I have been singing that song
to myself all day long. Early this morning, I got a email
with an attachment to it. Late 80s, maybe early 90s, the
quartet from Dinkus singing that song. I've been singing it all
day. Now Mike sang it. He sings it way better than I
do, but I've been enjoying that song all day. All right, let's
open our Bibles to Psalm 14. The title of the message is Salvation
for the Totally Depraved. This evening I want to paint
a plain, a true and accurate picture of you and me by nature. I want to be able by the Spirit
to paint the picture so accurate and so ugly that we're forced
to turn away from ourselves and run to the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's that's my goal this evening. Here, verse one, here is who
and what all of us are. All men, that includes all of
us here this evening, are fools by nature. The fool has said
in his heart, there is no God. By nature, we don't have any
spiritual understanding. We're fools. We don't know who
God is. We don't know what God's like.
So we don't have any idea how it is that God would save sinners
because we don't know what he's like. And we don't know who we
are. We don't know how much we need
a savior. We're lost and we're dead in
sin, but we don't know it because we're fools. We're so foolish. We think we can save ourselves. We think we don't need God. And
I tell you when that happened, when we became fools, It's when
our father Adam fell. Adam was created upright. Adam
was brilliant. But immediately after he fell,
you could see Adam act so foolish. Why did he see sudden acting
the fool? Because sin killed his spiritual
understanding. And you and I have inherited
that nature. And man has been doing nothing
but getting more foolish ever since. Earl Wooten made this
statement a few weeks ago. I've been saving this, Earl.
I like the way Earl thinks. Earl said, you know, man has
made so many advances in science and medicine and building and
everything. But, you know, we're getting
dumber, not smarter. We have lost the understanding
of things that work and things that would heal and so forth.
The pyramids in Egypt, the Mayan pyramids, we couldn't build them
today. We're getting dumber, not smarter.
We've got tools they never did have. We don't know how they
built them. We couldn't do it. Just in the past couple of weeks,
I got another example. Men are trying to say that the
world's flat. We're getting dumber, not smarter.
We're just, we're fools. Anytime someone's talking about
something spiritual and they begin the statement with, well,
I just think You just mark it down. Whatever follows is wrong. Because by nature we're fools.
Our understanding is darkened with sin. The only hope for a
totally depraved, foolish sinner is the Lord Jesus Christ. Our
only hope is that He would be our wisdom. That in Him we can
see God. In Him we can understand how
God saves sinners. If Christ is not our wisdom,
we'll be forever foolish. Men have been getting dumber
since Adam fell, and we've been getting further and further from
God, or at least trying to, ever since Adam fell. We've gone so
far as to try to convince ourselves that God does not exist. Or at
least, if He does exist, that He's not in control of everything
about me, and I don't have to answer to Him. Here's the second
thing. All of us are rebels against
God. The fool has said in his heart,
there is no God. Now the original here doesn't
say there is no God. Those words, there is, are added.
They're in italics. They've been added by the translators.
David didn't say there are people who say there is no God. There's
no such thing as an atheist. I mean, you know, they try to
convince themselves that they don't think God doesn't exist,
but they know better. You just let them get sick enough.
You let them get in enough trouble. And every single time they're
going to ask somebody to pray for them or they're going to
pray and say, well, God, you know, I'm not a praying person,
but if you're there, I mean, you know how it goes. But they're
looking, they're looking for help from somebody. They know
better. God's put it in them. They know
God is. But what David is actually saying
here is the fool says, no, God, the fool tells God no. You know,
that's what a foolish child does. We see a little child say no
to their parents. What do we think? That's a foolish
child. Somebody better get a hold of
that or there's going to be trouble. That's what we think. That's
who we are before God. By nature, we say, no, God. No,
God, I will not surrender to you. No, I will not submit to
you. No, I will not have you reign
over me. No, God, I will not admit that
I'm a sinner and beg for mercy, even though you said you'd be
merciful to sinners. I won't do it. No, God, I will
not admit I'm a totally depraved sinner who cannot help myself
and who's completely dependent on you. I won't do it. No, God,
I will not believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and
rest in him. I'd rather work to keep the law
myself. Thank you very much. That's what
a fool says. The fool says, no God, I won't
have your gospel. I won't have the gospel that
says God chose a people to save, that Christ came and died for
only those people and all of those people shall be saved because
Christ is the victorious savior. I'm such a fool. I would rather
believe that you left the choice of salvation up to me. If I don't
make the choice to accept Jesus as my personal Savior, then Christ
died for me in vain, and God's purpose of redemption for me
failed because God left salvation up to a fool like me. Only a fool would think that.
