20. So, our text is Romans chapter 3, verses 10 through 20, which says this, As it is written, none is righteous, no, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. and their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. you may be seated. As we look at this text this morning, I've entitled it, Why Faith Alone? That we in our Protestant congregations If we remember where we started with the Protestant Reformation, that really this idea of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, was really when the battle cries of the Protestant Reformation. And we do believe that we're saved by faith alone, not by works. And so really as we look here at Romans chapter 3 verses 10 through 12, this will be kind of a, I hope to some extent, somewhat of a, you might call it a theological sermon from this passage. Because the book of Romans is such a beautiful theological work. Most pastors love the book of Romans because it's a systematic theology to some extent in the entire Bible. Which makes sense. With the context of the book of Romans, Paul is writing this book of Romans to this church in Rome, where Paul apparently has never been. Apparently someone else started the church here in Rome. Paul has heard about their faithfulness. In fact, he tells them, everyone has heard about your faithfulness. And he's writing this letter with the hopes of coming to visit them. But imagine Paul, the great missionary, the great apostle. He started most of the churches, and most of the churches he goes to, he makes sure they have good sound doctrine, because he's the one who's taught them about Christ. And so, he is writing this book of Romans to this church in Rome, I would say to some extent, to make sure that they at least have the basics. And the book of Romans is a beautiful, very systematic, very organized summation of really what the Bible teaches. Here in Romans chapter 3, you see Paul summing up an idea. In Romans chapter 1, Paul has shown how mostly the Gentiles, who may even be religious, And God has revealed Himself to everyone through creation and natural revelation to where everyone is without excuse. No one can say, I had no idea that there was a God. But then Paul goes on in Romans chapter 1 to go, with this revelation, man in his sinfulness has simply turned it into idolatry. In fact, he uses the terminology, they suppress the truth in unrighteousness. And they turn to man-made things, rather than the one who has made all things. And so in Romans chapter 1, Paul basically states, the Gentile world is lost, whether without excuse, Their sinfulness and their sinful nature makes them twist and pervert the truth, and they're judged because of it. And then Paul turns to Romans chapter 2. And again, imagine this congregation in Rome, a mixed congregation of Jews and Gentiles. And when this first part is being read, the Jewish part of the congregation is probably nodding their heads, going, uh-huh, you Gentiles, you dirty Gentiles. And then this letter written by Paul, first chapter here, this first section, it wouldn't have been broken down in the letter, but the first section points to the Gentiles, you are without excuse and without hope. And then he turns to the Jews in chapter 2, and he says, you're no better. In fact, to some extent, you are worse off. Because while you have been given all these blessings, you've been given the Word of God, you've been given the Law, You don't do them. And so the Jews, religious people who've been given the Word of God, they're condemned. And then here in Romans chapter 3, you have this section here. Paul sums up his idea in this. We're all condemned. This is a great little passage on the theological topic of depravity of man. I almost entitled this sermon this. I've got good news. You're worse than you think you are, which doesn't usually sound like good news. But I remember when I was in college, I went to NC State. I was a science major. Started off pre-vet. I was going to be a veterinarian, and then changed to pre-med. So I was taking all the science classes. And I enjoy science. I like knowing how things work. I think it's fascinating. didn't enjoy organic chemistry quite as much as I enjoyed the other stuff. And after I fought my way through organic chemistry one and then organic chemistry two, then I had this great gift of biochemistry, which was organic chemistry on steroids. And I remember sitting halfway through the semester going, there is no way I'm going to pass this class. In fact, I'm embarrassed to admit it in front of you, but as I looked at my average, I had about a 49. I was like, there is no way I can pass this class. But I've been taught by my father, you do not quit. And so I couldn't just quit. So I set up an appointment with the professor so that he could tell me to quit. Because I can't quit, but I want to go to the professor because this was a tough class. Every night, studying hours, poring over this difficult, difficult course of biochemistry. And I had other difficult courses, physics and other things I was taking at the same time. I was tired. And so I set up this appointment with the professor so I could meet with him, go to my grades. Really what I wanted to hear was this. There is no way you're going to pass this class. And so you should drop out. It's too late to drop, but we had at NC State, you had three courses or three chances. You could drop a course without penalty, take it again the next semester, and that grade would count for you. So I figured this was going to be one of my drop classes. Met with a professor, went over my grades, and he gave me