Well, what a joy it is to be
here outside of Vancouver. I'm on a 45-day trip right now,
which is a long time to be on one trip. And I have been as
far south as Puerto Rico. I've been through various parts
of the United States. I've just been in Edmonton, and
so now I'm so happy to be here in Vancouver. And I'm excited
about what we're going to be talking about tonight. and tomorrow
as well, because this conference is focused upon the doctrines
of grace, those truths in Scripture that most magnify the saving
grace of God in salvation. God is a saving God, and God
delights in putting His glory on display by saving those who
are unworthy and undeserving, such as you and and making us
trophies of His grace. And as we study the Bible, we
come to understand that God is a triune God, God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and that each person
of the Trinity is a Savior. God the Father is a Savior. God the Son is a Savior, and
God the Holy Spirit as well. And they work together in perfect
unity, in perfect partnership, one with another, in saving the
same vast multitude of sinners whom they have set their hearts
upon to save. And so in this conference, what
we're going to look at are four of the five doctrines of grace.
I would love to do all five, but we only have four sessions.
So I'll meet you at McDonald's if you want the fifth one. I'll
be more than happy to give it to you. But we're going to be
looking at total depravity or radical corruption. We're going
to be looking at sovereign election. definite atonement, and irresistible
grace, or sovereign regeneration. And as we do this, we're going
to be uniquely focusing upon the words of our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ. I believe everything in the Bible
is true from cover to cover, and yet when we come to the teaching
of Christ himself, I think it has extraordinary authority and
impact upon our lives because Jesus is the truth. He is the
greatest teacher of the truth. He is the greatest expositor
of the truth. And so to hear it from our Lord's
own words, has, I think, an unusually strong influence in our lives. What we're going to do is take
one book in the Bible. We're going to take the Gospel
of John, and we're going to go through the Gospel of John four
times. and to look at each of these
doctrines of grace. Years ago in the church that
I last pastored, I wanted the men in our church to be well
grounded in the doctrines of grace, so I did something that
proved to be a wonderful study for us. I started in Genesis. And I just worked my way through
the entire Bible until I arrived at Revelation. And I took each
author in the Bible and unfolded their teaching on the doctrines
of grace. So I took the book of Genesis
and taught the doctrines of grace. I took Exodus through Deuteronomy
and taught the doctrines of grace, et cetera, as I worked my way
through the entire Bible. And when I came to the Gospel
of John, there was such extraordinary precision in the teaching of
our Lord on these grand truths that as I taught the men in our
church, we met Friday morning at 6 o'clock, our hearts were
just unusually captured, and our lives were greatly impacted
and transformed. In fact, we were greatly humbled.
We were greatly lifted up. We were greatly lit up and fired
up for the Lord as a result of our time looking in the Gospel
of John. So I trust that the Lord will
do that in your heart as well as in my life as we look together
at the doctrines of grace in the Gospel of John. I love the
Gospel of John. I'll just have to tell you this
at the outset. I've named my youngest son John. I have taught
through the gospel of John three times, and each time I took about
five years to do it, so I've spent a major portion of my ministry,
I guess that'd be like 15 years, just teaching the gospel of John. It's my favorite book. 92% of the gospel of John is
not found in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. Matthew, Mark, and Luke
are what we call the synoptic gospels where there's much overlap
because they present much the same material, but John is over
here by himself. John, I think, actually ascends
the mountain a little higher and has an even yet more towering
perspective on the subject of salvation. And so, I think that
as we will look at this during this conference, that we will
have an eternal perspective that is breathtaking on the subject
of salvation, and specifically God's saving grace. We could well argue that there
are twin mountain peaks in the New Testament, John and Romans,
and we all have our favorite between those two. I'll just
have to tell you my bias, of course I'm correct on this, but
I tilt towards the gospel of John, but worse things could
happen than we change the conference to the book of Romans and go
through the doctrines of grace in Romans. So this is where we
are and this is what we're doing. And one thing about the gospel
of John, it's been well said, it's been compared to a swimming
pool. book, that it's shallow enough
for a brand-new Christian to wade in. I mean, what book do
we say to a new Christian to read after they come to faith
in Christ? I always say, read the gospel of John. In fact,
that's what I say to someone who's not even a Christian. I
just met someone on the airplane, flying here and in the conversation.
