Over the past few weeks, I've
enjoyed watching as spring has unfolded and summer has begun. I think I'm right in saying summer
has started, right? We're pretty much at the longest
day of the year, so I hope this is summer. And I've noticed a large number
of gardens up in Shoro, where I live, displaying tulips in
the garden. And I've wondered why there are
so many tulips in the gardens in Shoro. And I'm thinking maybe
it's because there's a Dutch heritage up in that part of the
state. I don't know. Maybe it's just
because they look pretty. And I like tulips. Tulips are
one of my favourite flowers. And I wanted to bring one today
and I couldn't find one. For all I've seen them in the
gardens. So I've got a lily instead. No, I don't have a lily. I want
to tell you about my tulip first of all. I'm going to come back
to the tulips in a few minutes. I wonder if you ever feel that
the gospel is complicated. Someone says, the gospel's easy. All you have to do is believe. Well, that sounds easy. All you
have to do is believe. What do you have to believe? Well, just believe that Jesus
died. Okay. Everyone dies. So that's not hard to believe. Does that make me a Christian? Well, you've got to believe that
he rose again as well. And that he went to heaven. and that he's coming back again.
Okay. Is there anything else that I've
got to believe? Well, you've got to believe in
God and Jesus. And you've got to believe you're
a sinner. And you've got to worship. You've got to trust in the blood. and get baptised and pray and repent. It's not so easy. It's getting
more and more complicated. Every time you listen to somebody
else say something, it's getting more and more complicated. The truth is, But the gospel
is much bigger than just a few glib comments. It's much broader. It's much more meaningful. It's much more important than
a handful of religious propositions. If you ever hear somebody begin
a sentence with, all you have to do to become a Christian is,
I want you to put your fingers in your ears. Because anybody who says to you,
all you have to do to become a Christian is, doesn't understand
the gospel. Furthermore, if you ask any older
believer, they will tell you that they
have spent many years listening to the gospel being preached
and they still have lots to learn. The gospel's not just a set of
facts that have to be believed, like some textbook or something
that you would get at school where you've got to memorize
20 things and then take a test to see how many of them you can
remember. That's not the gospel. The gospel's
a way of life. The gospel's an experience. The
gospel's a relationship. The gospel is knowing yourself
and the gospel is knowing who God is and what he has done in
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel's the answer
to a problem. The gospel is help for the helpless. It's food for the hungry. It's sweet refreshment for those
who are thirsty after righteousness. It's ointment for the wounded. It's comfort for the sad. It is a life-giving message for
those who are dead in their trespasses and sins. It is the message of
the Lord Jesus Christ's accomplishments. for the salvation of sinners
like you and like me. Now you might say to me, what
do you mean by saying that it's the answer to a problem? What
is the problem? What is my problem? Well, it's the problem of sin,
of course. It's the problem of sin. It's
the problem of your sin and my sin and the sin that is in this
world. And it is the problem that our
sin has separated us from God. It's a problem to do with guilt. It's a problem to do with judgment. Now you might say to me, that's
not a very big problem because I'm not a very big sinner. Well, this morning I want to
tell you something about that. Let's turn to Genesis chapter
three. Genesis chapter three. And we're going to read from
verse 1. Now the serpent was more subtle
than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he
said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said ye shall not eat of
every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent,
we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the
fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God
hath said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it,
lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the
woman, ye shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the
day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye
shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman
saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant
to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she
took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her
husband with her, and he did eat. The eyes of them both were
opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig
leaves together and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice
of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves
from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the
garden. And the Lord God called unto
Adam and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard
thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked,
and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that
thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof
I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat? And the man said, The
woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree,
and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the
woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said,
The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And the Lord God said
unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed
above all cattle and above every beast of the field. Upon thy
belly thou shalt go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of
thy life. Thy will put enmity between thee
and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise
thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Unto the woman he said,
I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow
thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy
husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said,
Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast
eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not
eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake. In sorrow shalt
thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also, and thistles
shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of
the field. In the swear of thy face shalt
thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground. For out of it
thou wast taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou
return.' And Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she
was the mother of all living. And to Adam also and to his wife
did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothed them. And the
Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us to know
good and evil, and now lest he put forth his hand and take also
of the tree of life and eat and live for ever. Therefore the
Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the
ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man and he
placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims and a flaming
sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of
life. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. A solemn reading, perhaps one
of the most solemn and serious chapters in the whole of the
Bible. And yet also I trust a chapter
in which we see the seeds of salvation in the very first foretelling
of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the beginning, God made all
things very good. God created man, after his own
image and he placed him in a well-stocked garden and he gave him everything
that he needed. It was filled with all goodness,
the perfection of nature, free from all sin, a wonderful state
and a wonderful condition that Adam and Eve found themselves
in a position of privilege and a position of blessing, and they
communed with God. But we find, as we read the narrative
here, that man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, did not enjoy their
honour for very long. Satan, a fallen angel it would
appear, used the subtlety of the serpent to tempt first Eve
and then by her to tempt Adam into eating the forbidden fruit. They transgressed the command
of God Perhaps it didn't seem such a big command, but they
had everything, just this one tree, don't touch it. And by their transgression of
the commandment of God, they fell and they brought death upon
all their posterity. Posterity means everyone that
comes from us. It's great being a grandpa. You have the pressures when you're
a mum and a dad and then when you become a gran and a grandpa,
everything's just wonderful. But we see sin in those young
lives and we know that that sin is there because it's in me. Where did you get it? Well, you
got it from your parent. Where did he get it? From his
parent. And where is it going? All the way down the line. That was the extent and nature
of the fall into which Adam brought humanity. He brought death upon
all his children and their successive generations because all are conceived
in sin. Do you remember we read that
in Psalm 51? I think it's lovely the way the
Lord just sometimes brings these coincidences together and gives
us the testimony of this Saint David. who could say that he
had been conceived in sin, his mother had conceived him in sin.
