Turn with me to Genesis chapter
2. Genesis chapter 2. As we know this. Service that we call the Bible
study. This is supposed to be a time.
Of learning. I consider it to be more of a
time of teaching and then the morning message to be a time
of preaching, and I know that sometimes it's hard to tell the
difference in the two. But something came to my mind
and I felt led to teach it. It's five fundamental doctrines
that people refer to as the doctrines of grace. Or they are commonly
called Calvinism. And I have something that I really
want to say to you right here for just a minute about this.
I'm not a big fan of the word Calvinism. Okay, I'm gonna explain
myself here. But this is something that I
feel led in my heart to teach. I'm not a big, I don't go around
witnessing to people and talking to people about Calvinism and
telling everybody I believe in Calvinism for two reasons. Two,
I believe, very good reasons. Number one, it's because I don't
personally like any word that ends in ism. This is just me. I understand
that there are a lot of words like that out there, a lot of
men who use those words. And I'm just speaking on my own
behalf. I personally reject words that end in ism. I'm not going to say that they
don't ever come out of my mouth and you'll never hear me say
a word that ends in ism. But generally speaking, I deny
the use of them in my vocabulary. I actually rebel against using
them. And it's because it just sounds
like the pride of man to me. It does. It just sounds like,
you know, prideful man trying to impress others with doctrinal
knowledge. And I'm just not into that. I
just personally don't like words that end in "-ism." The other reason why I don't
commonly use the term, and I'm not particularly fond of the
term Calvinism, is because I don't worship John Calvin. I don't worship John Baptist. I don't worship the Apostle Paul.
I worship Jesus Christ. Just like John Calvin worshiped
Jesus Christ. Referring to the truth of God's
Word just as Calvinism, to me, it takes the focus off of Jesus
Christ. It just muddies the focus a little
bit. John Calvin saw five doctrinal
points in the scripture just like all of God's people see
five doctrinal points in the scripture. All of God's people
do. John Calvin only pointed out
the obvious. That's all that he did. He only
stated what was already there. Calvinism is not a radical opinion
on the Scripture. It's not. It's not a take on the Scripture
that a man came up with. It only acknowledges what God
wrote from the beginning. That's all that it does. It just
declares what's already there in black and white. So when people
point blank ask me, are you a Calvinist? I say, yes. Yes. I acknowledge. that the Lord
God opened John Calvin's eyes to see the truth of what's written
in the scripture. This is important. John Calvin
didn't see it on his own. This is important right here.
John Calvin didn't see it on his own. God revealed it to him. Just like God does for all of
his people. God did it. God did it. He gets the credit for what John
Calvin saw, just like God gets the credit for what any believer
sees. God gets the credit for what
I see, God gets the credit for what you see, and God gets the
credit for what John Calvin saw. That's why I don't believe any
name ought to be named for the credit of this revelation except
for the name Jesus Christ. If we're gonna name one sinner's
name, why don't we name any other sinner's name? Literally, why
don't we call it Moodyism? Why don't we call it Bakerism?
Or Coffeeism? Honestly, do you see those five
truths in the scripture? Did you hear that? That's Wattsism! That's what William Watts believes! Right? Surely you're not a wastiest. Really, do you see how ridiculous
this is? This is what all of God's people see, believe, preach. Now with all that being said,
the Lord did reveal to John Calvin what he reveals to all of his
people. There are five doctrinal truths
that we see on every page of this book. And John Calvin is
the one who coined the acronym TULIP, which is a word where
every letter stands for something. The T stands for something, the
U, the L, the I, the P. It stands for total depravity,
unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace,
perseverance of the saints. T-U-L-I-P, tulip. If the Lord
is willing, I want to take a Bible study on each one of those truths. And we're going to start today.