I said, please promise me you'll read the gospel of John. So it's
so evangelistic, and it's so geared for a new Christian, and
yet it's been said that the profoundest theologian can drown in the gospel
of John because of the profundity of the teaching and the words
from our Lord. Well, that's all by way of introduction,
and so in this first session, I want us to talk about total
depravity or radical corruption. What can a dead man do? We want to start with the bad
news before we will look at the good news, because the good news
is not good news until you know what the bad news is. Grace does
not really become amazing grace. until you understand the depths
of depravity to which we had sunk as a human race, where God
found us and God raised us up to the heights of heavens to
be seated with Christ in heavenly places above. And so, we first
must see the ruin of mankind before we can properly appreciate
the rescue of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit. The doctrine of radical corruption
is simply that the entire human race has fallen in sin. When
Adam sinned, we all sinned, and his sin was imputed to our account,
and that was enough to condemn us and to be cast into hell forever. We were in Adam, and when he
sinned, we sinned. But also, His sin nature has
been passed down to us as well, from generation to generation. And we all, like sheep, have
gone astray. Each one of us has turned to
his own way. And we entered this world defiled and corrupted by
sin. That's the teaching of Scripture.
We have gone forth from our mother's womb, speaking lies. And sin
did my mother conceive me. And our mind, our affections,
and our will are now all in bondage to sin. That's the teaching of
scripture from cover to cover. But I want us now to look at
the gospel of John, and I want to trace this out. We'll start
in the prologue with actually the words of Christ Himself,
with the words of the Apostle John, but for the rest of the
time, these will be the words of Christ Himself. And I have
nine headings that I want to give you, all right? So, I've
got my note-takers here on the front row, and I want to set
before you now nine passages in the Gospel of John. It is
an overwhelming case. If someone does not hold to total
depravity, it's not because they know too much of the Bible, it's
because they know too little of the Bible. And so, there is
such an insurmountable case. And so, I want to begin in chapter
1, verses 9 through 11. The first main heading is spiritual
ignorance. The entire human race has been
subjected to a human ignorance of God and of spiritual things. And so, in John 1, beginning
in verse 9, this is the first statement of total depravity
And it is an assertion of the spiritual ignorance of this unregenerated
world regarding the matters of salvation. So note verse 9. There was the true light. Stop right there. That is a reference
to the Lord Jesus Christ. Later in John 8, 12, He will
say, I am the light of the world. And by that, He means He is the
one who has come to bring to us the fullest revelation of
the knowledge of God. Light refers to truth, it refers
to the knowledge of God, it also refers to personal purity and
holiness, but principally it refers to the knowledge of God. And so Jesus is the true light. The word true here means real
or genuine or authentic. Jesus is the perfect light of
divine truth and knowledge that has come into this world. And it says, there was the true
light which coming into the world enlightens every man. I think
that's a reference to everyone who hears the gospel, everyone
who hears of the name of Christ. It's an interpretive issue there
with verse 9. But then he says in verse 10,
John is writing this, he, referring to the true light, Christ, was
in the world and the world was made through Him, and the world
did not know Him." How blind can blind be? That the Creator,
the Lord Jesus Christ, and He was the one in Genesis 1, verse
1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and
in verse 3, let there be light That was Jesus Christ, according
to Colossians 1, 16, who spoke everything into existence out
of nothing on six consecutive days. And it is this Christ who
has created everything, has come into the very world that He has
made, and upon His entrance into this world, this says that the
world did not know Him. That would be like standing on
the surface of the sun and looking square into the sun and saying,
there is no sun, or saying, I do not know what it is that I'm
looking at while you're standing on the surface of the sun. Jesus
Christ is the Light who has come, and the world did not know Him.
And when it says the world here, it is a reference to the entire
human race outside of the Kingdom of God. It's not a reference
to any particular part of the human race, and it speaks of
the universal ignorance of God in the world. And it's not limited
to that generation when Jesus came 2,000 years ago. Hypothetically,
if Christ was to come tonight and be born of a virgin and be
here in this world, the world would still not know Him. We
may be smarter, we may have more knowledge, we may have accumulated
more learning, but on spiritual matters, We're still, the world
is just as ignorant of spiritual things. Jesus came and made known
the perfection of His life, the only person who's ever lived
a perfect life in this world, the profundity of His words.
