The doctrine of total depravity
has always been the doctrine of the creature. The doctrine
that man is a sinner and cannot save himself, because it is the
message of the gospel itself. That man is a sinner, because
man is a sinner, God must invade history. God must come down. Emmanuel, God with us. Salvation
is of the Lord from first to last. Take this glass of water
and I would just put one drop of strychnine in here. Just one
little tiny drop. If you were really thirsty and
I would say to you, drink the good water. Leave the water that
is contaminated with the strychnine alone. Would you be able to do
that? What part of this glass of water is contaminated? All
of it. So the doctrine of total depravity
is this. that your mind is only evil continually,
that the heart is desperately wicked and is enmity against
God. The heart says, I'll be the captain
of the ship, I'll be the master of my own fate, I'll do as I
please. So that's really what depravity
is. We are born sinners. You see,
sin is not what we do, what we are. And because we are sin,
we commit sin. The reason you commit sin is
because of who you are by nature and what you are by nature. You
are a sinner by nature. How many of you watched Whitney's
funeral this week? Whitney is foreknown. I watched
the funeral and I said, that is foreknown. That's why I wrote
the book. The truth is, everyone in here
is a foreknown. Just some of us cover it better
than others. Whitney's last song was, Jesus
Loves Me, This I Know. Yes, Jesus loves me. When she was hiding, she was
hiding. Somebody asked me yesterday,
Pastor, do you believe Whitney, after all you know and all that's
come out about Whitney is in heaven? And I said, yes. Even
when she was hiding, she was singing, Oh, How I Love You.
Sometimes, Christian people do their best singing when they're
drunk. I had two pastor friends. They were going to have a barbecue,
and their wife said, we need some buns, some rolls, with a
hamburger. We got to go to the store. Well,
they did, and they were gone for three days. They got locked
up in the Lexington jail. Told me, said, we sang hymn.
We sang for, oh, we sang till we got sober. The truth is, Christian
people don't go to heaven to sanctify. They go to heaven to
nap. It's just that they're changed between here and there. Isn't
that right? Well, I hope you're prayed up!
I hope you're fessed up! Fessed up! Right? Some of your
sins you don't even know. The sins of omission and omission. Some of the things you should
have done today, you haven't done. You haven't even thought
about doing them. Is that right? You can't be caught up. You better
pray that Jesus paid it all. All the debt I owe. I thought
it was interesting as I watched the funeral. Someone made this
statement. There was a grace that kept on
carrying with it. There was a grace. You think
you'd be better off with money? You think money will make you
better? Really confused, wouldn't you? Had lots of them. You know
how to handle Her old mother was right. Probably shouldn't
have got into Hollywood business. Watch who you hang with. If you're
on a diet, don't go near the bakery. Last week, in talking
about total depravity, I told you I'm going to take stories
from the Bible that teach the doctrine. And last week, we looked
at the story of the baby that was left in the open field. and
God said through the prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 16 I want
my children to know their abomination it's important that we know our
abomination I think I said this last week the Holy Spirit exerts
power on us to get us to confess we're sinners and then we confess
we're sinners and we're born again and then we Try to prove
we're not. We spend the rest of our lives
trying to prove we're not. Denial. Old Brother Barnard,
my mentor, used to say, honest people don't go to hell. Most
religious people aren't honest. We need a church that becomes
mercy, hospital, where we're honest with one another. I mean,
just between us girls, aren't we all a mess? We're all a mess. There's no one in here that isn't
a mess. You got messed, I got messed, we all got messed. But
I'm glad there's a grace that carries us, aren't you? There's
a grace that carries us. In the book of Ezekiel, the prophet
said, your mother and your father were heathens. Which is to say,
your mom and daddy were sinners. Can a good thing come out of
two bad things? I don't think so. You don't have to teach your
children how to sin. Nobody taught you how. It all
just came so natural, didn't it? It was just so natural. We are centered by nature, by
practice. And it is so important that we
not only see it before we're converted, we see it after. And we acknowledge it because
it shuts us up to the grace of God. It shuts us up to giving
Him all the glory in your madness. in your lust and lasciviousness,
crazy as a June bug, doing your own thing, the captain of your
own ship, the master of your own fate. And God watched and
loved you freely. In Hosea, Hosea chapter 1 and
verse 2, the beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea, And
the Lord said to Hosea, go get you a wife who is a whore. Is
that in your Bible? That's what the Bible says. You
shouldn't talk like that. God's talking like that. It does
seem a bit unusual though, doesn't it? For God to say, I want my
preacher to go marry a whore. Well, why Lord? Because I'm going
to give an illustration here. of how I love folks free. Gomer. Lord have mercy, don't
name your baby Gomer. That little Gomer. Gomer, she
was a wild thing, you know. Prophet went down there and married
her, and she was a whore. That's all she knew. That's all you and I knew, too. Just boredom. Sinning against
God. We were not single-minded. We
should have been single-minded toward God, but we weren't. We
had all kinds of lovers. It can be your kids. It can be
your job. It can be your house. It can
be crack. It can be heroin. It can be just about anything.