horrible news. Horrible news was this. He said, well, Mr. Lee, actually compared to the rest of your class, you're not doing so bad. And according to the curve, you could actually pass this class. And I was like, I did not say this to him, of course, but that's horrible. Now I have to keep working so hard because I can actually pass the class. There's hope. And so it was an exhausting semester. I did pass the class. Thank you. But it was exhausting. I wanted to be able to quit. But my professor told me, nope, you actually are doing not too bad compared to everyone else in this course. And with the curve of everyone's grades put together in average, you're actually passing the class. So I couldn't quit. But it got me on the hamster wheel, working and working and working and working to pass. And I did scrape by. But it was difficult. We do that sometimes as Christians. You know, we have this idea that God saves us from our sins. But He saves us from mostly past sins. Or, God likes this idea of faith, and if I work up faith enough, faith is like divine currency. Or perhaps he eats this stuff. I don't know, but he really likes faith. And so if I give him faith, what does faith look like? Well, I can't really get my hands on it very much. So faith looks like worship. It looks like tithing. It looks like service. We do good things for people. I teach a Sunday school class. It looks like attendance in church. It's horrible when church is empty. God doesn't like that. I'll put my butt down there. It looks like doing stuff. That's what faith looks like. And if I do enough of this, enough of emotions for God, that's what faith looks like, emotions. If I do enough of this stuff that He likes, then He'll like me back. And I'll be in right relationship with Him. It's called the hamster wheel. That I will work and work and work and work. And if I work hard enough, He will find me pleasing enough to want me to enter Heaven. That is man's default religion. If you look at every religion on the face of the planet, that is the formula for salvation. You do what God or the gods want you to do enough. And then the God or the gods will accept you into their presence. That's the formula of salvation for every religion on the face of the planet. And if we're not careful as Christians, Remember, a default is what you go to when you're not thinking. When I don't know what to do, I go to my default. If it's our built-in default religion, we go back to that when we're not thinking. We go back to that when we're not going in the right direction, we slide into our default or our rut or what we basically have inside. Romans 3, that beautiful passage. Kills us of that. Because it shows us really what the problem is. We're trying to solve the problem. The problem is, I understand from Scripture I'm not right with God, so how do I get right with God? Do better, do better, do better. Romans 3 tells us really what the problem is. What the solution is. And then, I know this is not a snappy little outline, but really, why this solution? Let's look at the first part. Now, lots of times we feel like the problem is that I don't do enough good things for God, and so I solve that problem by doing more good things for God. That's really not the problem. The problem's me. And if you're the problem, then you can't be the solution. You know, this idea of salvation by faith alone. It is the turning point. Justification, how we're made right with God, is the turning point of the whole Protestant Reformation. And really, the Protestant Reformation, they said, we're not coming up with any new ideas. We're simply going back to original Christianity. They quoted St. Augustine a lot. They quoted Paul and the Bible a lot. You know, the Reformation, it was a going back. What did the Scripture say? How was man saved? And if you get this idea, especially in our Reformed churches where, you know, sometimes we call it the frozen chosen. But sometimes, some groups, especially if you're not Reformed, and if you're not, I don't know all of you here, some of you perhaps come from a background where you don't even know what this Reformed Presbyterian idea is, well then bear with me. Sometimes people give Presbyterians and Reformed people a hard time in that, you know, you think that we're so bad. And you think that you're the only ones who get chosen. They don't like this idea of election or predestination because it sounds so cold, so hard, so unloving, brutal even. God doesn't just offer salvation to everybody. Actually, yes, He does. But everyone doesn't have an equal chance of choosing after God. Actually, they do. The difficulty... Maybe that's not the right terminology. The easy thing. Let's do it that way. Let's go for something easy. If you can get this idea of depravity of man, then Reformed theology, especially dealing with soteriology, makes sense. Because it makes it necessary. In fact, every time I'm arguing with someone, and hopefully they're nice arguments, But people who don't come from a Reformed theological background, I always pivot back to this one point, total depravity. Because if you get to that point, you know, whether you want to just talk about election, God choosing us rather than us choosing God. If you want to get a little more theological and talk about the five points of Calvinism with tulip. If you can get the tea of tulip, Total depravity. All the rest of them make total sense and are necessary. If you get T, total depravity, then you have to believe in unconditional election or unmerited grace. You have to believe in limited atonement, or at least it makes Sense, you