They said no man ever spoke as He did. The power of His miracles
the testimony of the Father, the heavens opened up at His
baptism and said, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well
pleased. The voice of God thundered out
of heaven and pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ. All of the
prophets throughout the Old Testament pointed ahead to the coming of
Christ. There were over 100 prophecies
recorded in Old Testament Scripture that gave specific, detailed
foretelling of the coming of Christ. John the Baptist pointed
to him and said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin
of the world. And despite witness after witness
and testimony after testimony, the world was spiritually ignorant
of God. And man has not changed, and
man is not evolving upward. If anything, man is devolving
downward, and the spiritual ignorance that plagued mankind 2,000 years
ago continues to plague mankind in this hour. And verse 11, He
came to His own, the very world in which He had created, and
those who were His own did not receive Him. That's a blanket
statement, including every person in every place, in every generation,
and we could expand it to every continent. They did not receive
Him. They did not know Him. and therefore
they rejected him. So that's where we begin with
this statement of the spiritual ignorance of the entire world. You wanna know what's wrong with
the world? You wanna know what's wrong with America? You wanna
know what's wrong with Canada? You wanna know what's wrong with
politics? You wanna know what's wrong with
everything? It's this spiritual ignorance. And it is the result of sin that
has marred every person. But I have good news for you,
it gets worse. So if you'll come to chapter
three, I want you to see not only spiritual ignorance, but
spiritual blindness. John chapter three and verse
three, And the reason why man cannot know the truth is because
man cannot see the truth. You cannot know what you cannot
see. In baseball, we say you can't hit what you can't see.
Well, in the Bible, you cannot know what you cannot see. So,
in John chapter 3, verse 3, Jesus answered and said to him, "'Truly,
truly, I say to you.'" Now, that always introduces a very important
statement. Everything that Jesus said was
important, but some things that Jesus said rise to a higher level
of importance. And Jesus will draw our attention
by saying, truly, truly, I say to you, and now comes this statement,
unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. there is this total inability
to see with understanding the things of the Spirit of God. Do you see the word cannot in
your Bible? Unless one is born again, he cannot. There's a world
of difference between may not and cannot. May not simply means
you don't have permission to do something, but it is implied
that you would have the ability to do it. When you say cannot,
that signifies you may have permission, but you do not have the ability
to carry out the request or the statement. So when Jesus says
that unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of
heaven, that means he is as blind as blind can be. He cannot see
with understanding. He then says in verse 5, "'Truly,
truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit,
he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.'" That is a universal
statement applied to every person who is outside the kingdom of
heaven. that until one enters into the
kingdom, as long as one is on the outside of the kingdom, that
person cannot see the kingdom of God. And it's not talking
about physical eyes. It's talking about spiritual
eyes, is unable with spiritual perception to see the teaching
that is required to enter into the kingdom of heaven. I'll just give you a couple of
cross-references. In other parts of the Bible, 2 Corinthians 4,
verse 4 says, the God of this age has blinded the minds of
the unbelieving, so that they may not see the light of the
gospel of the glory of Christ." Every person on planet earth
outside the kingdom of heaven is blinded by Satan and blinded
by sin. And when you witness to someone
and they refuse your witness of Christ, many times we blame
ourselves that we didn't explain it well enough. Well, we are
describing a sunset to a blind person. We are walking a blind
person through an art gallery and pointing them to masterpieces
that they cannot see. And that is why we are so dependent
upon God the Holy Spirit to open their eyes and to give them the
sight that is necessary in order to be converted. We'll talk about
that tomorrow morning. In 1 John 2 verse 11 says, the
one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in
the darkness and does not know where he is going because the
darkness has blinded his eyes. This is a reference to every
person who is unconverted, who is unregenerate. This explains
a lot, does it not, about the world in which we live? This
explains why some parents even have difficulty with their children
who are yet unconverted and who have not yet been given spiritual
eyes to see. It explains some of the conflict