You made a god out of it and fornicated. You are an adulterer
forsaking the living God. So take a wife of whoredom and
the children of whoredom. For the land hath committed great
whoredom departing from the Lord. Now that last phrase is, I'm
doing this because I want to illustrate, God says, total depravity. That my people are ungrateful
and unthankful and go a-whoring. When's the last time you shouted
praise to God? When's the last time you were
so thankful and so grateful? We get a little stiff in here
sometimes. You know, where nobody dare put their hands up. Nobody
say hallelujah. Say, now pastor, don't get them
going. Don't get them going, pastor. I'm not trying to get
them going. I'm trying to get you going.
You're the one that sits there like you don't have a tongue.
You don't have two hands to lift up and praise. I'm trying to
get me going. You ought to be praised in the
house of God. He's brought you a mighty long way in me. This
dormer, she got pregnant three times. and took off. Every time
she'd have a baby, she'd take off after her lover. Give birth,
take off. Hosea, the type of God signifying
the love of God, would say to his servant, you follow her. Don't let her get in too much
trouble. When she gets hungry, you buy her food and let it appear
mysteriously at her door. When she's without clothes, you
give her clothes and don't tell her that I bought them. You know
what? All that would happen, and Hosea
was supplying it all. Zomer never said thank you. She
just said, and my lovers are taking care of me. They're taking
care of me. You ever been there? God's been
good to you. You had a house when you hated
God. I mean, before you lost it. You had a job when you hated
God. You had food on the table. You
know, God would give you things, give you money, and you'd go
buy stuff to kill yourself with. God would bless you and you'd
give it to the devil. Am I right about that? Just give it to the
crack man. He said, I go after my lovers
in verse 5 of chapter 2. For she said, in the middle of
the verse, I will go after my lovers that give me my bread
and my water and my wool and my flax and my oil and my grain. Ignorant! And look at verse 6
of chapter 2. Therefore, behold! God says she's
given her lovers the credit. Time for me to move in a little
closer. I will hedge her up. I'll hedge up her way with thorns. You ever had things going pretty
good, and then God put some thorns, and either way you went, the
thorn got you. And you began to kind of feel
like life's not so hot. Life's not so good. She followed
after her lovers. Look at verse 8, chapter 2. For
she did not know that I gave her corn, and wine and oil and
multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal. I gave her all these things,
and she offered them to a false god." Now, just like he did,
look at verse 10, "...and now will I discover her lewdness
and the sight of her lovers." You ever had your lover get sick
of you? Somebody be real good to you,
and all of a sudden they just start turning on you. Thank God! You know, God might have been
in that. In fact, God was in that. Where your lovers, who
were not real lovers, they didn't care anything about you. You
thought they did, but they didn't care anything about you. And
none shall deliver her out of my hands. God says she's in my
hands. and these lovers are not going
to get her she's in my hands I she bear my voice and I know
them and I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish
they're in my hands look at verse 11 and I will cause all her mirth
to cease I'm going to cause her and I'll be happy no more her mirth is no more I'm going
to cause all her happiness to disappear. You ever been there?
Oh, for a while it was get down and party, serving the false
gods, high, fusing. And then God began to make the
lovers sick of you. And then God took your joy away. All your false happiness that
you had. Oh, you're going down. You see
what's happening? You're going down. Thank God you're going
down. It's good for God to bring you down. Look at verse 12. And I will destroy her vines
and her fig trees. Pam and I were on vacation. Came
in, the flowers in the house hadn't been watered and they
were just... That's what God did to you. Bet you just wither. Oh, you hit bottom. Just hit
bottom. A kid that fell in my arms out
there said, I didn't want to live before today. I didn't want
to live before this morning. You know, I know men are, men
are animals when it comes to sex. I said men are animals usually
when it comes to sex. You know, they got one thing
on their mind. How come none of you guys said amen? Don't
leave me up here like, I know you, I is one. But you know,
there's something horrible about a woman who cheats on her husband.