have to believe in, oh, I just lost it. Unmerited favor, unconditional election, T-U-L-I-O. Irresistible grace, thank you. Some people were mouthing it to me. It's really a spelling problem, not a theological problem. And then perseverance. The saints, they make total sense. Good news is you're worse than you think. What's the problem according to Romans chapter 3? The problem is us. The problem is in the fall of mankind, when Adam sinned and rebelled against the righteous king, he fell from grace and it affected his very nature. And Romans 3 here in these passages 10 through 20 sum up what our natural, apart from a supernatural work in the Holy Spirit on us, but our natural state nature is and has fallen. And what about it is fallen? Total depravity does not mean that you're as bad as you could be. I assume that everyone here is not a serial killer. It's an assumption because I don't know you. But I would say I'm pretty safe with that assumption. You're assuming I'm not, that I don't have a trunk, a body in the trunk of my car. I don't, but it's an assumption. Total depravity does not mean you're as bad as you could be. But it does mean this, that sin has corrupted every aspect of you. And what is you? What are you? We are thinking beings. Especially creating the image of God. We think, we create, we do things, we think about things the rest of creation does not. We are thinking beings, our minds. But we're not just minds. We're also feeling beings. Emotions we love, we hate. We have these emotions within us. We're also doing beings. Our will, choosing, acting, etc. That's what we are as human beings. The fall of mankind has affected every aspect of that. Notice how beautifully Paul sums up these three ideas. Mind, heart, and will. That the mind has fallen. Romans chapter 3 verse 10. None is righteous, no not one. So he's summing up what he talked about in chapters 1 and 2. Jews are not righteous. Gentiles are not righteous. There is none righteous, no not one. And then he breaks up the parts of us. No one understands. It doesn't mean that you're not intelligent. I assume y'all are intelligent people. It's not that we can't do science and math. We have these wonderful feats over creation. We have, even with the dominion mandate, can science, I love science, the things we can figure out and do. We've gone to the moon. It's not that we don't think. It's not that you're stupid. But that your mind has fallen. We discovered the basic building blocks of matter, atoms. And what did we do with it? We made atom bombs. ways to destroy the entire world. We are very intelligent. Think about the internet. We found a way to get information, the world's information at your fingertips. I can pick up a phone, my smartphone, and I can look up practically anything. I do it all the time. I'm driving the car, I'm curious about something. I just do a little Google search for those with Apple. You're God's Siri, you ask a question to and you, you know, get an answer to it. We come up with these wonderful inventions and then what do we do with it? We use it for corruption. For destruction. Most searches on computers are for pornography nowadays. We come up with these wonderful ways to keep in touch with people. Facebook. A recent statistic, vast majority of affairs happen over Facebook. Get in touch with an old girlfriend, an old boyfriend from high school, and that's how you get in touch with each other to destroy your life and your marriage, etc. It's not that we're not intelligent, it's that we take that intelligence and it is twisted and corrupted for the use of sin. The mind is fallen. It's not that we don't think, it's that we don't think rightly. And some might say, alright, with the mind, I understand, it doesn't always think the way it should. But the heart is good. Romanticism. The heart wants what the heart wants. Just follow your heart. Every Disney movie, follow your heart. Your heart can lead you to dark places. Notice here as Paul, the mind has fallen, there's no one who understands. Also in verse 10, there's no one who seeks God. You seek after that which you want. If I want an ice cream cone, I will find myself an ice cream cone. We seek after that which we want, don't we? And Paul is saying here, no one seeks after God. Why? Because they don't want Him? Even if a person was to understand intellectually, there is a God, because I didn't make all this stuff. There is order to the universe. I didn't put things in order. That the simple DNA helix is so complicated for even the most simple organism that the statistical chances of it coming to being, we're not going to talk about it coming to being from what. How did stuff get here? But even if stuff was here, which, impossible. But from that impossibility, we'll go to the other impossibility. It's like if you were to get all the pieces for a Cadillac. Bolts and screws and wires, and here's a light bulb for a headlight, and here's cans of paint, and here, you throw in all the pieces and put it in a big metal box with a mechanical shaker to it, and you shake all these raw pieces around. You can do it for a billion years. I'll give you two. In fact, you take as much time as you want. You can have as much time as you want to shake all those raw pieces around. Nuts and bolts, maybe even some pieces and panels, raw materials, shake them around. And how long will it take you to shake it until you have a fully functioning Cadillac? Because every piece has got to work together in order to make it fully function. you shake it, 10 billion trillion years, there will never be a shake that makes all