I want to declare the truth of man's total depravity. This would be a good thing for
all of us to get ahold of. And this is how I want to do
this and declare this. I want to tell you what total
depravity means. And then I want to spend the
rest of our time seeing it declared in the scripture. And we're gonna start with where
total depravity started. Genesis 2, verse 16. It says, and the Lord God commanded
the man, saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely
eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt
not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest
thereof, thou shalt surely die. And as we know, Adam ate of it. And according to God's word,
in that very moment, he died. Not physically, but spiritually. His soul, his character, his
inner being, before God, died. And that death brought total
depravity to him. And it brought total depravity
to every person that came from him. Which I'm looking at a whole
room full of them. Sin brought death to man. The wages of sin is death. Death
brought total depravity, corruption. Total depravity. Now let me tell
you what those two words mean. The definition of the word total,
and again, this one right here is important, okay? The definition
of the word total is the whole of the amount. Complete. Absolute. Entire. All of it. All of it. No portion left out. Total. That's what total means.
Total. The definition of the word depravity
is corruption, wickedness, evil. That's what mankind became when
Adam sinned. That's what we are in our own
natural fleshly condition because that's what Adam was in his own
natural fleshly condition and we came from him. Our natural
condition before God is complete, total wickedness. Boy, that's a shocker, isn't
it? Absolute evil. Nothing but corruption in the
whole of the amount. with no portion being left out. There's not one component of
flesh that this doesn't apply to. Total depravity. It's not that the mind is wicked
but the heart is good. That's what a lot of people think,
you know. Everybody goes into their mind. Everybody knows.
We can say what we want to. It's wicked. The mind is wicked.
People say, yeah, but the heart is good. The heart is right.
Uh-uh. Total depravity. Total depravity. Complete evil. Absolute wickedness. That's what man is before God.
Now, we're going to let the Word of God prove that to us. Don't take my word for it. Don't take my word for it. We're
gonna let the word of God prove this to us. Look at Genesis 6. Verse five, God saw that the
wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination
of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Do you have a center margin in
your Bible? Every imagination. Mine says the whole imagination. The Hebrew word signifieth not
only the imagination, but also the purposes and desires. All of it, every component of
it. Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only
evil continually means every day, every day, every single
day. Can we not agree with the word
of God on that? The thought of our minds, the desires of our
heart, they are only evil continually, continually. We are so wicked. Everything we do turns out to
be wicked. Turn with me to Job 14. Job 14. Verse 1 says, Man that is born of a woman is
a few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower
and is cut down. He fleeth also as a shadow and
continueth not. And dost thou open thine eyes
upon such an one, and bringest me into judgment with thee? Verse
four, he said, Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one. You can't. My mother couldn't. Not one. The only thing that a sinner
can produce is another sinner. Well, Gabe, are you calling me
a sinner? Yes. But more importantly than that,
God Almighty is. He has declared every man or
woman born from Adam to be the sinner that he or she is. I'm
a sinner. You're a sinner. We're all sinners. Turn over to Psalm 14. Psalm 14, verse one, the fool
hath said in his heart, there is no God. The fool hath also
said in his heart, no God. They are corrupt. They have done
abominable works. There is none that doeth good. The Lord looked down from heaven
upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand
and seek God. People like to say that God looked
down through time to see who would do good and who would obey
him. God did look down through time. And this is what he saw,
verse two, the Lord looked down from heaven upon the children
of men to see if there were any that did understand and seek
God. They are all gone aside. They are all together become
filthy. There is none that doeth good,
no, not one. That's the condition of mankind
before God, all of mankind. Total, complete depravity, wickedness,
evil, sin. Look with me at Psalm 51. Psalm
51, verse three. David said, for I acknowledge
my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. This is, you
know, the sweet psalmist of Israel. This is the man after God's own
heart. Verse four, against thee only, thee, thee only, have I
sinned and done this evil in thy sight that thou mightest
be justified when thou speakest and be clear when thou judgest.
Verse five, he said, behold, I was shapen in iniquity And
in sin did my mother conceive me." He said, I started this
way. I was conceived into this. Why is it that we don't have
to teach our children how to lie? Why is that? Why is it in the heart of every
child born into the world to lie? Why is that? Because that's
the nature of the child. That's what the child was born
into. That's what I was born into. I got it from my father.