Happens all the time, though. I mean, if you've cheated, don't
think you're the only one, because there's that great need, and
when that need doesn't, you've been met by a man or a woman,
always looking. Oh, it's getting quiet in here
now. Oh, we're really getting down. This is real life. Yeah. Something like about 87% of women
have cheated. Oh, I don't want to go there, though. I mean,
y'all are going to get real quiet. You know what? Those needs aren't
met by that man. Some Romeo comes along whose
intentions are not good at all. Amen. This is the real world. I'm talking real stuff to you.
Don't be backing up on me. This is where we all live. I
went after a lover. And most marriages don't survive
that sort of thing. It's true. Some do, thank God. Some are stronger. This thing
was different with God. God's not a man like us. I said, I'm gonna love her freely.
And God says to his servants, now you watch over us. You make
sure nothing happens to us. That wouldn't be my attitude.
Y'all better be glad I'm not God. I said to the first crowd,
I'd beat the hell out of most of you. If I was God, I get angry. You know, I'm so self-righteous,
I get angry. Like I wouldn't do the same thing
were it not for the grace of God. So, I remember the first
time I'm reading chapter 2 of Hosea, and we get down to verse
14, and I love this verse. I loved it when I got to it.
Therefore... Oh, right, God. Now's the time
to smash her like a bug. Therefore, behold, I will allure
her and bring her into the wilderness. Yeah, get her out there by herself
where she's scared to death. Rip her up. Go in a whore and
teach her something, God. Therefore, behold, I will lure
her and bring her into the wilderness and speak comfortably unto her. Oh, no. Speak comfortably unto
her. I thought you were going to beat
the hell out of her. God, what do you mean you're
going to love on her? You gonna love on her? After
everything she's done, you gonna love on her? What? Beat the daylights
out of her. That's what you ought to do.
She's nothing but a whore. She's left three times. What
about you? God loved on you? Sacked you
down into the wilderness? Instead of beating the hell out
of you, picked you up and kissed you? I have loved you with an
everlasting love. I'll never leave you nor forsake
you. You belong to me. That's my God. That's the gospel
of God's grace. This message is going to go all
over the world, and it's going to shock. They're going to be
calling in. It's going to be on radio next Sunday, and they're
going to say, do you hear the preacher clack? He said he's
going to beat the hell out of people. He's tossing in the pulpit.
Leave what I just said on the tape. Speak comfortably unto
her. This is the love of God. Is this
not a picture of the love of God for us? Aren't you glad to
have a God like this? After you've messed up, He's
not going to beat you up. He's going to speak comfortably
to you. It's a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful thing. Some
of you have heard me tell this many, many times. Finally, Homer
got old. and wrinkle and she finally gave
herself to a pimp down on Main Street and in Bible days they
put the most beautiful prostitutes at the front of the line the
youngest most beautiful and then as you got older and uglier and
dirtier you were at the end of line you were the cheap thing so the servant comes back and
said to Hosea she's on prostitute roll she's in bad shape Hosea
Hosea got his coat and wallet went down to Main Street approached
the temp Mr. Hosea 18 years old beautiful
great figure good-looking blue eyes $25 they walked down the road 35
years old beautiful young woman they got to the end of the line
and there was a wrinkled dirty arthritic stinky female couldn't lift her head
up, lice in her hair. Hosea said, I want her. What? You want her? Yes, I want her. How much? Hosea would give his life, and
Hosea bought her off and out of the slave market. all of your lifetime, unbeknownst
to you. God has been trailing you, protecting
you, holding back the forces that would kill you. You would have died of polio
at six months old. You would have got pneumonia.
You would have got some infant disease and have died. But God was watching all the
time. think about that all that time
when you first took your first kiss when you lit up for the first
time when you injected for the first time could have died of
AIDS many of you God was watching this is the grace of God you
watch you go down down down like Jonah down down down got you to the place of emptiness
where there was no hope no hope in the church you saw the church
mess up you saw the preacher run off you'd see homosexuality
you know in the church you'd seen all kind of mess you gave
up on the church a long time ago you saw the hypocrisy in
the church so you just quit and then God brought you down until
finally you came to a place like this full of anger. Some of you
came in here full of anger. You never heard a preacher say
he was a sleazebag before you heard me say it. You never heard
a preacher identify with you. You never heard the message of
grace out there. You thought there was no hope
for you. And there wasn't in the message
of words. It's only in the message of grace
that there is hope for sinners. that is all of grace well pastor how do you know that? let's just take Whitney since
she's on our mind she had everything she was raised in a Baptist church
she heard the gospel she heard the truth she was born again
and the world came took her talent and that daddy
she never really had in her life to coach her along then a man
came a man who was an addict and introduced her to the demon introduced her to the demon she
couldn't shake the demon that man pushed her around maybe hit
her a few times Wasn't even allowed at the funeral. That's why he wasn't allowed
there. Wasn't allowed there. Loved the
man, but didn't get fulfillment from the man. Just so you girls
know, you never get it from a man. Except the man, Christ Jesus.