the pieces come together and we have a full functioning Cadillac, we can just drive out. Watson and Crick who came up with the came up with the fact that DNA is this double helix strand and it's the basic building block of all cells, the code for how cells work. realized that it is so complicated, it is impossible for it to happen by chance. Brilliant scientists. And they went from that step to go, well, since it didn't happen by chance, aliens must have come down and seeded the ocean with DNA. They didn't go from the fact that this could not have happened by chance, there must be a Creator. They take that step and then go into another falsehood of aliens must have come down and seeded the oceans with DNA to get things started. Where did the aliens come from? I don't know. But that doesn't take them to truth. The mind has fallen and the heart has fallen. I will seek after that which I most want. We believe, to a large extent, what we want to believe. And then even if my mind were able to comprehend truth, and even my heart wanted that truth, my will is fallen. I have to grab hold of that truth. I have to bend the knee to one true King. I have to do what He requires, faith. And then Paul goes on here to say, In verse 12, all have turned aside, together they have become worthless. There is no one who does good. Your will is your doing factor. You do what your will chooses to do. And there is no one who does good, says Paul. Why is that? Because our wills are fallen. Sometimes, I remember a friend of mine going, you're really going to tell me that no one does good. The person who gives a million dollars to charity, that that's not good? It's not bad. You know, helping the poor is not a bad thing. Serving others is not bad. But to quote a great Puritan, that which is not done to the glory of God, even our best deeds, and the best things we do, if it's not done to the glory of God, it is but a glorious sin. Because the point of it is me. Many people give millions of dollars to charity. They serve the poor, all these wonderful things. And those in and of themselves, that act is not a bad act. But when the motive of the act is not the glory of God, which is the greatest good, when He's not the focus of it, then what is the focus? Well, the focus has to be me. It's self-idolatry. It makes me feel good. It makes me look good. It's a good tax write-off. It gives me a good reputation with those around me. It makes me look good. I'm the focus. It's idolatry. It's but a glorious sin. Again, not that the act in and of itself is not a good act, but when the motive behind it is me, it's idolatry. Again, to quote the Puritan, it's but a glorious sin. As the prophet Isaiah said, even our most righteous deeds are like filthy rags before God. Because they're never 100% pure. No one does good. Not true good. And God who created all things, who is all righteousness, all glory, all rightness, gets to define what good is. Think about those billboards you see. I remember driving by a Unitarian church not too long ago, and they had the billboards up with a big rainbow flag, love is love. I remember driving by and asking my youngest daughter, love is love. What's the problem with that? Because love is love. And so I asked my daughter, where's the error? And she thought for a moment, she's pretty clever. She went, oh, they're defining what love is. I went, that's right. Who gets to define what love is? God does. He's made all things. He owns everything. He is the author of all truth. He gets to define what love is. He gets to define what truth is, what righteousness is. He is truth itself. He never lies. And He gets to define these things. What is the problem? The problem is us. My mind is fallen. There's none who understands. My heart is fallen. There's none who seeks after God. My will is fallen. There's none who does good. The good news is you're worse than you thought. You could never pass this class. You could never, in and of yourself, muster up enough good to make God anywhere close to you, even your best deeds are but glorious sins. What does the law do? It condemns us. Why? Because it shows us, to quote John Calvin, the law is but a mirror by which we see ourselves rightly, and I'm not nearly as pretty as I thought I was. It condemns us because if you don't obey the law perfectly, then you are a law breaker and thus unrighteous. And no one does the law perfectly. That's why no one will be justified by works of the law. So if that's my problem, and it is a deep hole that you will never in and of yourself get out of, what's our solution? My problem is I don't have righteousness. What's my solution? God provides righteousness. God has provided a salvation for us that we could never earn ourselves. He has done what we could never do ourselves. He's provided salvation and he also has changed us within our minds, our hearts, our wills by which we would lay hold of him. You know, Paul says here, there's none who understands. Really? I think I understand there's a God. I assume you believers, you Christians, you children of God go, I do understand there's a God. I do understand I'm a sinner. I do understand my need of him. I thought it says I don't understand. God not only provides a salvation for us, but He provides a work within us by the Holy Spirit by which we now can do something we could never do before. It's called regeneration, a new birth. He changes our mind by which I understand not only there's a God in heaven, but I need Him. Not only does He change your heart from stone, but He gives a heart of flesh, as says Ezekiel, that beats as alive. I not only know there's a God, but I want Him. I want a right relationship with Him. And then He changes our will by which we bend the knee to the one true King. You are God. What would you have me do? We delight in His Word and His Law. Our lives are changed. I want to obey. Not perfectly. But obedience, it's good. The solution is found in God. Romans 3 verse 21, a little farther from what we read, but Romans 3 verse 21 says, The righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, because we can't do the law. Although the law and prophets bear witness to it. Verse 22. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. I need righteousness, but I can't do righteousness, because my mind has fallen, my heart has fallen, my will has fallen, I'm worse than I think, I'm lost. What's the solution? God does righteousness for us. This is why God sent His Son at the appointed time, Galatians 4, 4. Born of a woman, like us. Born with a real human nature. Born a woman and born under the law. Why was Jesus Christ born under the law? Emphasis. So that He may obey the law we could never obey. He does what we could not do for us. He earns as a real human being. He is God, so He had never disobeyed the law. He already had God-righteousness. Because God is righteousness itself. But He was born of a woman, took on a real human nature. And born under the law, so that He might fulfill the law to the T. For us. Earn a righteousness. And then that righteousness is imputed to us by faith. Not my words, but His. Not what I did, but what He did. And He's done it all for us. The solution is Christ. The fact that I can't do anything makes me Run to one who can. If I can pass this class, as difficult as it may be, it puts me on the hamster wheel of working. If you can do righteousness, if you can be saved by faith plus works, then you are required to do those works. If you can do it, then you must do it. Just like biochemistry. If you can pass it, then you must study and work for it. But you can't pass this class. You have failed because your father, Adam, failed as a representative for everyone. And we do what a representative has done. We fail. born, have been born failing. We sin because we are sinners. It's not, you know, think about when a child is born. It's not that this innocent little free from sin, clean slate child is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful until the first time, mine. Or the first time, no. First lie, I didn't eat the cookies. You lost it today. Good run, son, good run. But today you lost it. Born separated from God. Paul says, David says, Psalm 51, that even in my mother's womb I was conceived in iniquity. We're born lost. We live lost. We are lost. Until we are found. Solution is Christ. And our depravity, our lostness, our hopelessness, it runs us to Christ. It is good news. It gets your eyes off you and puts it where it needs to be. Let's go to our last point. Why faith? Now, if God were to find some instrument for justification, why did he pick this one? Why not? You need to climb Mount Everest and give 90% of all of your income, or just make it a million dollars. Over your lifetime, at least a million dollars. to the church, then you get salvation. And make sure your attendance in church is at least 85%, minus major surgeries. It could have come up with anything. Why faith? Two ideas. One, our incapability makes faith necessary. John Calvin says in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, let us not suppose that we bring anything to the Lord, but sheer disgrace of need and emptiness." Why faith? Because I can't do anything. Even my best deeds are so stained with sin. One author said this, that we can't even say the Lord's Prayer without sinning. Even the most righteous thing we can't do with 100% pure motives, 100% to the glory of God, seeking His glory alone, we can't do that. So even my most righteous deeds are staying within pure hands. They condemn me. Even prayers. in and of myself if they're not accepted by grace. Why faith? Because my incapability of doing anything makes faith necessary. Because I can't do anything. My mind has fallen, my heart has fallen, my will has fallen. What is faith? It's a turning away from self to another one and believing that He can do what we cannot. My faith is not in my faithfulness. My faith is not in the fact that I can muster up the emotions, I can cry at good hymns, and I can shout for joy when the tune is going really good, and this is my favorite one, and yay! My faith is not in my faithfulness, or in my emotions, or in my works, or in the fact that I do the things that I think are faith. Faith is nothing. That is what faith is. Faith is turning away from me and turning to another Christ. I believe Him. He is my righteousness. Why faith, our incapability, makes it necessary. And two, faith points us to the one who really saves. Faith is, if I can use this terminology, is the one thing that might be the hardest for us to turn into idolatry. We are by nature idol makers, quoting Calvin again. We love to turn something into idolatry. Think about Satan. Satan creates nothing. He is not a creator. But he takes everything he has hands on and he twists it. Perverts it. We, as fallen children of Adam, do the same thing. We try to take something good. Want me to do good works? I'll serve the poor. Look at me serving the poor. Why are you not serving the poor? Why am I so much better than you are? Give tithes? I'll give tithes. You're giving 10%? I'll do 12. 