moral conduct that He wants us to live
by. And it mentions here that through that law, God's holiness
is revealed and our sinfulness is revealed. And that's the purpose
of the law. Notice in verse 20, it adds, Therefore, by the deeds
of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in his or God's
sight, For by the law is the knowledge of sin. Now here's
where 95% of all religion errors. I mean, be it Buddhism, or Hinduism,
or Islam, or most of Christianity, here's where 95 plus percent
of all religion errors. And in verse number 20, it puts
its finger on it. They never tell their followers
that they cannot work their way to God. And so that's, by human
nature, what man is trying to do. They're trying to earn their
way to heaven. You ever think about how futile
this really is? I mean, just stop and look at
the Ten Commandments. The first commandment, have you ever put
anything ahead of God? A person, a relationship, money,
a business? Whatever. I mean, your life revolves
around it. You're into it. And God's kind
of on the back burner. I think we're all guilty of that.
We've also all concocted this God of our own imagination, one
that lives by our standards. We reinvent God, and we have
this God that pleases us. And a good God wouldn't send
anyone to hell, and you're going to tell me that God would do
this. We're inventing God in our mind. That's a violation
of the second commandment. I mentioned the third already,
taking God's name in vain. How about always honoring the
Lord's Day? Have we always done that? We've
blown that one, there's the fourth. How about honoring our parents?
Have you always honored your parents immediately? Fully? Have you always been obedient?
You ever had an attitude? Of course you have. So you've
messed up on the fifth commandment. How about ever hating somebody? Ever done that? Ever gotten mad
at somebody? Maybe you're bitter towards somebody
even right now? Well, you've broken the sixth
commandment. You committed murder of the heart, according to Christ.
How about lusting after the opposite sex? Have you ever done that?
Christ calls it adultery of the heart, and it's the seventh commandment.
You've broken that one, I'm sure. How about stealing, taking something
that wasn't yours? Maybe too long of a coffee break,
or a lunch break, or even a paper clip from the office, or some
rubber bands, or a pen, or whatever. We've all stolen something. What
about that ninth commandment? How shall not bear false witness?
You ever told a lie? Of course you have. Yet, the
Bible says all liars shall have their part in the lake that burneth
with fire and brimstone. We call them little white lies,
don't we? They're serious. God's going to hold us accountable
to them. How about coveting? You ever wanted something you
didn't have? Lusted after something you didn't have? You've broken
that 10th commandment as well. Now you say, well I haven't broken
all of them. It only takes one actually. Like the links of a
chain. How many chain links do you have
to break if you're hanging over a cliff by 10 chain links? Only
one, right? And James tells us, whosoever
is guilty of one is guilty of all, they're a unit. And so we
stand guilty before God. The purpose of the law, don't
get me wrong, the purpose of the law is not to drive man to
self-improvement. Well, I'll just start going to
church then. I'll just start buying Girl Scout cookies and
helping little old ladies across the street and doing all kinds
of nice deeds. No, no. No, the purpose of the
law is not to drive us to self-improvement. That's where most people go wrong.
That's what most religion teaches. That's not what the Bible teaches
at all. The purpose of the law is to show us what sinners we
are. and how serious sin really is. It's no wonder that Ephesians
2.8 says, For by grace are you saved through faith, and that
not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, and not
of works, lest any man should boast. You want to be saved?
You want to know for sure you're going to heaven when you die?
Well, it's through faith, not of yourselves. It's the gift
of God. What do you do with a gift? You
receive it. You don't try and earn it. It's
not of works. lest any man should boast. In
fact, we read in Titus 3.5, not by works of righteousness which
we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us. Not by works, but by mercy. And then Galatians 2.16, couldn't
say it any clearer, knowing that a man is not justified by the
works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. For by
the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. You know, God is trying to show
us our need. That's why He mentions all these
things here in Romans chapter 3. He's not trying to rub our
nose in it. He's trying to wake us up and
show us what we're like and get us to admit it so that we can
do something about it. That is the whole purpose of
it. We have a sinful nature. And ten commandments aside, we're
selfish, aren't we? We are stubborn, aren't we? We
get angry, don't we? We're greedy. We're jealous. We're manipulative. What about
our thoughts? We have 10,000 thoughts a day,
according to researchers, and not all of them very good, are
they? You know, Robert Louis Stevenson years ago wrote a classic
novel, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. You remember
that? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll was a respectable physician,
but he invented this serum that when he drank it, he turned to
this awful person, he called him Mr. Hyde. Mr. Hyde was a
crook, he was a thief, he was even a murderer. And Dr. Jekyll got to where he liked
stepping out and being Mr. Hyde. But he kept doing it and
going back and forth and finally he couldn't control it anymore.