in families with in-laws, for example, who have not yet come
to faith in Christ. They have eyes, but they cannot
see, and so this is the result of total depravity. John 12,
verse 46, everyone who believes in Me will not remain in darkness. That is to say, before you believe
in Christ, that person was in darkness, John 12, 46. Well,
third, I want you to know, not only spiritual ignorance and
spiritual blindness, but third, spiritual hatred. In John chapter
3 and verse 19, if you'd follow with me, we see that the result
of the radical corruption of the human heart is that that
person loves what they should hate, and they hate what they
should love. So, in John 3 and verse 19, this
is the judgment, and I believe these are still the words of
Christ. This is the condemnation of the entire human race Jesus
is saying outside of Christ, that the Light, and in the New
American Standard, it's a capital L. In the original Greek, there
are no capital letters, but I think this is rightly designated as
the true Light, the Light of the world, Jesus Christ. This
is the judgment that the light, referring to Christ, has come
into the world, and men love the darkness rather than the
light. What men? The answer is all men,
not just some. All, rich, poor, male, female,
educated, uneducated, civilized, uncouth, No matter who the person
is, there is enmity within their own heart of resistance against
the things of God. Sometimes it's active rebellion,
and other times it's passive indifference. But nevertheless,
this pushback is there in the heart until it is subdued by
the Holy Spirit in the new birth. So, notice what it says in verse
19, rather than the light. How wicked
must the human heart be? At Jeremiah 17, 9, the heart
is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. How inverted,
how upside down, how backwards is the human heart until it's
converted. Men love the darkness rather than the light. Here's
why. Four, this introduces an explanation clause, for their
deeds were evil. They didn't want God any more
than a thief wants to find a policeman. And then verse 20 gives the other
side. Not only do they love the darkness, verse 20 now will say
they hate the light. It goes both ways. They love
the darkness. They hate the light. Look at
verse 20. For everyone, and again, please
note, that is an all-inclusive statement. It's not referring
to just Americans, okay? That is an all-inclusive statement. For everyone, who does evil,"
well, that covers the human race outside of Christ. Everyone who
does evil hates the light. Now, I know some people will
say, oh, no, no, no, I've always loved God. Well, are you going
to believe your own heart, or are you going to believe the
Bible? Because this says, everyone who does evil hates the Light,
capital L, a reference to the Lord Jesus Christ, and does not
come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. This is the spiritual hatred
that is bound up in the human heart. It hates the Light. It loves the darkness. It hates Christ. It loves self. It hates God. It loves the world
and the things in the world. This is the divine diagnosis
of the human heart. Fourth, while we're in John 3,
I want you to note spiritual defiance. This too is a mark
of of total depravity. This is what we're up against.
This also is what characterized our own lives before we were
birthed into the kingdom. In John 3 and verse 36, we see
spiritual defiance, and what we see is that this depravity
affected even our will as well. So, in verse 36, he who believes
in the Son, referring to Christ, has eternal life. But, and here it turns in another
direction. He who does not obey the Son
will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him." This verse
is what we call parallelism, where there's an A line and then
a B line. And in this parallelism, believes
and does not obey are parallel to to not believe in Christ is
synonymous with not obeying Christ. We need to understand that the
gospel is more than an offer. It is an offer. It is an invitation. But it goes further. It is also
a command. Jesus issued His commands in
the imperative mood. When the apostles preached in
the book of Acts, they preached with the imperative mood. The gospel is a command from
God Himself that we believe in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
And we have one of two choices. Either we believe by obeying
the gospel, or we remain in unbelief by disobeying the Lord Jesus
Christ, who says, enter by the narrow gate. Who says, come unto
me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give
you rest. Who says, if any man thirsts,
let him come to me and drink. and out of his innermost being
shall flow rivers of living water." To remain in unbelief is to remain
in spiritual defiance of God. It is to remain in spiritual
disobedience to God. To be in unbelief is not where
you stand in neutral territory. It's not in no man's land. No,
you have declared yourself to be in defiance of the gospel
of Jesus Christ. That's what verse 36 is saying. It is a refusal to submit to
the lordship of Christ. Unbelief is a refusal to humble