You'll always be trying, and until you learn, that only the
Lord Jesus Christ can be your significance. You can trust Him. Amen, that's true. And men need
to learn that too. The night before singing Oh How
I Love Jesus, face contorted because she's
full of pills and alcohol, and angry, legs bleeding after that
party. And the next day, pops of milk, a little alcohol,
a little mixed salad and stuff. Take a nice warm bath. Only her
body says you don't have to breathe anymore because you're full of
Xanax. Since you're in a tub of water,
then you just keep on bathing. Absent from the body, though,
present with the Lord. Is that right? Yeah, in spite
of all that mess. That's how I know I'm going to
heaven, because it's by grace. I know it. I know I'm going to
heaven. I don't want to do that stuff. You know, people are always
accusing me of saying you can sin all you want to. I sin all
I want to. Don't you, Christian? Don't you
sin all you want to? Don't you sin more than you want
to? Of course you do. I'm not preaching, let us sin,
that grace may abound. I'm just saying we do sin, but
thank God for His grace and His unmerited favor. You know, it's
an amazing thing that when Gomer was on prostitute row, Hosea
went to her. I'm going to just flat out tell
you, I wouldn't have... 98% of the men who are cheated
on in an adulterous affair, Do not go back. But God did. Say hallelujah, God did. Somehow
you need to get yourself in the picture here. You need to start
seeing yourself. Don't be looking around at anybody
else. You just need to look at you. Oh, He came to me, and He
keeps coming to me, and coming to me, and coming to me. This
is the story. And as you see total depravity,
you give God glory and praise. This is sovereign grace. I know
it's hard to grasp. We didn't deserve it. Can you
say you deserve the grace of God? Surely not. We didn't purchase
it. We didn't even seek after it.
Why do I sought the Lord? I know you did, but it wasn't
until you were found by Him. Of course you sought the Lord.
Every converted person seeks the Lord but it's after they've
already been found. You were the coin in the Gospel
of Luke that was lost on the floor and it was somebody else
outside of the coins. The coin didn't find itself.
The 99 sheep and the foal and one out of the foal. The sheep
didn't find itself and returned to the foal. You seek him because he found
you. You do not believe in order to be born again. You are born
again and therefore you believe. Life comes before faith. Dead
men don't believe. This grace is given without money
and without price. It's opposed to bargaining. This
is not bargain basement salvation. God's love comes to us all free
and unbought. without our having merit to deserve
or money to procure it. I will love them freely, unworthy
and sinful though they be. Think of God's love being given
to us freely. We were objects utterly unworthy. Is that right? Utterly unworthy. I know that probably some of
you in here say, well, you know, I don't know whether I was utterly
unworthy. That's because you haven't been
converted by grace. Once you see this thing, it's
all grace. You just praise Him. You know,
what Pastor Clark preaches, I'm not real sure about that. It
seems like it kind of makes some people better than others. Well,
I'm not talking about that at all. There is no difference. All have missed the mark. You
know, who maketh thee to differ? That's the question. Who makes
you to differ from another? Why are you saved while other
people are not? It is God who makes you to differ.
Think of God's love being given to us freely. We are objects
utterly unworthy. There was no honor or position
as an inducement for Him to love us. This grace was unsought. Sovereign grace does not wait
for man. God is not waiting for you. You're
dead. There's no need to wait on a
dead man. God's grace was totally unsought.
It was only because he first loved us that we seek him. No
labor of man procures it. No effort of man can add to it.
We were all undeserving, ill-deserving, hell-deserving objects. He has
mercy on whom he will have mercy. That little 18-year-old out there,
his lips were quivering, big old tears running down his cheeks.