But that's what every one of us think by nature. The fool
says, no God, I'm not totally depraved, so I don't have to
be born again. My flesh is good enough to get
some light, to get some life into it. So I don't need a new
man to be born in me from above. Only a fool would think that
about himself. It's somebody that doesn't know
anything about himself. You see, this is what sin is.
Sin is not just breaking the law and I didn't mean it and
I couldn't help it. It was just a little mistake.
That's not what sin is. Sin is active, Open rebellion
against God, saying no God, refusing to bow, refusing to believe. When we do what we choose to
do, the choice is always to be rebellious against God. But what's
the hope? Is there hope for such a rebel?
The Lord Jesus Christ is our only hope. We need God to make
us sons in Christ and not to leave us rebels in Adam. We need
God to do for us not only what we cannot do, but what we will
not do because we're rebels. That's what we need, Christ.
All right, here's the third thing. This is our problem. It's a heart
problem. It's a corrupt heart. We are
corrupt. Verse one, they are corrupt. Our nature is corrupt. There's
not some good and some bad in us. It's completely corrupt. If corrupt is worse than bad,
that describes us. Completely corrupt. This word
corrupt is normally translated destroy. Our nature was destroyed
in Adam. It's destroyed. It can't be fixed
up by doing some good religious things. It's destroyed. It can't
be fixed up. It can't be propped up. It's
destroyed. So what's our hope? The only hope the corrupt person
has, the destroyed person has, is the Lord Jesus Christ. We
need God to give us a new heart. Because the old one's destroyed
by sin, we need God to give us a new heart and take the old
one and throw it away. Because we're corrupt by nature. And
that's the way we'll stay unless God gives us a new heart. We
must be born again. All right, here's the fourth
thing. Since our nature is corrupt, everything we do is evil. Here's the rest of verse one.
They are corrupt. They have done abominable works,
and there is none that doeth good. Now, the fool likes to
think, you know, we do some good things and some bad things, and
in the end, at judgment, God will say, well, they've done,
he'll put things in the balance. You know, they've done more good
things than bad things, and he'll let us into heaven. But only
a fool would think that. Only a fool who doesn't know
what God's like would think that. God is holy. God hates sin. God hates anything that's less
than absolute perfection. And everything we do is sin. The only thing a corrupt nature
can produce is sin. Our corrupt nature can't produce
anything good. It can only produce sin. This
word abominable. It means to abhor. Abhor. God abhors everything we do. Everything. Everything we think,
everything we do, everything we say. God hates it. It's not some good and some bad.
God hates it all because it's all bad. And that's all of us. There's nothing any of us do
that's any good. We read that in Romans 3 to open
the surface. The only conclusion that you
can draw about us is we're guilty. We're vile. Is there any hope
for us? What we need is forgiveness,
don't we? Desperately how we need forgiveness. We need God to forgive us. Not
just of what we've done. We need God to forgive us for
who we are. Who we are. We're corrupt. The
only hope that we have is the forgiveness of sin in the sacrifice
of the Lord Jesus Christ. We can't do anything to earn
that forgiveness. Everything we do needs forgiveness.