oneself. It is a refusal to deny oneself. It is a refusal to take up a
cross. It is a continuation of living,
I'm going to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, how
I want to do it, with whom I want to do it, It is arrogance on
steroids. It is pride that is strutting
to hell, and all unbelief is rank disobedience to the Son
of God. And so, that's the fourth mark
of total depravity, this spiritual defiance. And before you were
converted to Christ, you too lived in a world of spiritual
defiance, and so did I as well. And conversion is coming to the
end of yourself, that obedience to the gospel may begin. That's why true saving faith
is far more than just intellectual head knowledge or warm feelings. It must affect the will. The will must be activated now
to live in obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ, and it begins by
obeying the gospel. But it gets worse. If you'll
come to chapter 5 and verse 25, fifth I want you to see spiritual
death. This is really bad. But you know what? This is what
magnifies the grace of God in salvation. Let me put it to you
this way, and you're turning your Bible, but look up here
just for one second. If you think man is right here and God is
right here, it's just a small chasm for grace. to bring us
to God. But if you understand that man
is down here in the grave, and that God is high and lifted up
and holy, and you see this extraordinary chasm that separates man in the
grave of sin and God in the glory of His throne, that now becomes
amazing grace. And so we're not simply underscoring
this because we want to get down on the human race. We're underscoring
this so that we can exalt the grace of God and see the magnificence
of His saving grace. How far down God had to reach
to the bottom of the barrel to get me and to get you. And so chapter 5, verse 25 will
help us understand a little bit more clearly what this is. Notice
verse 25, "...truly, truly, I say to you..." Stop right there.
Are you noticing that these salvation verses, it's like John had a
yellow highlighter as he wrote this and just is highlighting
these verses. These ought to be leaping off
the page. and just grabbing us by the lapels
and drawing our attention to them. Truly, truly, I say to
An hour is coming and now is. And it's very important, the
now is, because by saying now is, he's not referring to the
end of the age, where there will be a resurrection, a physical
resurrection of the dead. That'll be verses 28 and 29,
later in this section. But in verse 25, he's talking
about right now, today, this moment. An hour is coming and
now is when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and
those who hear will live. These dead refer to those who
are spiritually dead. What Paul says in Ephesians 2,
1, you were dead in your trespasses and sin. What Paul will say in
Colossians 2, verse 13, you were dead in your transgressions.
It's a spiritual death. It means we had no spiritual
life within us. We had an existence. We simply
had no life. Now, there's three ways to look
at mankind outside of Christ. Either he's well, he's sick,
or he's dead. Now, there was a book that came
out many years ago called I'm Okay, You're Okay, and that summarizes
the first of those options, that the human race is just fine and
just needs a better environment and just needs better life insurance
or health insurance and just needs a better this or that education,
and he'll be just fine with God. The other option is not that
he's well, but that he's sick. Man has the sniffles. Man has contracted a disease. He still has life. He has time
to take care of it. And he still has ability, and
he still can function. Or, third, he is dead. Now, dead is dead. You can't be any worse off than
dead. What does this text say? It says
every person before they come to faith in Jesus Christ were
spiritually dead. That is to say, their mind was
spiritually dead. They could not understand the
truth. Their heart and their emotions
and their affections were spiritually dead. They were numb to the truth. There was no responsiveness to
the truth, and their will was spiritually dead. They could
not believe the truth. It's like this. You go into a
hospital room, and here is someone in the hospital bed, and before
you walk in, they have died. Now, there have been times as
a pastor, I've gone into a hospital room, and there, the member of
our church has already passed away and is laying there in the
bed. If I was to go up to them, hypothetically,
by way of illustration, And if I knew that they weren't a believer
and I share the gospel with them, what capacity do you think they
have to respond? Let's say I could bring in a
praise team or a choir and sing to them and just kind of warm
the atmosphere in the room and get them in a good spiritual
mood. Do you think that dead person could respond to that?
Let's say I bring John MacArthur, I bring R.C. Sproul, I bring
the best of the best to come in there and to articulate the
plan of salvation. If you're dead, you cannot respond
to what's being presented to you. I mean, you have eyes, but
you cannot see. You have ears, you cannot hear.
