This morning we take up again
the five points of grace and directly look at total depravity. Last week I told you that there
is reason, after 33 years of preaching the doctrines of grace,
to take them up again and proclaim them, because, separate and apart,
from the doctrine of grace, God does not get glory. It's just
that simple. If you don't preach grace, God
doesn't get glory. The only message that gives God
all of the glory is the message of grace. Undeserved, unmerited
favor. It really is not difficult. It's
very simple. Either salvation by grace And
if it be by grace, then it's not by work. If it be by work,
then it is not by grace. It is not both. And so grace
totally eliminates the human factor, the human contribution. We are saved by sovereign grace
alone. And shut up to this. Glory to
God. Right? And after you have finished
with the five points of grace, you are left with only the gospel
standing, the gospel of the glory. Moses said to God, show me your
glory. This was the man who was up on
Sinai and saw God give his law, and Moses saw glorious things. He saw the earth shake. thunderings
and lightning. He saw glorious things. But he
did not see the chief glory of God. Moses said, show me your
glory. And God said, here's my glory.
I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. My friends, I know
you don't like this, but God can save you or damn you and
still be God and still be just. Somebody ought to say amen to
that. God is not a debtor to humanity. If you want what God owes you,
you will get hell. If you want what you deserve,
you get hell. The cry of the New Testament
and the proclamation of the gospel is, Lord, have mercy on me. In Ezekiel 16, I want to read
two passages. Again, the word of the Lord came
unto me, saying, Son of man, caused Jerusalem to know her
abomination." Again, the Word of the Lord came unto me saying,
Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abomination. Let me
read it again. Son of man, cause Jerusalem to
know her abomination. And say, Thus saith the Lord
God unto Jerusalem, Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land
of Canaan, thy father was an Amorite, thy mother a Hittite. And as for thy nativity, in the
day thou was born, thy navel was not cut, neither was thou
washed in water, to supple thee. Thou was not salted at all, nor
swaddled at all. All truth The only way to know the truth
of God is for it to be revealed to you. So know assuredly today
that I am not attempting to force truth down your throat. I cannot
reveal truth to you. Only the Holy Spirit can do that.
So know assuredly that I am not attempting to shove this down
your throat. I am simply proclaiming it. And
believe that the Holy Ghost is the only one that can make it
alive and make it real and make it truth in your heart. I cannot
teach you grace. Like that Pastor Clark taught
me grace. I have never taught anyone grace. Grace is a revelation. It's revealed to us. I cannot teach you the five points.
I cannot open your eyes to the doctrine of total depravity. I cannot open your eyes to that.
Only God can do that. And probably out of all five,
this is the one that's hardest. It takes a miracle for man to
see this. Because man resists this. Because
if this one falls, If you accept and enter into the truth of total
depravity, then salvation has to be by grace alone, because
total depravity eliminates all of the other things that mankind
says he can contribute to his own salvation. There's not one
of the five points that religious man or immoral man will receive
as truth unless it be revealed. And I'll give you a passage for
that, 1 Corinthians 2, 9-10. But as it is written, I have
not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of
man the things which God hath prepared, God hath prepared for
them that love Him. But God revealed them unto us
by His Spirit. But the natural man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God." Really, as I preach
total depravity today, unless the Spirit of God is with you
and in you, you will reject it. You will totally reject it. It
will be foolishness unto you. Neither can he know them because
they are spiritually discerned. They are spiritually discerned. You remember the passage in Matthew
16, Jesus went into the coast of Caesarea Philippi, asked his
disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I am? Peter answering
said, Some say you're John the Baptist, Elias, or one of the
prophets. And Jesus said, Who do you say that I am? And Simon
said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, which
has come into the world. And Jesus immediately said, You're
blessed, Simon. because flesh and blood has not
revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." If
you know Jesus Christ to be Lord and Savior, it's because God
has revealed it to you. You are special. Not everyone
bows and confesses Jesus Christ to be Lord. If you're here and
confess Him to be Lord, you're blessed. I want to define total
depravity. Man in his fallen condition is
so completely morally ruined that he has no capacity within
himself to prepare himself for grace or to respond to grace
without the work of the Holy Spirit. The word depravity is defined
as moral corruption. wickedness, or the innate corruption
of human nature. When we add the word total, the
idea emerges of a total depraved nature that is completely ruined
and lost. Completely ruined and lost. You see, the difference between
depravity and total depravity The folks who believe in depravity
say that every man has a spark of divinity, and if the spark
is fanned, it turns into a flame of love for God. The only problem
with that is it's not so. It just isn't true. Man is totally,
completely, innately depraved and wretched. The mind is corrupt. The heart is corrupt, the feet
are corrupt, the hands are corrupt. From the top of his head to the
bottom of his feet, he is a putrefying soul. Now listen to me carefully. While a man or woman may be wicked
and depraved, it does not follow that he or she is totally devoid
of moral sense and virtue and accountability. with respect
to his or her social connection and relationship. I'll give you
an example of what I'm trying to say here. Adolf Hitler was
capable of tenderness. He was. He had a lover. He loved the German people. He
hated Jews. There is honor among thieves.