15? I got 20. I can do better than you. Or my 20% is more than your 30% because I make more salary than you do. Whatever it may be. Or the widow's might. This is all I had so I actually win. We'll turn everything into a competition or really into idolatry that we possibly can. Faith, by nature of what it is, is probably the hardest thing to turn into idolatry. Because it is not me-ness. True faith in a true Savior is taking my eyes off me and putting it on another. Faith is the one thing that points most to God. Because by very nature of what it is, I must look at Him. My faith is in Him. My faith is in what He has done. He is my righteousness. He is the one who loves me. And it wasn't my love for Him. It was His love for me. For He poured out His love into my heart while I was yet an enemy. Our faith is in this. Not only that He is able But don't miss this point. He's also willing. Not just His power and His righteousness. Yes, He has enough righteousness, more than enough for all of us. But that He is willing to save. That is His disposition. He is willing to save. 1 Timothy 1.15, Paul says, The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. of whom I am the very worst. That's why He came. Not to save good people who needed to be patched up. I'm worse than I even think I am. I can't even comprehend how bad I am. But someone who sins little, loves little. Or if I'm just a little sinner. Little sinner in that, alright, I don't do everything as good as I should, but I'm not as bad as so-and-so. If I'm just a little sinner, then what do I need? I need a little Savior. But when I get a better understanding from Scripture of what my state is, who I am, that I don't think right, I don't feel right, I don't do right, that everything I do is tainted with these filthy hands, that there's nothing I can do, when I stand disgusted of how totally separate from God I am by my natural nature, then I need a huge Savior. I am worse than I think I am, but I have even better news than that. He is a more huge and glorious and loving Savior than you could ever comprehend. What do we learn about this? What's the good news? The good news is there's no hope in us and our natural abilities, which gets you off the hamster wheel. You could never earn His favor. He's too good. Then we must, therefore, rely by faith entirely upon God and His work for us. That is what faith is. When we think about this idea of how lowly we are, we have to finish the thought out. That is the beginning step, not the ending. Remember what Jesus told the people when they came to Him, what must we do to be saved? He preached, repent and believe. It's both. Repentance, we look at our sin, this is horrible, I'm so sorry. And we should never lose sight of the sinfulness of sin. It is horrible. I take sin so lightly because I'm so used to it. Because I'm used to us. I've sinned from a very early age, as early as I can remember. Everyone around me has sinned. I am so used to it. When was the last time I wept my eyes out because I've sinned against the Holy One of the Universe? I'm ashamed to say, I don't know if I can remember. I'm so used to sin. And to properly man is to make us look at how ugly it is. But you have to finish out. We repent and believe. We have finished out the thought, we turn our eyes away from ourselves, repent, and we turn away from our ability, our goodness, and it is meant for this purpose to turn our eyes entirely upon God and His goodness and His love in Christ. It makes us into worshipers. Robert Murray McShane, and I'll close with this quote from him. Learn much of the Lord Jesus. For every look to yourself, take ten looks to Christ. He is altogether lovely, such infinite majesty, yet such meekness and grace, and all for sinners, even the chief. Live much in the smiles of God, bask in His beams, feel His all-seeing eye settled on you in love, and repose in His mighty arms. The doctrine of depravity of man, while it is heavy, it's a weight that frees you and allows you to fly. Is it no wonder that God is the one who chooses? Because I would never choose. Is it no wonder that it's God who saves? For I could never save. Is it any wonder that He is the one who calls me through no merit of my own? Because I had no merit. He has to choose me because I would have never chosen Him. If He leaves us to our free wills, then we will freely choose not God. But He has done a wonderful work in that He has reached out and snatched us as brands from the fire. And He's put a new heart within us by which we love Him. A new mind by which we comprehend. And then we freely choose Him. Because He has done a work within us. He doesn't turn us into robots. He simply makes us alive. And we do what living spiritual beings do. We love our Creator. We understand. We love. We act as spiritually alive beings. Freely. Because of His work. not because of ours. And thus, who receives all honor, praise, and glory forever and ever? Christ. Let me close us in prayer. Lord, we are grateful for the mercies that you have given to us. And we are grateful that you are the God who saves, not us. And that's all honor, praise, and glory goes to you. Lord, as we go to the Lord's Supper this morning, we acknowledge this, that you offered yourself for us to do what we could never do. And Lord, you still offer yourself to us. In the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, Lord, you are offering us yourself. You are here in a very real and spiritual way for our good to build us up, for we still need you every moment, every second. And Lord, you offer yourself to us still. May we be worshipers for you, Lord, are good. We pray this all in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.