I mean, you could take a pen and stick the person's foot,
and there's no movement, there's no response. That's exactly the
way someone is before they come to faith in Jesus Christ, spiritually
speaking. They may have physical life,
But if they're unregenerate, they have no spiritual life,
and so they're in a state of total spiritual I remember one
day I was in seminary and I was thinking through all of these
issues and thinking more carefully about sound doctrine and theology,
and I remember one day in class the professor asking this question. It was a real tipping point for
me in my understanding of the doctrines of grace. The professor
asked this question, what can a dead man do? And I was still in a state of
kind of arguing for a less-than-doctrines-of-grace position, and as soon as he said
that, it seemed like it was so quiet
in the room that you could hear the grass growing outside. I
mean, no one had an answer, and I'm wanting someone in class
to answer this. And then I remember one student
on the back row yelled out, That's all a dead man can do,
and the entire human race, my friend, is in a state of spiritual
death. They are unable to think rightly
about the truth. They are unable to feel for the
truth. They are unable to receive and
believe. the truth. That's an important
pill to swallow, because it's going to affect our understanding
of what the new birth is, and what all takes place when God
regenerates a lost soul. But it gets worse. I want you to turn to chapter
6, to John chapter 6. And as it gets worse, we're just
magnifying the saving grace of God all the more. And in the
process of this, I trust that you're coming to an awareness,
then who can be saved? So, John chapter 6 and verse
44, the sixth main heading that I want to set before you under
this radical corruption is spiritual inability. And Jesus taught that
it is absolutely impossible for spiritually dead sinners to exercise
saving faith. apart from the miracle of the
new birth, which only God can do. So, in John 6, verse 44,
and I would imagine most of us here tonight are very familiar
with this passage, but let's look at it again. No one, I've
studied this in the original Greek, guess what this means?
No one. Thank you very much. No one. Read my lips. No one. Please note, it does not say,
may. It says, no one can, meaning no one has the ability to. No one has the moral ability
or the spiritual ability, notice he says, to come to me. He's
not talking about physically walking across the room to Christ.
He's talking about spiritually coming to faith in Christ. To come to Christ is to believe
in Christ. Yeah, you can look earlier in
John 6, verse 35. Again, the parallelism of believing
in Christ and coming to Christ. And so what Jesus is saying is,
no one in and of themselves can come to faith in Christ. This is the death blow to the
pagan myth of freedom of the will. It is a religious superstition. It is a pagan myth that has zero
basis in the Word of God. It runs in total contradiction
to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the authority of His teaching. When he says, no one can come
to me, he is referring to the total inability within fallen
man to come to faith in Christ, in and of himself, by his own
choice, apart from what we'll talk about tomorrow. They're
going to have to come back tomorrow. Now, a man has free will to go
to hell, but no free will to go to heaven. Now look at verse
65 as we come down through this discourse that Christ gives. In verse 65, in case they did
not catch it the first time, Jesus circles back around and
says it a second time. In verse 65, "'For this reason
I have said to you that no one can come to Me.'" No one can
come unless it has been granted him from the Father. Well, that didn't sit well with
the crowd that day. Look at the next verse. They
had a Scottish revival here. Honey, I shrunk the church."
Look at verse 66, as a result of this, as a result of what?
Well, do tell, as a result of what he just said, that no one
can come to Me unless the Father who has sent Me grants it. That is an utter, utter, utter
death blow to human self-esteem. and human pride. As a result
of this, many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking
with Him anymore. I was taught in seminary that
when you teach these doctrines of grace, if someone's not upset
with you, you haven't taught them well. Here with the Lord Jesus Christ,
who is the incarnation of truth, who is the very personification
of truth, who is truth itself, Now, these disciples were not
true disciples. These were false disciples. These
are what we would say today unconverted church members. They withdrew
because they didn't want to hear this. And earlier in verse 60,
they were saying, this is a difficult statement. Who can listen to
it? Well, it's not hard to understand,
it's just hard to swallow. Spiritual inability. So therefore,
every time we preach the gospel, every time we witness the gospel,
every time we teach the gospel, We are totally, completely, entirely
dependent upon God performing a supernatural miracle in the
hearts of people, because in and of themselves they cannot
come to Christ. We are to invite them, and we
are to call them, and we are to summon them, but we must leave
the results with God, for only God can grant it. Well, it gets
worse. Come to John 8 and verse 34,
spiritual slavery. What Jesus will now say is that
every human being outside the kingdom of God is held by the
iron chains of sin and that they have that they obey their Master
who is sin. So, in verse 34, Jesus answered
them. Notice how He begins His answer.