And that just shows you that we are fallen in our nature,
everyone. And to that extent, because of
that fall, because of that sin in our life, there is a deadness
that pervades us as far as any life and relationship with God
is concerned, a separation that has been effected by sin. The Bible tells us that by nature,
which is what we live in, we are the children of wrath. Tells
us that we are the servants of sin. The Bible tells us that
we are subject to death. And there are other miseries
in this world that are all part and parcel of our condition as
sinners and fallen beings. We're captive to our own lusts
and the temptation that is around about us. We are prone to follow
after things that we should not be doing. We have a bias towards
the attractive, sensual things of this life and this world.
And the great, the great mantra is, if it feels good, do it. And we go further and further
and deeper and deeper into sin. We're enslaved to Satan as a
result of this fall. We are guilty under God's law
as a result of this fall. And unless the Lord Jesus Christ
sets us free, we will go to our graves. as sinful, guilty, transgressors
of the law of God. And we will experience that everlasting
separation and that eternal death that the fall brought upon humankind. Now maybe you're thinking now,
well, that's a bigger problem than I first realised. And you'd
be right. It is a bigger problem than you
first realize. It's a bigger problem than any
of us realize. And I'll tell you why. Because
the Bible says the heart of man is deceitful and desperately
wicked. We pretend we're better than we are, even when we know
we're not. And we get deceived. Even the old guys. who think
they know a little bit more. Not only are we captive and bound
and enslaved, Not only are we these things, we can't do anything
about it. That's the other thing that the
fall brought upon us. We can't fix ourselves. We can't
fix the problem. We can't do any real good. We can't get over that separation. We can't bridge that gulf. We can't get back to God. He
has separated himself from us because of our sin and we are
stuck. But you know, see if it was just
even that, if it was just even that passive stuckness. But it isn't. It's anger. And it's rebellion. And it's disgust. And it's enmity,
the Bible says, against God. We're not just like passively
lying there, languishing in our inability. We are snarling at
the same time and spitting and saying, get away from me. I don't want anything to do with
you. And God set in place in this
world a standard of holiness in order that we might see just
how wicked we really are. And he set in place his law. It's called his holy law. and its design is to expose our
true nature by showing us how unholy we are, how far short
of holiness we really can get. But you see, that doesn't stop
man trying his best to be as holy as he can and then saying
to his neighbor, oh, you're doing very good, how am I doing? And because of our deceitful
heart and because our thoughts are only evil continually, because
of this nature that we have, because of this opposition and
enmity towards God, we say constantly in our lives, no God, we won't. We won't. And every thought is
tainted and spoiled with sin. And every aspiration is selfish. And every good work, every honourable
effort, every attempt to change is flawed and broken. And not
because of what we do, but because of what we are. because we are
sinners, and as sinners, we do sin. Because this is the nature
of our heart, and this is the nature of our actions. And in every part of our being,
whether it's our heart, or whether it's our nature, whether it's
our thoughts and our mind, whether it's our intellect, whether it's
our emotions, All about us, everything about us suffered in that fall. There was a completeness in that
fall. There was an extensiveness in
that fall. Everything about us is flawed
and broken. Everything about us is separated
from God and there is nothing in us that can please or will
please God. because of Adam's fall, and because
we fell in him, and because he passed down the effects of that
fall to all of his generations, we are totally unable to love
God. We might say we love him, but
we're totally incapable of doing it. We are unable to serve God,
though we might make a good show at trying, We are unable to honour
Him and worship Him and please Him and there is nothing in us
that is desirable to God because He sees us in our true nature
for what we are. And we can hide that pretty well
from our parents and our children and our friends and our neighbours,
even our wife and our husband. But God sees us. He sees the
heart. He knows what we are. And even
if we say we want peace with God, what we really mean is that
we want peace on our terms. We want a truce, not a surrender. We want a negotiated settlement,
not an unqualified submission. Romans 8 verse 7 tells us why. Because the carnal mind is enmity
against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed
can be. Now I hope that you can see here,
the sin that separates us from God is not just the things that
we do wrong. It's not just the things that
we do wrong, our deeds, our thoughts, our words. Because while they
do count as evil against us, the problem is that they flow
from a heart that is opposed to God. We think big sins and little
sins, but it's not to do with the size
and the scale of the sin. It's to do with the heart from
which that sin emanated. And then we shake our head at
all those naughty people out there, all those mischievous
people. I wouldn't do that. Not me. My children wouldn't do that.