There really is. People in prison have a coat
of honor. But they're wicked. They're totally
depraved. And so, in society, I know some
of you are sitting there saying, but John, you know John. You
know John. John's a good guy, Pastor. I
mean, he never smoked crack or never used heroin. You know,
he's religious. Oh, you don't know John. You
only know what you see. You only see his social connection.
If you could see his brain, his mind, his thought, his heart,
his intent. You know why a person is religious
and rejects Christ? Because they love themselves.
They love their own righteousness. They hate God. Why do people
get mad at the message of sovereign and free grace? because they
want glory. They cannot turn loose. You give
man an inch, he'll take a mile. Man will give everything up except
this thing of what is called free will. And Martin Luther
said, there is no such thing. Man's will is in bondage to his
nature. And you have to be born again
and given a new nature. A nature to love God. A nature
to live in righteousness. A nature to do good. A godly
nature. And unless you have that, you're
wicked. Totally, completely. We know assuredly that man is
fallen in his essential nature from birth. came forth from the
womb speaking lies. You know, a baby can lie when
it can't even talk. It'll lie to its mother and daddy
and act like something's wrong and cry like crazy. For nothing's
wrong. The diaper's not filled, the
diaper's not wet, and the baby's not hungry. Before there are outward actions,
There is innate depravity. No one sits down and says, today,
Junior, I'm going to teach you how to lie, steal, and lie. No
father tells his son that. It all just begins to develop.
And you see it. We all walk according to the
course of this world. Genesis 8.21 says that God saw
that every imagination of the heart was only evil. In God's
sight, man's sinfulness is such as to make nothing man does pleasing
to God. Nothing! And a man does pleasing to God.
Nothing. Flowing out of his natural will,
nothing pleases God because he's got a shotgun pointed at God.
He will rob God of his glory. He will not lay the shotgun down.
He'll be the master of his own life and captain of his own ship. Man's moral and spiritual condition
on account of sin is so completely ruined that he cannot respond
positively or savingly to God or to his law or gospel. This
is known theologically as inability. Man does not have the ability.
