which is not the same thing as an Arminian, but it's close. And I came to Romans 3, verses 10 through 18, and I could not get past the clear biblical teaching. And so Romans 3, 10 through 18, for me, was one of those passages that would not, God would not let me get away from the reality of my total depravity. And so I've entitled this message this evening, Depravity of Poetic Proportions, because that's exactly what we have here in Romans 3 verses 10 through 18, a poem crafted masterfully by Paul that just drops a nuclear bomb on anyone who had any inkling to think that they have any good in them, destroys it completely and teaches what we have come to call total depravity. And so this passage is very dear to me, and I want to bring it to you this evening. Maybe not that I'm saying anything that you've not heard, but again, it is good that we are reminded of these very, what we would call very vital doctrines, that we understand the constituency of man or woman in his or her fallenness, that we understand our true sinful depravity. And so I want us to read now Romans 3 verses 10 through 18. Hear the word of God as it is written. There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none who understands. There is no one who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable. There is none who does good, no, not one. Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues they have practiced deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways. In the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Let us ask for God's assistance this evening. Oh Lord, as we come to what I would consider a very heavy passage. Weighty in terms of its style, its poetic force, but weighty in terms of its doctrine and teaching. Lord, that we would be receptive to your word. And even as we consider a doctrine such as total depravity among Christians, Lord, may we understand the great significance that we need to have an appreciation of this doctrine and we need to see an application from it. Lord, help us. We ask that you would be pleased to use the preaching of your word to bless your people. We pray in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. Well, as we come to Romans 3, I think I need to do at least some justice to explain the context leading up to this. It's not as if Paul, out of nowhere, starts moving into poetry. That doesn't happen on its own. If you go back to Romans chapter 1, you'll see what Paul is doing, and I wish we had time to look at all of the background of Romans. But Paul is bringing up an argument in both chapters 1 and chapter 2 that he's going to continue in chapter 3. That is, all, both Jews and Gentiles, are equally and justly condemned before God. He'll take up this theme in chapter one, going through various matters, especially in verse 18, and talking about how even the Gentile... is guilty before God, whether it be through their idolatry or wicked practices, they are guilty. And you can almost hear in chapter one that as Paul is bringing this out to the people that he's writing to, that the Jews are behind him thinking, yeah, go get them, Paul, get them. And then he switches over to chapter two and he starts changing his tactic a little bit. And finally, midway through chapter two, verse 17, he says, and by the way, I'm talking about you too as well, Jewish people. Thou art the man. It's almost as if he sneaks that in there in chapter two. And so in chapters one and two, he is dealing with the idea that whether you're Jewish or whether you're a Gentile, you are under justly the condemnation of God. And then Romans chapter three, it starts with a series of questions. Some scholars have called this a diatribe. I don't think that's what's happening here. I think likely these questions are posed in such a way as to let us know the internal structure of Romans. Paul is going to take up these matters in these questions in verses one through nine throughout the rest of his writing in his letter. And so these questions are not just ones that we pass over. This is Paul letting you know, here's where I'm going. Here's the questions and the matters that I'm going to answer. And the final question in all of these questions of verses one through nine, you have in verse nine. What then he says, are we better than they? Again, he's taking up this theme. Are the Jews better than the Gentiles? Not at all. For we have previously charged, I just got done saying chapters one and chapter two, both Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin. And then, because if that weren't enough, let me prove it to you with poetry. Now I love that Paul switches to poetry. If you've not heard it by now, you know, I love the style of Hebrew poetry. It was part of my focus and study and research. I love it. I love going through the Psalms and seeing the poetry there. I love coming across Genesis chapter 49. It was so hard brethren for me to use the ministry of exclusion. There was a lot of fun poetic things happening in Genesis 49. we just didn't