The only hope we have of forgiveness is in the sacrifice of our Lord
Jesus Christ. We need to run to Him. All right,
here's the fifth thing. You starting to get the hint
about what we are? We need God to save us. We need God to forgive
us. He's the only one who can. He's
the one we've sinned against. He's the only one who can forgive
us. But we're such fools, we refuse to seek him. 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. Now, free will
religion, they're not exactly atheists. They say there's a
God, but they say, well, he's not really God. They say that
God's not in control over all men. He can be in control of
some things, but not everything, you know. They say salvation
is up to the will of man to decide to accept Jesus or not. It's
not up to the will of God. But yet when they read the Bible,
they're forced to deal with this matter of election because it's
so plainly taught in Scripture. Jacob have I loved, Esau have
I hated. You can't misunderstand what
that means. So then, it's not of him that willeth, nor of him
that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. You have not chosen
me, but I have chosen you. Does anybody have any difficulty
understanding what our Lord meant when he said that? You believe
not, he said, because you're not of my sheep. You believe
not because I didn't elect you, because I didn't choose you.
My sheep hear my voice and they follow me. Now, that's an undeniable
truth. But in free will religion, they
read those passages and say, no, God, no, God, no, God didn't
choose a people to save and his mercy and his grace and pass
everybody else by. No, God gives everybody a chance.
So here's how they explain away. I know you've all heard this.
And after I say this, you're going to have an answer to this
for the rest of your life. Here's how they explain away
God's electing love. God looked down through a telescope
of time and he saw who would believe. So he chose them and
passed everybody else by. No, no, no, no. A thousand times, no. I like what brother Donnie Bell
said, that's God taking credit for what man would do anyway.
God did look down upon all men, didn't he? He did. He did look
down on all men. He didn't need a telescope to
do it. God dwells outside of time. He looked down from heaven
upon all men. And what did he see? He didn't
see any man who would ever choose God. He didn't see even one man
who would ever seek mercy from God. The will of man to choose
what he will do is captive to our sin. We'll only ever choose
sin. We'll never choose sovereign
mercy. We'll never choose divine righteousness because the will
of man is totally depraved. It's ruined by sin. There's none
left to themselves who would ever choose God. We will not
because we're rebels and we cannot because we're depraved. We lack
the ability to come to Christ. Our Lord says, no man can come
unto me. unless the Father which has sent
me draw him. And we lack the desire to come to Christ. You
will not come unto me, but you might have life. We're hopeless,
aren't we? We would left ourselves, we'd
never choose God. The only hope that a sinner like
you and me has of salvation is in the sovereign electing love
of Almighty God. God chose a people to save. And
those people are saved. You see, we need God to choose
us because we never choose Him. We need God to seek us because
we never seek Him. We need God to find us because
we never find Him. We need God to come to us and
make us seek Him or we never will. We need Christ, the Good
Shepherd, to come where we are to seek and to save that which
was lost. That's the only hope a totally
depraved sinner has. But if that's your hope, you've
got a good hope because Christ Jesus did come to save sinners
of whom I'm chief. He seeks them, he finds them,
and he brings every last one of them home. That's the only
hope a totally depraved sinner has. Why would you want another
one? What a good hope. All right,
here's the sixth thing. All men, all of us here tonight,
we've gone out of the way of righteousness. Verse three. They
are all gone aside. Now we all went out of the way
of righteousness and truth in Adam. Now we have a way, but
our way is not God's way. Man's way of trying to get to
heaven is by earning it. And that's a broad way. Many
find that way. It's a broad way that leads to
destruction. Many are in that way and every
last one of them that's in that way is going to wind up in hell
unless God comes and violates their will. That's their only
hope. Man thinks he's devised a way
to gain eternal life by what he does. And it sure seems right
to him. You know, if I keep these laws
and I do this and this and this and give up something else and
give up this and start doing this, it sure seems right, doesn't
it? But the end thereof are the ways
of death. We totally depraved sinners only
have one hope. The Lord Jesus Christ, he is
God's way. Our only hope is that Christ
will come and put us in him, that he'll put us in the way
because he is the way. Christ is the only way a sinner
can be made righteous. It's through his obedience, not
ours. Christ is the only way our sin
can be forgiven. It's not through us saying the
sinner's prayer or doing whatever foolish things men come up with.