My children got it from me. Look at Psalm 58. Verse one, Psalm 58, verse one. Do you indeed speak righteousness,
O congregation? You who gather are supposed to
be God's people. Do you speak righteousness? Do
you judge uprightly, O ye sons of men? Yea, in heart you work
wickedness. You weigh the violence of your
hands in the earth. The wicked are estranged from
the womb. They go astray as soon as they
be born, speaking lies. That's man's nature, total depravity. Look at Isaiah 1. Isaiah 1 verse 4, Our sinful
nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children
that are corruptors, they have forsaken the Lord. They have
provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger. They are gone away
backward. Who's he talking about right
here? Look at verse three, the ox knoweth his owner, and the
ass his master's crib, but Israel doth not know, my people doth
not consider. He's talking about his own people. Verse five, why should you be
stricken anymore? Will you revolt more and more? The whole head is sick and the
whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot, even
into the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises
and putrefying sores. They have not been closed, neither
bound up, neither mollified with ointment, Your country is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire.
Your land, strangers devour it in your presence. And it is desolate
as overthrown by strangers. And the daughter of Zion is left
as a cottage in a vineyard and a lodge in a garden of cucumbers
as a besieged city. Verse nine says, except the Lord
of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant. We should have
been a Sodom and we should have been like unto Gomorrah. burned
up. If it wasn't for the fact that
God had a remnant, a very small remnant that he chose to save,
all of us would be burned up because that's what we deserve.
Total depravity. Total depravity. Turn to Isaiah
64. Isaiah 64 verse 6, but we are all as an unclean
thing and all our righteousnesses, that means good deeds, are as
filthy rags. Get a Bible concordance sometime
and look up the words filthy rags right there. And we all
do fade as a leaf and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away. And there is none that calleth
upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee.
For thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us because
of our iniquities. But now, O Lord, Thou art our
Father, we are the clay, and Thou our potter, and we are all
the work of Thy hand. It has to be the work of His
hands because all of our work, all the work of our hands are
total depravity. All of our righteousnesses are
filthy rags. Every good thing that we try
to do is a filthy rag before God. Look at Jeremiah 13. I won't be much longer. Jeremiah 13, verse 23. Can the Ethiopian change his
skin or the leopard his spots? Then may you also do good that
are accustomed to do evil, can only do evil. That big cat, a
leopard, how could he of his own ability change the pattern
of his spots? He can't, he couldn't. In the
same way, how could we in our own ability do good When we're
only evil, we can't, we cannot. Look at Jeremiah 17 verse nine. The heart is deceitful above
all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? That's what
the heart of man is, desperately wicked, deceitful above all things. The heart, our hearts, the heart
of men and women, this is the most deceitful thing that exists
on planet Earth. Is that not amazing? It's deceitful
above all things. If you want to know the most
deceitful thing, you got one right there. The most deceitful
thing you could possibly find on earth. In Matthew 15, our
Lord said, this is where all sin comes from. He said, all
of our evil thoughts, all of our murders or our hatreds, all
of our adulteries, all of our fornication, lust, All of our
lives, lies, it all starts in these totally depraved hearts
of ours. Go to Romans 3. Romans 3, in chapter 1, Paul
says that he is writing this letter to all that be in Rome,
beloved of God. He's writing to God's people
here. He's writing to saved people as opposed to lost people. And he said in verse 9, Romans
3, verse 9, what then? Are we better than they? No,
in no wise. For we have before proved both
Jews and Gentiles that they are all under sin. As it is written,
there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after
God. They are all gone out of the
way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that
doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open grave,
sepulcher. With their tongues they've used
deceit. The poison of asps is under their
lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing
and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed
blood. Destruction and misery are in
their ways and the way of peace have they not known. There is
no fear of God before their eyes. Who's he talking about here?