have time to look at it. I love the devices of poetry. And so what happens here in Romans 3 verses 10 through 18 is that this will lead into a masterfully crafted poem created by Paul to demonstrate the biblical doctrine that all are sinners, Jew and Gentile. And what this poem proves, it does so by both content, what he says, what we see on the page here, the words in the poem, but it also does it by way of the form of the poem, through its structure, through its elements, through the poetic devices that it contains. He ensures that you both read it and you even poetically feel it, that both Jews and Gentiles have this one common trait, depravity. And so he strings together his own poem of the style of biblical Hebrew poetry, but he does it in Greek. This was written in Greek. In fact, there are a few Hebrew manuscripts, medieval manuscripts, that are actually a quotation as they Start Psalm 14, which is the first part of this poem, is from Psalm 14. They just go ahead and quote all of Romans 3, 10 through 18 in Hebrew, as if that's what Paul had created. What is amazing about this poem is that this is not Paul inventing words. Rather, this is Paul, almost as if he's sitting in front of a computer, going through the Old Testament, highlighting, cutting, and pasting, and putting it into Romans. He is stringing together his own poem. He's not creating it out of thin air. He's cutting and pasting, and he does so with six different Old Testament passages. He has concocted a poem from lines and verses from six different places in the Old Testament. What is amazing to me is how it flows as if this was how it was originally written, but it wasn't. And so Paul is doing this, we would wanna ask the question, why would Paul not just come out and say, I've said it again, or I said it once, I'll say it again, you're depraved. Jew, Gentile, you're all depraved. Why switch? Why reinforce it with a poem? Well, part of it is to show you from the Old Testament this biblical truth. But why not just quote it and say, you know, Isaiah says this, and the Psalms say this. Why does he put it into A poem. And I think this is the effect of poetry, that it's charged language, it's visual, you can feel it, it's almost tangible. This is poetically charged theological poetry. I wish we did even have time, and I wish you had the same kind of interest and passion that I do to look at all the artistic nuances of this poem. We're not gonna do that, I'm not gonna nerd out on you. But I do want you to understand how this poetry reinforces Paul's point. That he wants you to walk away making sure that there is no question that this is a biblical truth from the Old Testament and that you know it and you can quote it because he reorganizes all these passages into his own poem. When we consider its poetry, it's always helpful when you break it down into its poetic structure. What you have in verses 10 through 18 is a poem composed of two stanzas. And each of these stanzas kind of has this A-B-B-A structure. You kind of see it very obviously in verses 10 through 12. Notice how it begins. No one who does good, no not one. Then how does verse 12 end? There is no one who does good, no not one. Now all of 10 through 12 is coming from one passage, Psalm 14, as I mentioned earlier. And so both stanza one ends and begins with that same phrase, no one righteous, no not one. Stanza two is very much like that same kind of A, B, B, A pattern, but really stanza two is where a lot more poetic mastery is happening. And it's in those verses of 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18, is where Paul is going to take five different Old Testament passages. So 10 through 12, that's just Psalm 14. 13 through 18, he's going to take from the Old Testament five different passages, reorganize them, cut and paste them, put them together, and it reads as if this is an original Psalm written by David. What's interesting is that he will take some B lines, because you notice how Old Testament poetry, it says line A, then it'll kind of repeat itself in line B. We call this parallelism. Paul will take from the Old Testament a B line and make it an A line. and then take from the Old Testament an A line and put it as a B line. In other words, he knows what he's doing. He's stringing together this poem. And the other element of poetry, of Old Testament poetry, is that every time you have an A, that B would intensify, or it would clarify, or bring to completion. And that's what Paul does. Every time he says something in line A, he intensifies or strengthens it in line B. It's like he knows what he's doing. Part of what I was doing in my dissertation research is to show that the New Testament is well aware of how the Old Testament poetry was used because they use it as well. Maybe you wouldn't be surprised at how many New Testament scholars think that the New Testament has no idea how to interpret the Old Testament, but a lot of people have said that. And so there is just a beautiful amount of poetic artistry happening here. We just don't have the time to look at it. But what I love about the second stanza, verses 13 through 18, you can feel a, what I might call a poetic movement. That there's this flow of thought that starts at the back of the throat in verse 13. And then it moves to the tongue. Look at verse 13. Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongue, so we're coming out of the back of the throat and onto the tongue, they have practiced a seat. After the tongue, what do you have? But lips, in verse, at the end of verse 13, the poison of ass was under their lips, and then after it comes out of the lips, it's just leaving the mouth entirely. In verse 14, whose mouth is full of cursing. You see the poetic movement happening there? Starting from within, and it's almost like This poetry is vomiting out the depravity. Eventually, Paul is gonna keep on this movement that he will move from the head, then Paul will shift down in verse 50 to the feet. He says in verse 50 that their feet, he's been spending time in the mouth and the head, then verse 15, their feet are swift to shed blood. Then, once he has spent time with the feet and the way that they run, where does he end up? He comes back in verse 18, back to the head, with the eyes. There is no fear of God before their eyes. So much that you get the sense that Paul is moving from inside to outside and from top to bottom. What's he doing here? He's making a theological point, and I want you to not just see it, but to sense it and to feel it here. You get a sense that man's sinfulness, it's not coming from outside of him. It's not like you have someone holding a gun to your head and making you sin. Paul's point, poetically, is that it's coming from your heart. It is not just parts of you. It's from head to toe, you're a sinner. This is what he's communicating with his poetry. You get this poetic picture that from the top of your head down to the bottom of your foot, all and every bit of you is tainted by sin. There's not one part of you that can avoid the scourge and the curse of sin. All of the person is depraved and every person is depraved. That is his point here. So let me pause and ask, If this is what Paul is doing, just in terms of poetry, why do you think it is that Paul goes to this trouble to poetically picture mankind's sinful plight? Why would Paul do that, and rather than just come out and say it very openly and clearly? Well, I can give you at least three reasons, I think, what is happening here. Some of these are very practical. The first one, I think, is that just a picture is worth a thousand words. Isn't that an expression we say? Why say something plainly when you can visualize it in a way that will stick with you? That Paul can say more through the vehicle of poetry than he can with words of explanation. I mean, he packs in to these eight or nine verses of poetry what he'd been saying in all of chapters one and two. So it's effective. Secondly, it's memorable. You can take this picture, this snake-like analogy, you can take that wherever you go. That way, you can hide this poem in your heart as I think Paul and ultimately God has intended for the believer. That you could use this, whether it be in your evangelism, whether it be in your own personal recognition of remaining sin, but that you might be reminded of your deep depravity and sinfulness and the sinfulness of the world. And so it's effective, it's memorable, but lastly, sometimes deep truths, important truths, they require illustration, they require the poetic display to communicate the full extent of the problem. And so Paul, he puts these devices into poetry Almost as if he is underlining or italicizing this great important truth. You know, it might be the equivalent of as we read through a book, we might take a highlighter and highlight, I know I do that, maybe you don't, but I like to highlight things in a book if it's really important and I wanna come back to it. I think this is what Paul is doing here. He's setting it off in such a way that our eyes, our minds, our ears would come back to it and be drawn to it. That we would recognize that this is important. What he is saying here is, Very critical. So if that is the case, that the poem itself is to act as a highlighter, it's to draw our attention to the important truths it unpacks, can I likewise then encourage you and admonish you, beloved, that you would tune in closely? This is all my introduction, but we will move through this very quickly. But if that's what Paul is doing here, can I exhort you, brethren, that you would give your minds and your thoughts your meditations, your considerations to this passage, that this text for the believer and the unbeliever, it was written in such a way that your antenna should be up, that you should be receiving signal from God, your radar should be on high alert. Because as we're gonna see, sin is not a matter to be taken lightly. I think that's Paul's point here. He wants you to understand, he wants you to walk away having read this portion, that