It's in the blood of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ
is the only way we can be given eternal life. It's all in Him.
Christ is the only way we can have fellowship with God. He's
the way. He's who we need. All right,
here's the seventh thing. I keep saying all of us here
because I'm not just talking about men out there. Because
Eric, I'm not preaching to them. They ain't here. I'm preaching
to us, right? All of us are totally depraved. So we are an offensive smell
to God. See that verse 3? They're all
gone aside. They're all together become filthy. There's none that
doeth good. No, not one. Now that word filthy
is stinking. See, sin, it's a whole lot more
than violating a few minor rules, isn't it? It's like, you know,
you get a speeding ticket. If you wait long enough, it goes
off your record. Sin's a whole lot more than that.
Sin is an offense against a holy God, and it's offensive to Him. It's offensive to Him. God says
we stink. It stinks. You know how a dead
body, if we'd come up upon a dead body, an animal, a person, it's
just like, ugh. We're more offensive than that
to God. We're an offensive smell. Sin
is a whole lot more than dirt on the outside, isn't it? It's
not just dirt on the outside you can wash off. It's a filth
and a corruption of soul. Sin's not even a You know, you
get some paint or some stain on your hands. It'll be there
a long time, but it'll eventually go away. Sin's more than that. It's corruption that goes through
and through. Isn't that what they call countertops
or colorfast? No matter where you drill in
them, it's always the same color. That's us. No matter where you
drill, no matter where you cut it open, it's always the same
filth. It's this offensive smell. That's
what we are. We're filthy and stinking because
of our sin. All men. David says just put
us all together. Put us all together in one giant
heap. You still couldn't find one good
thing if you put us all together all at one time. Because there's
none that doeth good. No, not one. Let me see if I can prevent some
of you from making the same mistake that I made. I grew up hearing
that. I've heard that as long as I
can remember understanding language. There's none that doeth good. No, not one. We're all sinners. We don't have any hope of salvation
in anything about us. We're totally dependent on Christ.
But in my mind, you know what my foolish mind thought? There's
none that doeth good. No, not one except me. You know,
except us here, you know, we're we're here. We are. We're good
calculus. We got all the right doctor. We're coming to church
on a Wednesday night when it's pretty, we'd be out doing something
else. Look how good we are. No, not one. David says, don't
think it now. No, not one. We can't do one thing that is
not a offensive to the sight and smell of Almighty God. And
the only reason we think it's good, the only reason we don't
think it stinks, is we've become nose blind to it. We're so used
to the stench of sin, we don't even smell it anymore. The only
hope a stinking, offensive, depraved sinner has is the Lord Jesus
Christ. There is a way. that we can be
cleansed from the filth, from the corruption and stink of our
sin. It's in the precious blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, this cleansing, the cleansing
of a sinner is not us doing, start to do some good things,
quit doing some bad things, clean up a little bit of our filth,
and then Christ comes and He takes care of the rest. He takes
care of what we can't handle. Now, if we try that, you know,
we're going to make ourselves a whited sepulcher. It'll look
pretty good on the outside to everybody else, but men can't
see inside. God does. He looks on the heart,
and on the inside, God's still going to see us full of stinking
corruption and dead men's bones and uncleanness. So thank God
there's a way sinners can be cleansed, and we don't contribute
to it a bit. It's being washed in the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's
Son, cleanses us from all sin. All sin. Sin in Adam, our own
sinful acts, our own sinful thoughts, our own sinful desires, our own
depraved sinful nature. The sin that we've done and the
sin that we are is cleansed, white as snow, in the blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ. He's our hope. Run to Him. Run to Him. If the Lord ever gives us a whiff
of ourselves, we'll run away from ourselves and run to Christ,
won't we? All right, here's the eighth
thing. All men, all of us here, by nature,
we hate God and we hate God's people. Verse four. Have all
workers of iniquity no knowledge who eat up my people as they
eat bread and call not upon the Lord? Now, this verse begins
with a hypothetical question. Of course all workers of iniquity
have no knowledge. If we had any sense, we wouldn't
sin, would we? But we don't have any sense because
we're fools. And since we're fools, not only do we work iniquity,
we love it. We drink iniquity like water.