I never heard of a God like this one. Never heard of a God like
this one. See, it's this message that will
bring the shout back into the church. Bring the hallelujah
back into the church. Just the other day, I was going
to tell you this. I met a lady at a meeting the other day. She
said, you need to write a retraction to that book. There's some of
us that are good godly people. She said, we'll talk later. And
I thought, yes, we will. Yes, we will. That's exactly
what I want to kill. Some of us think we are good,
godly people. As long as you think you're good,
godly, you'll never praise God. You've got to admit, I'm a sleazebag
most of the time. But greater is He that's in me
than he that's in the world. He keeps working in me. There's
a grace that carries me. And you give God the glory. You
don't draw attention to yourself. all of those goody two-shoes
out there that never lift their hand in praise. Never say hallelujah. Thank God for bringing me such
a long way. Never thought about this. I just
worship God as I watch Whitney's cast come out of that church.
Oh, she's in a land that is fairer than death. No more bloody legs. No more Xanax. She's with the
Lord Jesus Christ who loved her and gave himself for her. Don't
talk to me about Whitney being a mess. You're a mess! You know,
the only way God can love us is freely. What if it was there
had to be a cause in you for God to love you? And you're bankrupt. You don't have a cause. You can't
think of anything. I can think of a thousand reasons
why he should have damned me. I can't think of one why I should
have saved him. Grace comes without money and without price. Grace is opposed to bargaining.
You can't bargain with God. What do you have to bargain with?
This is not bargain, basement salvation. This is not a thrift
store. God's love comes to us without
our merit, without our deserving it, without money to procure
it. I will love them freely, all unworthy and sinful though
they be. Think of God's love being given to us freely. Just
let that soak in, and when you go home today, think about it.
We are objects utterly unworthy. There was no honor or position
as an inducement to God to love us. When I first saw Ms. Pam, there was a lot of inducement,
and there still is. Now, we're not going to talk
about that. Y'all settle down. Oh, we're
having church now. This grace was unsought. Sovereign
grace does not wait for a man. God's not waiting on you. I hear
preachers say that all the time. God's waiting on you. God has
no hands but your hands. God has no feet but your feet.
Poor God! God doesn't need you. Think about
it. God could have saved you or damned
you and still been God. God could have just left you
where you are and you'd have gone on to hell. We are undeserving,
ill-deserving, hell-deserving objects. But He had mercy on
us. Nothing in ourselves, nothing
anywhere else was the cause of God to love us. Not even the
blood of Christ caused God to love us. God didn't love us because
Christ died. Christ died because God didn't
love us. That's the truth. Before I formed
thee in thy mother's belly, I knew thee. Before thou came as form
out of the womb, I had already set you apart. Yea, I have loved
thee with an everlasting love, and in tender kindness have I
drawn thee to myself. We're bound to give thanks for
you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the
beginning chosen you to salvation. That's called God electing us.
God electing us. You'll stop fighting the doctrine
of election when you understand this. I chose the worm that I
was on the dunghill, a tumbled bug. rolling manure around all
of the days of my life, and yet he loved me. You know, if a man
did go to heaven, by good words, I mean, if a man did get into
heaven, by good words, it would only be just. If a man could
be good enough, and work enough to get to heaven, in other words,
there would be no wonder about that. But what about a tumble
bug? What about a maggot, like you
and I, that we get to heaven? You know, I'm not going to get
up there and say, oh, Dave's there. Sure surprised me. When we get to heaven, it's going
to be like this. Hey, I'm here. Oh, what a wonder that Jesus
found me! Out in the darkness no light
could I see. He put His great arm under, and
wonder of wonders He saved even me. Alas, and did my Savior bleed,
and did my Sovereign die? Would He devote that sacred head
for such a worm as I? Amazing grace, how sweet the
sound! that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see. And when we've been there 10,000
years, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we
first begun. My sin, oh, the bliss of this
glorious thought! My sin, not in part, but the
whole, is nailed to His cross, and I bear it no more. It is
well, it is well with my soul, the grace of God. And I want
to say this to you. You can see this in your own
life. After you're converted, sin begins to pile up. And for
a while, it's about chin high. Take a glance off of it, and
the next thing you know, it's over your head. And then it seems
at some point in life, it abounds. It just piles up. And you think
it's too much. It's too much. Except the Bible
says this. We're saying piled up. Grace! Grace piled up higher! It's piled
up higher! If I was a Pentecostal, I'd shout
all over this place right now. It's piled up higher! Higher
than your adultery. Higher than your fornication.
Higher than your lust. Higher than your anger. Higher
than your mess. Grace piled up higher!