you realize the weightiness, the severity, and the gravity of sin. That you would get serious with this passage and therefore you would get serious with God. That Christ, through his apostle Paul, he has gotten serious with you. And he's done that through the form of poetry. And so we've considered, at least a little bit, the poetic form and the structure of the poem. I want us now to look at the content of the poem. We'll do this in the stanzas as Paul wrote them, stanza one, then stanza two. First of all, in stanza one, verses 10 through 12, we see the general picture of depravity. Stanza one, we have the general picture of depravity. And you notice that he points out things in a very general way. First of all, he points out the very general picture, the general idea of the population of depravity, which is the central theme here. The poem goes out of its way in both the beginning and end of the first stanza to make the case, all leaving out none, both individual Jew and individual Gentile is not righteous, not even one. In verse 12, there is none who does good. You feel this in the words, no one seeking, no one understanding, all have turned aside, not one doing, and so forth. The general picture of depravity is the population of depravity. All humans born of natural generation are in Adam and therefore born in sin. You can look at any person in the eye, at work, at the market, in your families, in your children, and you can see depravity. You don't have to ask, is there a good person? You have the answer already. Most people, If you were to ask them, just on the road or on the street or wherever, if you were to ask them, they would tell you that they're really not a bad person. They're generally a good person. This is the mentality and thinking of most people. And it's because the church has gone silent to the fact that the population of depravity is that all of the population born of Adam's children, all without question, not one of them are righteous. Though we may not be attractive if we were to teach and preach this to the world, we may not gain a great following. We would probably come under scrutiny. The world needs to hear this. The church has been too silent on this. We need to be telling the world, all are sinful, none are good. There's also in stanza one, an ethical description of depravity. In other words, what does it mean for every single human to be not righteous and not good? Well, the righteous language in Romans is usually legal. It's a legal description of a perfect standing before the judge. And then verse 12 says, no one does good. And the word for good there is usually in relation to God. No one is good no matter their standing before God as judge or just their goodness of what it means to be before a holy God. No one is doing, no one is practicing the goodness of God according to God's standard of goodness. And so we see an ethical description of morality that is guilty. All are morally bad before God. Thirdly, there is a knowledge limitation of depravity. In this general picture, we have knowledge limitation. What is said in verse 11? There is none who understands. What is remarkable about depravity is that it not only affects our legal standing and morality, it infects our minds. Paul had said earlier in Romans 128, they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. And so God gave them over, Romans 128, to a debased mind, to those things which are not fitting. This is why they don't understand. And you wonder why we have government officials and Supreme Court justices unable to answer the question whether a person is a male or a female. We think, how in the world is there no more common sense? Brother, we should not be confused by this. There is none who understands. We see a knowledge limitation of depravity. There is desire influences in depravity. No one seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable. Not only does depravity attack the mind, it influences the heart. This was the phrase that would not let me go. As much as I wanted to be Arminian semi-Pelagian, I wanted to say I could conjure the choice and the faith in myself. Yet no one seeks after God. That was what convinced me of the doctrine of total depravity and the doctrine of total moral inability. No one seeks after God. The only explanation could be, therefore, God must seek me, change my heart that I might desire and believe in him. in our sin, even our desires are wicked. We long for things, we run after things, we seek things that are in contrast to God. We love rebellion. We want desires that please our own flesh rather than please the creator of the universe for whom we were made. We were made to please God. And then all of that generally describes an action result of depravity. That depravity, as we see in verse 12, there is no one who does good. The depraved population, ethically depraved, mentally depraved, desires depraved, can only lead to actions of sin and depravity. No one does good actions. Thus this result, the actions are the