We hate God and we hate God's people. David says we devour
them like bread. Now, why did he say eat the wicked,
the workers of iniquity, eat God's people up as bread? Well,
there's three reasons, at least I can think of. Number one, you
eat bread easily. Bread is something you can eat.
Even if you lost all your teeth, you can still manage to eat a
piece of bread, can't you? We eat bread easily. We eat bread
and enjoy it. I just, I enjoy eating bread. And we eat bread every day. Hardly
a day goes by, I don't think, that I don't eat bread. That's
what the workers of iniquity do, how they eat up God's people,
easily. They enjoy it and they do it
every day, every chance they get. And the proof of it is what
do we do to God's only son when he put him in our hands for just
a couple hours? We ate him up like bread, destroyed him. And
that's just what we'll do to God's people if he leaves us
to the desires of our own nature. And this is something a believer
has got to be wary of, constantly wary of this. You've got to admit,
This is our nature, don't you? I mean, you can see how we would
do this. I'm talking to believers now.
We would devour somebody, one of our brethren, because that
old man's not changed. When we're born again, that old
man is still just as hateful as he ever was. Look at Galatians
chapter 5. So believers are warned. Now
don't devour your brethren, because don't bite and devour them, because
we would at the drop of a hat if they offended us just right. Galatians 5 verse 14. For all the law is fulfilled
in one word. Even in this thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself. I was looking at that Monday
and it struck me for the first time. All the law is fulfilled
in one word. Love thy neighbor as thyself.
Legalists who love the law, who like to study the law, who like
to say that they're keeping the law. They never, ever, ever get
the message of the law, do they? They never get love from the
law. People who try to keep the law
and think that they're doing it, think that they're morally
upright, think they're morally superior to everybody else, are
the most hateful people that I've ever been around. They don't
get the message of the law. Love thy neighbor as thyself,
do they? Because we're fools. Because we're fools. Our understanding
is darkened by sin. So verse 15, Paul here is warning
believers, but if you bite and devour one another, take heed
that you be not consumed one of another. We could do that
or else he wouldn't give us this warning that we would bite and
devour one another. Now that scares me to death. I don't want to bite and devour
my brethren. How can I be delivered from myself? Just one way. Lord Jesus Christ,
the Savior of sinners. He's our only hope. We need to
be given a new heart, a loving, a tender heart. And we need to
be given a new appetite, an appetite that desires to feast upon Christ,
the bread of life. Feasting on Christ, feasting
on His gospel fills up the heart of God's children. So there's
no more room left to bite and devour each other. If you're
just filled up with the Gospel. You don't have time, appetite
or inclination to be fighting and fussing and biting and devouring,
arguing with your brethren over something that just doesn't matter.
The more we feed upon Christ, the more we feed upon His Gospel,
the more all that will matter to us is Christ. He's all that
matters. Now come to Him and feast upon
Him. Just feast upon Him and your
soul will live. You come feast upon Christ and
you'll start to understand something about what love really is. The
only way that I'll ever love my brethren is when I have some
understanding of how holy God could love a totally depraved
sinner like me who's never done anything but something that's
offensive to me. Once God starts to show me that, then I'll start
loving you. That's the only way I'll ever
understand it. All right, here's the ninth thing. All men, all
of us by nature, live in fear because sin brings fear, verse
five. There were they in great fear,
for God is in the generation of the righteous. Now, you know,
sin brings fear. As soon as Adam fell, he became
foolish and he started being afraid, didn't he? You know,
we're afraid of everything. We're afraid of living. You know,
what's going to happen the longer that I live? Am I going to lose
all my little hoarded, you know, resources or I got enough to
make it, you know, money to make it to the end? I'm afraid of
suffering if I live too long, afraid of loneliness if I live
too long. I'm afraid of living, but I'm afraid of dying too.