You will not come to me that you might have life. Not you
can't. You will not come to me. In the coming weeks, I'll give
you examples from scripture of man's total depravity, depressing. I understand. That's why when
we preach total depravity, We also need to preach grace to
give a little relief. What a solemn commission this
is. And it's interesting that the prophet did not begin by
reminding the people of the law. It's really interesting how the
prophet mixes total depravity and grace here. That he shows grace as he is
showing man total depravity. The prophet didn't take the people
to Mount Sinai, to the stony law, to the thunderings and lightning. He didn't point out the doom
which would come upon them for breaking the divine law or violating
God's holy statutes. No, no. He does not bring to
their minds the law. He does not fetch obligations
as to his argument to convince them of sin, but rather he gives
them an illustration of the grace of God. A baby, navel not cut,
wretched, in its own blood, left in an open field, cannot help
itself, and God passes by, and it's a time of love, and God
says to that baby, live! That's the grace of God. That's
the grace of God. Today I'll use the same method
to teach you the doctrine of total depravity. And only those who have fled
for refuge to the hope set before them in the gospel of Jesus Christ
are going to grasp it and rejoice in it today. The others will
find themselves angry or sleepy. My business today is to convince
you of sin. And I shall not begin by taking
you to Sinai. I'm going to take you to Mount
Zion, the Mount of Grace, the Mount of Love. I'm going to take
you to Mount Calvary. I shall not attempt to show you
what the law is and what the penalty is for those who break
the law. But knowing that there are many
here today who are not under law, My friends, I am not under
law. And if you're here and saved,
you've been saved by grace and you are under grace. Grace reigns
today. Aren't you glad that grace reigns? I will draw arguments more powerful
than any which could come from the law to show us all the greatness
of our sins and the abomination of our iniquity committed against
the Lord. and we'll use Ezekiel's method
and model to see our abominations, our total depravity. Let's look
at our sins since we were converted. Let's look at our sins committed
yesterday, the day before yesterday. Let's take this morning, and can you say, I'm totally
depraved? I'm saved! but I'm a totally
depraved creature, in my flesh dwells no goodness. Let us look
at our sinfulness in the light of when the Lord first looked
upon us. Let's observe what was our birth and our nativity. The prophet said, thy birth and
thy nativity is of the land of Canaan. Thy father was an Amorite
and thy mother a Hittite. That means your mom and daddy
were not good people. That's what that means. Pawpaw
was a rebel against God. Canaan was a cursed nation. They were a cursed people. And so God says your daddy was
no good. Our nativity and our birth were
of the land of the church. Can a good thing come out of
a bad thing? That's the question. Thy father was an Amorite and
thy mother a Hittite. When God speaks to us of our
natural estate, He tells us that our parents, our parentage, were
the mixed offspring. Adam's wickedness was in us. Look back to your early childhood
when you began to discover those late and sparse percent. Just go back, right in your mind,
to your childhood. You remember some stuff? I mean, it was wicked, wasn't
it? We call it genes and hormones
and adolescence and... Why don't we call it what it
was? You can hardly remember when there were not sparks there. In fact, you can hardly remember
when there was sparks because you have so much memory of flames.
Look back. Some of you are the only one
called of the Lord out of your siblings. Look back. Your father died and lived a
drunkard. Look back at your family tree.
Have you ever traced your pedigree? No, I'm afraid to. lived and died without God, without
hope, strangers to the commonwealth of Israel. What was there in
you that you, with a daddy who was a shot drunk and wicked,
what was there in you that got you where you are today? Why
are you saved while your other siblings are not? Were you better? No. It was the grace of God.
Somebody ought to put their hands up now. Somebody ought to be
saying hallelujah now. It was grace. The grace of God. You have no room to strut. No
room to boast. You're not better than your sister.
You're not better than your brother. You're not better than your mother
or father. It was sovereign grace alone. That's what I'm preaching
today. That's what I've preached all
these years. And we need to see it. We need to see our abomination. It'll bring you closer to grace.
You see, if a preacher doesn't wail on this, if a preacher doesn't
jump all over this thing of total depravity, you'll begin to coast
and get very confused about, really, what was it? Was it your
will, or was it God's sovereign will? Was it the grace of God
or was it my faith? First of all, faith is the gift
of God. Faith is God's gift. You don't have faith unless God
gives it to you. Amen, it's true. You are not naturally a person
of faith. You're a little rattlesnake and
you grow up to be a big rattlesnake unless God does something for
you. that you can't do for yourself,
there's no hope. You say, Pastor, you act like
there's nothing I can do. That's right. I'll tell you what
you can do. You can surrender. Why won't
you put it down? Why won't you give God all the
glory? Why won't you give it up? Because
you're totally to break. You ever looked at this? The
Lord loved us so in our birth there was nothing deserving of
merit. Nothing in our parents, nothing
to invite, regard, or merit the esteem of God. Isn't that amazing
grace? No wonder Newton wrote amazing
grace. How sweet the sound that saved
a rat like me. Have you ever just thought about
your sins after conversion? I mean, you don't have to think
about your sins before conversion. If you want proof of depravity,
just think about your sins after God saved you! For years around
here, I've heard this. Well, you know, he relapsed.