result of internal sin. That's what moves Paul into stanza two. Makes a nice transition. So stanza one, we had a general picture of depravity. Now stanza two, verses 13 through 18, we have poetic, beastly, head-to-toe picture. There's this poetic, beastly, head-to-toe picture of depravity. Why am I saying poetic beast? Well, notice that there is this depiction of a snake, verse 13. Their throat is an open tomb with their tongues, they have practices of steed. And finally, verse 13, the poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. And this is not an incidental thing. This is not coincidental that Paul has chosen from the Old Testament to use Of all the beast at his possibilities of analogy, he chooses a snake. The serpent theme does not end in Genesis. It extends throughout the scripture. Later on in Romans 16, Paul will pick up the Genesis 3.15, the heel bruised, the head crushed. In Romans 16.20, he'll take that skull crushing theme and apply it to the church, that God would use the church to trample the head of the enemy. Revelation 3 many times connects Satan to the serpent of Genesis 3. So should we be surprised that every human, every image bearer of God, everyone born as sons of Adam, left in their depravity, is depicted as the seed of the serpent? This is exactly what Genesis 3.15 says. God says to the enemy, God says to the serpent, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. Should we be at all surprised that the enemy of God is depicted as the seed of the serpent? Who is the serpent seed? It's every unregenerate, unbelieving sinner. They are the seed of the serpent. This is why Paul will use the analogy of a viper. We find in the Old Testament that Cain was the first of the serpent seed. 1 John 3.12 holds the idea that Cain was the seed of the serpent. 1 John 3.12 says Cain, who was of the wicked one, literally from the wicked one, and murdered his brother. Just like the devil is a murderer from the beginning, so also is Cain the very first murderer in the Bible. Jesus would tell the Jewish religious elites of his day in John 8, 44, and you probably know this passage, you are of your father, the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, just as Cain was, and when he speaks lies, he speaks from his own, for he is a liar and the father of it. What's the point here, being the seed of the serpent, that you act like your father? If you are of the serpent seed, you are a murderer and you are a liar, just like your father. There is always going to be that family resemblance. That's why Romans 3.13 speaks of our tongues as if they were open grave. Because out of our seed, like from the serpent, there's death. The startling reality is that all who are born in Adam, under his curse, they're born as the seed of the serpent. So Paul says, of believers, that before that they are converted, they were once children of wrath, just as the others, having once, Ephesians 2, once walked according to the prince of the power of the air. Speaking of Satan, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. Notice that language of being owned and born by the serpent. We were once that, brethren. Do you hear, do you feel the weight of that? Your father was once the devil. This is huge. You think sin is a light thing? Not when your father is the serpent. So we have this poetic beastly metaphor. Next we see in the second stanza, this poetic body movement. I've already alluded to it, the out of the throat, from the chest, from the heart, out of the back of the throat, come from the back of the throat to the tongue, to the lips, out of the mouth. You have this idea of your depravity is from within. We are not sinners because some outside force is making us wicked. Our wickedness comes from our wicked heart and it comes out of us. This is clear throughout scriptures. 1 Samuel 24, 13, wickedness proceeds from the wicked. Isaiah 32, 6, the foolish person will speak foolishness and his heart will work iniquity to practice ungodliness, to utter error against the Lord. And of course you have heard our Lord say in Matthew 12, 34 through 35, you brood of vipers. Notice what imagery he's picking up. You seed of the serpent. How can you being evil speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Or in Matthew 15, 17 through 20, he says, do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes in the stomach and is eliminated? That's not what makes you sinful or corrupt, what you put in your mouth. Rather, those things which proceed out of the mouth, they come from the heart, Jesus says. And they defile a man. For out of the heart proceeds evil thoughts, murders, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, blasphemies. What is he talking about with the Ten Commandments? The Ten Commandments are broken because of our hearts are bent towards sin. Jesus says these are the things which defile man. Not what you put in, but what is coming out of your heart, out of the back of your throat, and through your mouth. So what does Paul do in this poem