Do you see it there? "'Truly, truly, I say to you.'"
This is flagging all of these verses. These are critically
important. I mean, we cannot hydroplane
over these verses. We can't just run on and pass
by these verses without zeroing in and grasping the significance
of what they say. Truly, truly, and by the way,
it's repeated for emphasis. Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone,
I've done a study of everyone. Guess what it means? Everyone. Thank you very much. Everyone. who commits sin. All right? I'm
going to say that pretty much covers the field right there.
And it's referring to a lifestyle of sin. It's referring to the
unconverted person who lives in sin, swims in sin, breathes
sin, is on the path of sin, is pursuing sin. It's talking about
a habitual lifestyle of sin. everyone who commits sin on an
ongoing basis is the slave of sin. Now, if you're the slave
of sin, that means sin is your master. And if you're a slave,
you obey your master. And you can tell, you can tell,
really, where someone is spiritually, as best as a human being could
tell, by who do you obey? And those who obey sin, sin is
their master. And so, this referring to unbelievers,
well, I can assure you sin is not evangelistic. Sin is not
wanting you to go to Christ. Sin is not wanting you to believe
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Sin is not going to let go of
its captives. until one who is greater than
sin, one who has dealt with sin, one who has died for sin, will
come and release us from our bondage to sin. And if the Son
shall set you free, you shall be free indeed. But until then,
you are a slave of sin, and you will live for sin, and you may
even die in your sin if you're not released from your slavery
and imprisonment to sin." This is a strong message that Jesus
had for those there that day. And so, a person cannot come
to faith in Christ as long as they are enslaved to sin. Next, in chapter 8 and verse
44, there's spiritual bondage, spiritual bondage. Jesus announced
that those without Christ are suffering bondage, not only to
sin, but to Satan, who is a real being, small b, who is the god
of this age, who is the prince of this world. And in John 8,
verse 44, Jesus said, you're of your father, the devil. Wow,
that's some preaching. Now He is addressing the Pharisees
and the religious leaders of the day, but He is also addressing
those who are under the sway of their teaching, and in reality,
He is addressing every person who is outside the kingdom of
heaven, by extension. And so he says, you are of your
father the devil, meaning you belong to your father the devil. There are only two spiritual
families in the entire world. Everyone is a member of one of
two spiritual families. There is the family of God, and
there is the family of the devil. There are the saved, there are
the lost. There are the saints, and there
are the ain'ts. And there are only two spiritual
fathers. There's God and there's Satan. So that's why if you marry
an unbeliever, you've got the devil for a father-in-law. Because
you just married into a bad family. So Jesus said, you're of your
father, the devil. And you want to do the desires
of your father. Like father, like son. One thing I've noticed is how
much children look like their parents in so many cases. And I can spot it. I can walk
into a church like this, and I can sometimes pick out who
belongs to who just by the facial appearance. There is a family
likeness. And it's true not only physically,
it's true spiritually. And those who are in Satan's
family want to do the desires of their father, which is what
Christ is teaching here. And it's important to see the
word want. You want to do the desires of your heart. That's
in your heart to want to do that. That's your desire. And then
he says, he was a murderer from the beginning. So, spiritual
bondage. is a part of radical corruption. 2 Timothy 2, verse 26 says, they
are held captive by Satan to do His will. Ephesians 2, verse
2 says that we walked according to the prince of the air, the
spirit of disobedience. Well, there's one more that I
want you to see, and this will complete our first walk through
the gospel of John. We're still in John 8. It's spiritual
deafness. John 8, I want you to note verse
43, the previous verse. Jesus taught that the unconverted
sinner is spiritually deaf and is entirely unable to hear the
truth. They may hear the words, but
it doesn't register with them. So look at verse 43. Why do you
not understand what I am saying?" This is what Jesus is saying
to the unsaved, unconverted multitude there that day. Why do you not
understand what I am saying? And He now answers His own question. It is because you cannot hear
My Word. Please note the word cannot again.