What have you done since you were converted? Oh, you did it secretly. Nobody
knows you relapsed. I see depravity now, since Jefferson
Pershing is aggravated by the fact of his sovereign choice,
his infinite compassion that came to our young hill. He came
to me. He came to me when I would not
come to him. He came where I was. He saved
me. He picked me up. He brought me
back to the foal on his shoulders. And then I wonder, you must be
totally depressed. Does he take the beggar in his
rags and lift him up to make him sit among sons and daughters,
the very royal blood of heaven? And do I sin daily against him? This must be total depravity.
If he came to my dunghill, pick me up. If he came to me, the
beggar in rags, and called me with his own righteousness, And
my sins have been forgiven, and they're gone. And yet, yesterday,
the day before, this morning, the hope of the crowd must be
true. Does the beggar afterwards become
a rebel against God? You see, sin is a cursed thing.
Sin is a rattlesnake in the baby's crib. If you had that sweet little
thing just home from the hospital and you went in and saw a 60-foot
rattlesnake in that crib, wouldn't you go, ah? I mean, you wouldn't just, there's
a rattlesnake in the baby. Grace that has honored the dishonorable. Grace that has insulted the mean
things of this world. creatures that were the off-powering
of creation. I blush for the ingratitude that
I can forget such tender love and despise the extraordinary
unmerited goodness of such a great God. Not only was our pedigree messed
up, our parentage But we ourselves were in a condition of extreme
danger. When God found you, you weren't
coasting in and out of righteousness. You were in extreme danger. You
were obeyed, born, and put and left in an open field, unmarked. Your navel was not cut. This
is a picture of depravity and the helplessness of man's condition,
separate and apart from the grace of God. I went last night, Miss Pam and
I, to Tayden's to see Cookie Monster at the Box Theater. And Elmo, yeah, Elmo, Elmo, Cookie
Monster is not nice. She told me, she's not nice. You know how much care we took?
We set up in a, we had very nice seats in the balcony. Had dinner
up there, but we watched her. She could have fell over the
balcony. Think about your condition before
God when you were born. Think about all the infantile
diseases that could have taken you out of here. Measles, mumps,
things that could have taken you out. And yet, you were out
there in that open field. Think about a babe left in a
field, just totally, absolutely deserted, and passed away. Some mother gave birth to that
babe that had passed away. None I kidded you. There you
were, out there, helpless, without strength, like something unworthy. of preserving. That was us. We were an offspring deserted. Think about it. An offspring
deserted. You know, I mean, everybody in
here has not had godly parents. Some of you in here had parents
who sexually abused you, parents who wanted nothing to do with
you. Some of you in here have parents that you've never even
seen, because they deserted you. And yet here you are, little
Detroit alley rat. Here you are in God's house,
clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, with all of
your sins forgiven, heaven bound. Think about it. Think about what
grace has done for you. There you were in the open field
dying, dead, rotten, corrupted. Bury this dead thing out of my
sight. None I pity see. But when Jehovah passed on, isn't
it amazing? He said unto you, live. Live! wallowing in the stables of mess
out there. It hasn't been that long since
you couldn't speak without blaspheming, without cursing the name of God.
God blanked it, blank, blank, blank. Those of us who were not in open
sin, those of us who were religious, you know it's true. All of you. Nice religious people in here. You were drug addicts too. Your
mother and dad drug you to church and drug you to Sunday school. But you had that secret life.