And his evil side dominated him. There was a French preacher years
ago speaking to King Louis XIV, and he was talking about what
Paul had to say here in this passage, and these two natures,
and he said, it's like these two men within us. And the king
stopped him and he said, ah, ah, those two men. I know them
well. I know them well. Do you know
them well? I know them well. You know, Mark
Twain was right when he said, we're all like the moon. We all
have our dark side, don't we? We all have that secret side,
if you will, which leads us to our need for a Savior. That is
the whole point of what Paul is saying here. The Apostle Paul
is laying this broad, this deep foundation. He's leading up to
justification. That's what he's going to get to eventually in
free grace. But he lays this foundation showing us why we
need that grace. Think about it. If you could
earn your way to heaven, and you can't, you ought to know
by now it's impossible, but if you even could, why did Jesus
Christ bother even coming to this earth and shedding blood
and dying for your sins? Salvation is the gift of God.
We just have to admit we're sinners. The work's been done, the price
has been paid, the blood has been shed. We simply need to
put our faith and our trust in what Christ did on Calvary's
cross, in a heart of repentance, turning from sin, with a heart
of faith to the Savior, calling upon Him and asking Him to save
us, and being what the Bible calls, born again. Born again. Jesus Christ came to our rescue
when we were in dire straits. There was a man in his, I suppose,
late twenties. He owned this big, huge snake,
and why he did, I don't know. But he kept it in this big glass
aquarium-type thing, and he'd feed it with raw meat from his
own table. And one day he was at the pet
store, And he bought a white mouse. He said, this will be
a real treat for my snake. So he brought this white mouse
home, and while the snake was sleeping, he carefully laid it
in the box there that the aquarium was holding the snake within.
Of course, that poor little mouse there, he looked around, he realized
the condition he's in, but the snake was asleep. And you know
what that mouse began to do? He began to take the wood chips
in the cage there, and he began to heap them up on that big old
snake. And he went back and forth, up
and down that snake, heaping up this pile of sawdust there,
until finally, he had covered the snake over. And in his mind,
now he's safe, right? Well, the owner of the snake,
in pity, saw what the mouse was doing. He took pity on the mouse,
realizing that snake would awake at any moment, shake that sawdust
off, and swallow that mouse alive. The owner reached down and he
pulled the white mouse out, and he didn't go through with it.
But what a picture of what sinners try to do, isn't it? I mean,
there's sin like a snake, and we try to just heap sawdust over
the top of it. Now it's out of sight and out
of mind. We're okay. It's pitiful. It really is. What
is salvation? It is God reaching down into
that snake pen and pulling us up like He did the white mouse.
That's what He did for me on March 5th, 1981. It was a Thursday
night in Crookston, Minnesota, and I'll never forget it, when
God reached down by His grace, when I called upon Him, and He
saved me. I was born again. You know what's
amazing in all of this? God knows how depraved we are.
God's aware of all of our sinful nature, and in spite of that,
in spite of that, He still loves us. We read in John 3.16, For
God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting
life. God loves you. If you have never
been saved, it's not automatic. You go, I was born in America,
this is a Christian country. I was raised in a Christian home.
I've grown up hearing the gospel. I'm a Christian. No, it's not
automatic. It's not automatic. It is a gift. It starts with
taking our depravity by the horns, and recognizing it, and repenting,
and receiving the grace of God. Have you done that? You've been listening to Pastor
Tony Skeving of the Fargo Baptist Church in Fargo, North Dakota.
If you would like a CD of today's message, you can obtain one by
sending a gift of $2 to Fargo Baptist Church, 3303 23rd Avenue
South, Fargo, North Dakota, 58103. That address again, Fargo Baptist
Church, 3303 23rd Avenue South Fargo, North
Dakota 58103. We hope you'll join Pastor Skeving
next time right here on Pulpit Power. Pulpit Power is a production
of Heaven 88.7.
Taking Depravity By The Horns
Series Book Of Romans
| Sermon ID | 54141531122 |
| Duration | 46:51 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Psalm 58:3; Romans 3:9-20 |
| Language | English |
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