I don't know how that's going to go, what that's going to be
like. We're afraid of everything. I'm just, and maybe there's things
I don't even know of, I ought to be afraid of. Just like those
Athenians had that statue to the unknown God, you know, they
had one over just in case, because they didn't want to offend him.
That's the way we are. We just set up a statue to the
unknown fear, because there might be something out there, you know,
we got to be afraid of. We don't even know anything about. We
live in fear. Because sin makes us fear, makes
us fear the unknown, just fear. But you know, there's a cure
for those fears. The Lord Jesus Christ is the cure for every
fear. What I need, a totally depraved
sinner like me, this is what I need. I need Christ to come
and take dominion in my heart and cast out all fear. That's
what I need. Look at 1 John chapter 4. David
said, I won't fear any enemy because the Lord is my light
and my salvation. He said in another place, God
is our refuge and strength. A very present help in time of
trouble, therefore will we not fear. 1 John 4 verse 18. There is no fear in love, but
perfect love casteth out fear because fear hath torment. He
that feareth is not made perfect in love. Now hold your place
there. There's no fear in love. Now
back in our text, we started to get the first hint. I have
some good news here for the totally depraved sinner. God dwells in
someone. David says here, verse 5, for
God is in the generation of the righteous. God dwells in the
hearts of somebody. He dwells in their hearts by
the new birth. He dwells in the hearts of the generation He chose
to save. So, verse 16 here, 1 John 4,
verse 16. And we have known and believed
to love that God hath to us. God is love. He that dwelleth
in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. God dwells in his
people. And the unbeliever sees that,
and it makes them afraid. They're afraid of even the presence
of God dwelling in the hearts of his people. Pilate was scared
to death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, he didn't know he was God.
He thought he was just a man. He got some idea, at least God
was with him, didn't he? Scared to death. Haman, scared
to death of Mordecai. But believers see it, recognize
it in each other. And it's what draws us together
in love. Here's the tenth thing. All men,
every one of us, we need a refuge from God's wrath against our
sins. Outside of Christ, we fear death. We fear the judgment with good
cause. We need a refuge. And everybody
has one. Everybody. I don't care where
you find them, everybody's got a refuge they made up out of
something. And the wicked, they made them a refuge. But they
mock. They make fun of the believer's
refuge. They say, oh, you don't believe that stuff, do you? You
don't believe that election stuff, that predestination stuff, do
you? Those who pretend to be atheists say, you don't believe
God is, you don't believe in heaven and streets of gold and
pearly gates. You don't believe that junk, do you? Verse six. You've shamed the counsel of
the poor because the Lord is his refuge. Totally depraved
sinners need a refuge from God's fury against our sin and the
Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord is his refuge, David
says. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
only refuge a sinner could ever have. Because Christ took the
place of His people. He took the place, He became
the substitute for His people. He stood in their place and was
made sin for them. He took all of their sin and
His body upon the tree and He suffered all of God's wrath against
that sin. God didn't put an innocent man
to death. God killed a guilty man. He was made guilty of the
sin of His people. And because He was, justice was
satisfied with His death. Justice was satisfied because
the blood of Christ blotted out the sin of his people, made it
to not exist. The death of Christ satisfied
the law's last demand, death for sin. Christ died. The law and justice is satisfied.
Christ is such a refuge for his people. God's law and God's justice
is not even looking for you if you're in Christ. You know, sometimes
we think of a refuge as hiding in there and the storms raging
and out there, you know, the bombs or whoever. Somebody's
out there trying to get us in this refuge. If you're in Christ's
law, He's not trying to get you. Justice is not trying to get
you. It's been satisfied in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's how He's our refuge. He bore all the punishment for
the sin of His people and gave them life. Life eternal that
they can never lose. You see, there's salvation in
Christ. Now run to him. Run and hide in him. Hide in
Christ like Noah hid in the ark. Hide in Christ like Moses hid
in the cleft of the rock. You do that and you'll have life.