See, see, there's nobody in here better than a crack addict. See,
because we all have our There go I, but for the grace
of God. And in spite of sovereign mercy,
putting all our sins away, we have gone to sin again. Isn't
that something? Doing the same thing over and
over, expecting different results. What I'm trying to get across
here This depravity thing, you don't have to look at a man without
Christ to see depravity. Just look at a man with Christ. Depravity is there. Can't every
saved person in here say, in my flesh? Well, no good then. Can't you say that? Then why
do you act and why do we act? You know, the Holy Spirit spends
all this time convincing us we are sinners, and as soon as we
get saved, we pretend like we're not. We pretend like we got it. That's why I know this. Grace
taught me this. There's nobody I can't bump shoulders
with. There's nobody I can't put my
arm around. Because I know me, you see. I know me. I really
know me. And there is a big part of me
I do not like. There's a big part of me that
I hate. Because I've been born of the
Spirit of God and saved by grace. And some of us who are here present,
rejoicing in covenant love and mercy, clear view of all of our
sins we have committed since conversion, and know that we
will commit sins till we land on heaven's shore. We cry out,
O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body
of this death, the body of this death, something dead in me,
this dead person, this stinking, nauseating self, Hasn't there
been times when viewing His blood streaming down from the cross
and knowing that your sins were put away, that you thought you
would never sin again, but lo! I've been in the house of God
rejoicing in the gospel message of the free grace of God at times
where I felt like I would never sin again, walked out the door
and got to the car and Pam made me mad. We loathe ourselves. It's one thing for other people
to loathe you, but when you loathe yourself, you're in a pretty
bad state. We loathe ourselves. John Bunyan, the great Christian
preacher, who was an absolute humble bug, converted. And here's what he
said after he was converted. There are times when I wish I
were a dog, or a toad, rather than a man, ungrateful. See, the unregenerate heart,
you're here and you're not a Christian. The unregenerate heart is like
a den of unclean birds. You know why we call the yellow
house on Seneca the bird house? Because we took eight inches
of bird manure out of that clock bedroom. The old guy in there
had 30 birds in there, but not in cages. They had mesh around
this front bedroom. Who's in that front bedroom?
Anyone? Are you staying in the front? All right. Like a den of unclean birds,
full of all manner of filthiness. Really? Really, you that are
here without Christ, you have a miniature hell in you. No satisfaction,
no love, not real love, totally self-centered. You young women
manipulate to try to get your needs met and they can't be met
because you have two kids and no dog, because you have sinners. You've got to be born again.
Born again. Everyone in here who is not converted,
you ought to be afraid of other unconverted people. I can assure
you they are totally, completely self-centered. They're going
to manipulate you. They're going to use you. The
only check is that a human being has, the only check, and it's
a powerful check, is that they've been born from above and have
a new nature. And they learn that there are
others who have a kindred spirit. And we find ourselves loving
each other and helping each other and assisting each other in the
spirit of Christ. That's the only hope. There was nothing in us that
would invite God's attention. There was everything to hate,
nothing to desire us. had nothing to delight in, nothing
to commend his affection, but still he loved it. I was trying
to get my arms around this last night after I got home from Cookie
Monster and Big Bird, and you know, it's astonishing. Do you
ever have times alone with God and tell him how you marvel at
his love for you. You see, honestly and truly, I can understand God's faith
in some of you. I mean, in my head, I kind of,
you know, I kind of, you're a nice guy. Nice guy. I know lots of
people. I remember when I was a kid,
I didn't understand, as I do now, to some degree, the grace
of God. Grace alone will cause us to see our abomination to
cease. If you don't know grace, you're
not going to see your abomination. You're not going to see total
depravity. The only people who cease and accept total depravity
are grace people. I mean, do you really get that?
If you're not a grace person, first of all, you don't admit
total depravity. It's only those of us who know
the grace of God. And I mean that in a humble way.
We only know the grace of God because of the grace of God. I'm not trying to make us some
kind of, you know, different special people that did something
on our own. I'm just saying that once you see the grace of God,
you'll also see it is amazing grace. It is glorious grace,
and it gives God all the glory. Have you ever thought about what
the Lord has done for you since you came to know Him? I mean,
if you just think about what He has done for you, That babe
in the open field was dwarfed and cleaned and clothed and given
beautiful ornaments and decked all out. God decked you all out
in His own righteousness. Please, bag that you were. Think
of that date, of all dates, when you first came to know Him. That
day when the burden rolled away. That day when you began to live,
I mean really live, that day when you stepped down into the
bath of the fountain filled with blood and came out clean and
pure, white as alabaster, pure as crystal, like new-fallen snow. That day when the lights came
on, that day when the burden was rolled away, the day of our
pardon. Now think about this. With God's
oil on your head, you have sinned. with the Holy Spirit in your
heart, you have sinned. Am I right about that? We have
God in us and yet we sin.