Everybody. Everybody. Verse 19. Now we know
that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are
under the law, that's us, that's everybody, that every mouth may
be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God. That's man's natural state before
God. Guilty. Remember that. Remember
that for about the next 30 minutes. That's our state before God.
Guilty. Why? It's because all of mankind
is a totally depraved sinner. Verse 23 says, for all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. And we're not here yet in
the study of these doctrines, but while we're here on this
page, we might as well see the gospel. we might as well see
the gospel of our salvation. Verse 24 says, being justified
freely by His grace. Didn't that add a little breath
of fresh air, a little sigh of relief here for a minute? Being
justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is
in Christ Jesus. whom God hath set forth to be
a propitiation, that means a sacrifice, a substitute, a bloody victim,
a covering, an atonement, a hiding place, whom God hath set forth
to be a propitiation through faith in His blood to declare
His righteousness, not our total depravity, but his righteousness
for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance
of God to declare, I say at this time, his righteousness that
he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
It's hard to only teach one component of these doctrinal truths. It's
hard to just get on one and stay on that one. Total depravity
is awful news. without the glorious news gospel
of our redemption. It's just horrible news. Look
right here at Romans 5. It says, therefore being justified
by faith, that means looking to the one who saved us, Jesus
Christ. Therefore being justified by
faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein
we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not
only so, but we glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation
worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope. And hope maketh not ashamed,
because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy
Ghost, which is given unto us. Verse 6 says, For when we were
yet without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. And that right there brings us
right back to our total depravity. Ungodly. Verse 12 says, wherefore,
as by one man sin entered the world, and death by sin, and
so death passed upon all men, for that all have sin. All of
Romans 7 tells us of the complete ruin of our total depravity. Look at Romans 7, verse 14, it
says, we know that the law is spiritual,
But I'm carnal, sold under sin. Completely sold under sin. Verse 18, for I know that in
me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. For to will is
present with me. But how to perform that which
is good, I find not. What he's saying right there
is, I have a will, but it's not a free will. That's what he's
saying. I have a will, it's just not
a free will. Verse 18, I know that in me that
is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing, for to will is present
with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. For
the good that I would, the good that I will to do, I do not,
I don't do it. But the evil which I would not,
the evil that my will doesn't want to do, that's what I do. Verse 21, he said, every time
I try to do good, evil ruins the whole thing. Verse 24, he
said, oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me? I need deliverance. Who shall
deliver me from the body of this death? That's the gospel message.
It speaks of the one who delivered us from this. This is us. That's the truth. The gospel
is concerning the one who delivered us from this. We couldn't deliver
ourselves because we were totally depraved. But God. But God. All right, last one.
Go to Ephesians 2. Ephesians 2. Verse 1, and you hath he quickened
who were dead in trespasses and sin. Totally depraved, dead. How totally depraved? Dead, totally
depraved. Verse 2, wherein in time past
you walked according to the course of this world, according to the
prince of the power of the air. That's the adversary. The spirit
that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also
we all had our conversation. In times past, in the lust of
our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind,
and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. Totally
depraved, just like everybody else. Verse four says, but God,
who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved
us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together
with Christ. By grace, you are saved." As
bad as our total depravity is, it's the foundation of the gospel.
It really is. It's the blackness that the light
of Christ shines through. The Apostle Paul emphasized in
1 Timothy 1.15 that he was a totally depraved sinner. He said, I'm
the chief. I'm the chief. I'm the greatest
sinner that's ever lived on this earth. But he said, I have great
hope because that's who Christ came to save. He said, this is
a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ
Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I'm the
chief. If a man or a woman ever gets
a hold of his or her total depravity, that's what he or she will say.
That's what he or she will say. I'm the chief. And that's where
his or her hope will be. It'll be in the only one who
can save me from this impossible condition I'm in. Jesus Christ,
my Lord. Total depravity. puts all of
our hope in Jesus Christ. That's what it does. All right,
you're dismissed, and I've gone way over. Now, part of it was
not my fault. Everybody was having a good time,
but we need to have a quick turnaround.