All right, now here's the conclusion. We've seen, I hope, a horrible,
ugly, accurate but ugly, description of us by nature. We're totally
depraved. We stink. all gone out of the
way. God abhors everything that we
do. We're fools. We're corrupt. We hate God. What's
the only conclusion that we can draw about ourselves by nature? There's no hope in us. So we
cry, men and brethren, what should we do? There's no hope. There's
no hope in anything about. I need a savior. Can somebody
tell me about one? Christ came to save sinners.
Totally depraved, corrupt, filthy, God-hating, foolish sinners. Then my prayer is, Lord, save
me. I can't do anything myself, but
you can. Lord, save me. Verse 7. Oh, that the salvation
of Israel will come out of Zion. When the Lord bringeth back the
captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall
be glad. This is the prayer of God's people.
Lord, save me. Do you know never one time has
that prayer gone unanswered? Lord, save me. I am helpless. I'm hopeless. I don't deserve
it. Lord, save me. Come to me where I am and do
for me what I cannot and will not do for myself. Come to me. Wash me from my sin in your blood.
Give me a new heart. Give me a new nature that loves
you, believes you, feeds on you, and rests in you. Then I'll be
glad. Then I'll rejoice in Christ my
Savior. When I took the Elmquist to Lexington
Sunday, I stayed and spent the night with my daughter Savannah.
And we went to a spin class on a Monday evening where you sit
on the stationary bike and pedal and the teacher's got you doing
all this crazy stuff. And this girl, 20 years old. She don't know nothing about
life. Well, she's telling everybody all about life. She was telling everybody,
now just let go. Let go of everything that's been
holding you back today. You're your biggest problem.
I thought, well, she's right about that on every level. Here
I am pedaling away on this bike, and that's true. I am my biggest
problem. I wouldn't be struggling so much
on this bike if I, I'm my own, I've got no self-control. If
I didn't have two or three helpings of blackberry cobbler and extra
chocolate chip cookies, I wouldn't be struggling so much on this
bike, you know? It's just... But boy, this is true spiritually
too. Here's the problem. I'm my biggest
problem. It's not Adam's fault. It's not
my environment's fault. It's not my parents' fault. It's
my fault. I am my biggest problem. And she said that several times.
And I was thinking about this text and thought, that's true,
part of my biggest problem. But then she said this, you're
your own biggest problem and only you can solve it. You just
got to bust through it. You got to fight through it.
Am I going to solve all the problems of my life by riding an extra
mile on this bike? No. I am my biggest problem. But my only hope, the only hope
I have, is that Lord Jesus Christ came to save me. That He took
my sin. He suffered and died and put
it away under His blood. That He was buried in a tomb
and lay there for three days dead because He died for me. And the third day He rose again.
And when He rose, I rose in Him. Because He rose, I've got eternal
life. He's my only hope. There cannot
be any hope found in the likes of me. I want you to listen to
what Charles Spurgeon said about this. He said, Humanity, fallen
and debased, is a desert without an oasis, a night without a star,
a dunghill without a jewel, and a hell with no bottom. Pretty
good description, isn't it? That's you and me. Then there's
no hope in us, is there? There's hope in Christ. Run to
Him. Run to Him right now. You know,
Christ doesn't come and just bring solutions to my problem.
Christ is the solution to my problem. He is the solution to
my every problem. So I cry, Lord, save me. Lord, save me. And then I rejoice
in thee. I hope we will be able to do
that this evening. Go home rejoicing in him. Let's bow in prayer. Our Father, we thank you that
you've given us this clear, accurate picture of who we are by nature. It's ugly, it's awful, but Father,
we're thankful that you gave it to us, because it removes
all hope in anything that we can do, in anything about us,
and leaves us totally shut up to depending upon the Lord Jesus
Christ for everything. Father, give us the faith, give
each person in this room tonight faith to run to Christ, to run,
to flee to Him, to hide in Him, to fall at His feet, begging
for mercy as a totally depraved, guilty, vile sinner who must
have Christ or else I die. Father, bless us, bless us, bless
Your Word, bless it to Your glory, to the hearts of Your people,
we pray. It's in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For his glory, we pray.