It doesn't say you may not. No, he says you cannot. You are
spiritually deaf. You cannot hear my word, meaning
it's not reaching your heart. Listen, I know as a preacher,
I can only bring the Word of God to your ear, but God's going
to have to take it from your ear to the heart. I can't go
any further. You can hear my audible voice
right now, but I pray God has given you ears to hear the truth
of which I am saying, and that it is resonating within you.
That's because, if that is so, it is because God has given you
ears to hear the truth, and you know that this is right. But
if you are not in agreement with this, it's cause for careful
self-examination whether you're converted to Christ, because
those who are unconverted cannot hear this teaching. Look at verse
47, and we'll wrap this up. By contrast, he who is of God. To be of God means to be born
of God. It means to belong to God. He
who is of God hears the words of God. That means to hear with
spiritual ears so as to understand and to act upon it. To hear and
not to do is not to hear at all. So he who is of God hears the
words of God. There is a spiritual receptivity. For this reason, you do not hear
them because you are not of God. That's a strong dose of medicine.
And Jesus was not preaching to the choir when He said that.
He said this to a group of leaders who had already begun a conspiracy
to have him arrested and put to death. But Jesus said, the
reason you're not receiving this message is because you can't
hear it. You do not have spiritual ears. So this is where we begin. This is the case for total depravity
of the human race outside of the Lord Jesus Christ in the
gospel of John. Let me just put a ribbon around
this and pull this together. It is a devastating diagnosis
of the spiritual condition of all who are unregenerate. They're
plagued by spiritual ignorance. They cannot know Christ. Spiritual
blindness. They cannot see the truth. Spiritual
hatred. They hate the light. Spiritual
defiance. They disobey Christ. Spiritual
death. They have no life within them,
spiritual inability. They cannot come to Christ, spiritual
slavery. They cannot escape their sins,
spiritual bondage. They cannot escape the devil,
spiritual deafness. They cannot hear the gospel. This is the total depravity of
the human race. When I went to buy my wife's
engagement ring, I went to a jeweler, walked in the store, said, I'd
like to buy an engagement ring for a girl that I'm going to
ask to marry me. And they asked me some questions,
what I was looking for, and they pulled out some diamonds. They put the diamonds on the
counter, and I wasn't and remain not to be an expert on diamonds.
But as I looked at those diamonds, they were okay. I don't know
what I was really looking for, but that wasn't exactly what
I was looking for. And then the salesperson did
something brilliant. They said, wait just a minute.
And she reached under the counter, And she pulled out a black velvet
pad. And she put it on the counter,
and with these tweezers, she picked up each of those diamonds
and put them on the black velvet backdrop. And the moment she
did it, those diamonds almost exploded with light. And there
were so many lights overhead in the ceiling that it was the
black velvet backdrop that caused those lights to come shining
through those diamonds, and it was like those diamonds were
alive. What made the difference? It's
the black velvet backdrop. And when we come back after a
break, and then tomorrow morning, I'm gonna pull out the crown
jewels of the kingdom of heaven. I'm going to pull out the diamonds
of His saving grace. And if you missed this session,
you might just yawn at those diamonds. In fact, you might
even be upset at a couple of them. But once you see how black
sin is, once you see the devastating effect of original sin upon the
entire human race, and you see the radical corruption of the
human heart and the total depravity of the human soul, and then you
put these diamonds on top of that backdrop of sin, Then you
begin to sing, Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved
a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm
found. I was blind. Sound familiar? But now I see. And so, as we go through these
other doctrines of grace, may you remember this catalog that
we just walked through, because each one of these is going to
make the truth of sovereign election and definite atonement and sovereign
regeneration, just leap off the page of your Bible. Let me close
in a word of prayer. We're going to take a short break,
and then we'll come back for our second session. Father, we
thank You that You have sent Your Son into this world to rescue
us from our sin But while He was among us, He also preached
and taught about the devastating effects of sin. And Lord, I thank
You that these have been recorded in the Gospel of John. And John
will tell us at the end of this book that if we recorded everything
that Jesus said, all the books in the world could not contain
it. But we are grateful for what we do have. And we believe them
with all of our hearts. because they come with Your authority. So, Father, give us truly eyes
to see what we have just investigated and explored, and I pray that
You will give us an even deeper awareness of the radical corruption
and total depravity of the human race. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.