of depravity? That each line poetically moves and builds and grows from the inside out to the outside. Their throat, their tongues, their lips, and finally their entire mouth spews out wickedness. It is as if the depraved man is vomiting out his depravity, his wretchedness for all to see. This is why, brethren, you cannot reform, you cannot transform yourself. All that comes out of you and your state of depravity is sin. This is why children, teenager, young adult, hear me, you must be born again. You must be born from above. You must come to spiritual life by the gracious work of God. You can't produce or manufacture it. Only God can do this. And he does it for you in grace. And then there is this in stanza two, we've seen the beastly metaphor, the movement metaphor. Finally, we come to poetic anatomy. We have the depiction of a body from head to toe. Individual body parts, your throat, your tongue, your lips, your mouth, they're all corrupt. Your feet, where you go, what you do, your practices, they're destructive. Your eyes are blinded. Thus they have no wisdom because they have no fear. No fear for God. This poetic movement from head to toe covers the entire body. This is why we would use the terminology of total depravity. Not that you're as bad as possible, or you're the worst version of yourself, or even that you're the worst sinner, but all of you, all parts of you, from your head to your toe, is corrupted. Your mind and thoughts corrupted. Your will, your choices, wicked. Your emotions and your desires, depraved. Every human of the total population is totally depraved in the totality of their substance. If you are a human born of ordinary generation, and as I look around, I don't see anyone miraculously birthed here this morning, you're totally depraved. Now understand, this is not essential to be human. It is not essential to humanity to be depraved. It is essential to those who are born in Adam in his original sin, however. If you're in Adam, you're under his headship, therefore you're born as the seed of the serpent. You are in that line of corruption, and therefore you are totally depraved. So we've come to the end now, and I want to draw some application from this as we conclude. Usually in a sermon like this, you would say, well, there's the need for the gospel, there's how you preach this to unbelievers, that they need to repent, they need to turn to Christ, trust in his grace. We'll get there, but Christian, I want to address you first. by God's grace that we can look at this passage and say, this is what we have been saved from. Hallelujah, what a Savior. Yet, this is what you still battle, your remaining sin. Brethren, if this is the extent of your depravity, the depravity that we have been saved from, praise God, do you really think that you need less grace now in the process of mortification? Do you think that you've arrived at a place where I don't need any more help from God, I've got this on my own? If we took this poem seriously, when we were the seed of the serpent, when we didn't understand and seek after God from head to toe, Would we really think that now that we're converted, we're saved, we've received grace from God, we don't need God's help anymore? Or to ask it another way, why would you not avail yourself to all the opportunities, all the helps, all the aid that God has given his church by the means of grace? And I mean that, why don't we desire more? More preaching, more singing, more praying. And as I look around, this is a much lower crowd than it was this morning. I get that there are providential circumstances, but hear me, if we took our remaining sin seriously, I would like to think that we would know how awful and desperate we are because of sin is so awful and desperate. We have prayer meetings, we have book studies, we do pastoral oversights, we have AM and PM Lord's Day worship. You know, one of the reasons that we encourage all of these, and we encourage the PM worship, we encourage the Wednesday night prayer meeting, part of the reason is because your remaining sin is not easily put to death. And apart from the grace of God, apart from all of these aids provided by God, we would do it alone. We would try at least. I'd like to illustrate this. I was not alive during the Vietnam War, but I've heard enough about it to hear soldiers having complained that they got little help from their government. I would like you to think of your spiritual battle as if you were in Vietnam. But rather than the government not helping, you're telling the government, I don't need your help. I'm going against the enemy that is difficult, but I can do it on my own. It's like going into a battle with only your rifle and bayonet. Avoiding PM worship. that would be like you leaving your platoon and doing battle on your own. Avoiding the midweek prayer meeting is like refusing to call in an airstrike. And when the enemy seems to prevail, when it seems like your sin has become so strong, instead of going to God and seeking his grace, We complain and we blame superiors as if they left us high and dry. But the reality is, Christian, are you waging war without availing yourself to all the spiritual ammunition, to all the fellow soldiers with you, and all the weapons of warfare that God has given the believer? I can surmise, Christian, that many of you You would do this because you're not taking your remaining sin seriously enough. And this is why it's a poem, that you would remember it and it would highlight for you and that you would be focused and you'd be keenly aware that sin is serious. And you're not treating the enemy of sin as a deadly nemesis or your mortal enemy. This is why John Owen was so right when he says, if we're not killing sin, sin will be killing you. Do you really wanna be doing spiritual battle, brethren, apart from all the means of grace, apart from all the spiritual help that God has given? Do you really want to charge the enemy alone? Do you wanna leave your regiment behind you thinking, I can go at it alone, I can do this alone? Do you not want to call in God's favor and God's help? Those great airstrikes that can decimate the enemy before you've even seen the enemy. Oh brethren, do not make light your depravity. Do not underestimate your remaining sin. Do not put too much strength in your own self. Lay hold of Christ and all that Christ has purchased for you and all that God has given you in the church, in the preached word, in the prayer, in the fellowship and communion of the saints. Lay hold for your salvation and Christ is near. The sanctification that is promised to you in Christ is there, it's true. And sin's defeat has been accomplished. D-Day has occurred. We don't storm the beach by ourself. Christ has done it. We walk behind our Lord as he defeats the battles in front of us. Lastly, to the unbeliever. And as always, this is a way to encourage the saint because, praise God, we are no longer in this present situation of depravity such that we are the seed of the serpent. But to the unbeliever, what you need to understand and come to grips with is that right now, apart from Christ, Romans 3, 10 through 18 is giving a very poetic but very accurate description of you. And there could be the great danger of pride swelling in you that you see yourself as greater than you truly are. I'm not really that bad. Or it could be a great danger of foolishness that you incorrectly see yourself falsely as you're not. See, unbeliever, there is a just and holy God and he cannot abide a person who is fulfilling this poem. this poetic description of depravity. An unbeliever must be condemned for such wickedness, to speak wickedness, to utter foolishness, to never seek God, to not understand. Only an eternal punishment can satisfy the condemnation of eternal sin and depravity against an eternal and infinitely holy God. Only an eternal punishment. This is what hell is, it is satisfying God's wrath for eternity. That your total depravity is so totally encompassing, it's paralyzing, that your rescue is so completely out of your hands, it must come from the very one who would condemn you. It comes from the same infinite God against whom you have sinned. that He must be the one that provides eternal satisfaction, that He would provide satisfaction to pay for your infinite condemnation. And He has done this through His eternally begotten Son, the Lord of glory, who dies and bears the wrath of God, the infinite wrath of God in the place of sinners. He takes your eternal punishment. He is so good, so perfect, so infinite. He bears eternity of wrath in three hours. He dies for sinners. And he says to each and every sinner, come to me. And I'll give you life. I'll save you. Just believe. Are you taking your sin seriously enough? Are you treating your depravity as a total annihilating force that will decimate you if you leave it untreated? May God be pleased to give us a true sense of wickedness and may we repent from it. Oh God, we thank you for your word and even these poetic descriptions. Lord, for every believer here, would you give us a sense of how great our sin, even our remaining sin is, that apart from the grace of God, we would turn away from you, we would flee back to our rebellion. Lord, you keep us, you maintain us, you sustain. Lord, may we see the help that you have provided in these means of grace. And we would not see them as cumbersome, but as delightful. We would desire these things. Lord, that those who are not here, that they might hear this message and they would receive the same admonition. How good it is to be with the people of God. How good it is to hear from the word of God, to sing the praises to God, with the people of God. And Lord, we would pray. If there is a sinner here not trusting Christ, that they would believe not only in Jesus, but that they would believe the true state of their sin, that they're totally depraved, and apart from your grace, they can do nothing. Lord, we pray with you. Breathe life. Give birth, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.