They've been brought up better. And we think that we're better
than other people. What makes us better than other
people? The same guilty heart beats in every single one of
us. And that's what God looks at. The real problem is our sinful
nature from which these sins flow. The heart and mind is corrupt. And its corruption is evidenced
in the things that we do. It just shows, the things that
we do, the sins, big or little, it just shows the true nature
of our heart. And even the little baby, even
the little baby, all beautiful, all innocent, has that same wicked
heart in its nature. And it's not going to take very
long before the manifestation of that will prove it to be precisely
so. And because the spring is contaminated,
the water is unfit to drink. Because the tree is poisonous,
the fruit and the berries are bitter and uneatable. The cause
of sin is the heart. The effect of sin is our disobedience
and our transgression. And that's true for you, and
it's true for me, and it's true for everyone, because Adam and
Eve fell in the garden. And even if we try to, as best
we can, to be good, if we pile up good works, that spring is
still contaminated. That tree is still poisonous. That heart is still corrupt. Many years ago, when people cared
more about studying the Bible than they do now, an argument
arose about whether people were really all bad or whether they
were only fallen partially, only in part had they fallen. There
was still some good in them. And there were two different
camps, the camp that said, we're all bad, and the camp that said,
we're not all bad, we're kind of bad, but there's still a little
bit of good. And people studied the Bible and the question to
try and establish which of these things it was. And particularly the question
was whether or not our will was free. to choose to follow the
Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, we're falling in our emotions. We're falling in our passions.
We're falling in our flesh. But maybe, maybe just a seed
in our will that we can desire the things of God is enough to
show God that we are serious about being real and getting
a relationship with him again. And these people thought, you
know what? If we want to we can have a relationship
with God again, if we want to. It wasn't if God wants to, it
was if we want to. If we want to, if we will it
to be so, we can have a relationship with God again. Now, in a sense,
you would wonder about the presumptuousness of that attitude. I mean, it
made so many assumptions about God in the first place that he
wanted to have a relationship again. You deceive a friend. You betray
a relationship. You commit adultery in a marriage. You imagine that just because
you want to put it back together again that the other person sees
it your way. Do we have a will? to have a
relationship with God or do we not? And some people said we
do and some people said, no, we're totally fallen. And even
our will is in bondage to sin and in bondage to Satan. Now
that was a long time ago that that argument took place and
it became known as the Armenian Calvinist debate. And there were
people who said, yes, we believe in free will. that the will is
free. And people said, no, we don't
believe that the will is free, that all men are dead in their
fallen nature. And out of that debate came a
little summary of doctrine called the five points of Calvinism. And they were set out in order
to contradict, show the other side of what had first of all
been put in place, which were the five points of Arminianism. Now, I suppose some of you have
heard of the five points of Calvinism. Did you realise that they were
only constructed in order to contradict the five points of
Arminianism? So these five points of Calvinism
were the arguments of one side and the five points of Arminianism
were the arguments on the other side. And that brings us back to our
tulips. You remember I spoke about the
tulip at the start? Well, that flower became significant
as a little Mnemonic. Who knows what a mnemonic is?
Some of the children or anybody that's done exams ought to know
what a mnemonic is. If I said Richard of York gave
battle in vain, that's a mnemonic because it
tells you the first letter of all the colours of the rainbow.
So tulip is a mnemonic. And the first letter of the word
tulip, the T, and then the U, and then the L, and then the
I, and then the P, gives us a reference to the five points of Calvinism
that were used to contradict the other five points in the
other side of the argument. And what we've been thinking
about today is the T in tulip. And that speaks about the fact
that in the fall, in the garden, for Adam and for Eve and for
all of their children, all down through the ages, so that every
single person born naturally in this world was subject to
the effects of that fall and that it was total in its nature
and extent. The effects of that fall are
called our depravity. That was what these old guys
came up with as the name for the teaching. And that is total
depravity. So the first letter of the tulip,
T, stands for total depravity. Now, what I'm going to do in
the next couple of weeks, if the Lord will enable, is I'm
going to give you the ULIP as well. And we'll just have a few
weeks thinking about the doctrines of grace as they are presented
through that little mnemonic. or acrostic tulip. But today we're thinking about
this totality of the depravity that sin has brought us into. We're not just partially fallen. We're totally fallen, completely
fallen. We haven't just stumbled. We're sunk. We're not just sick. but we're
dead in our sin as far as God is concerned. And the whole nature
of the gospel and our understanding of the work of the Lord Jesus
Christ is founded upon a proper understanding of this condition
that we are in, totally depraved in our fallen nature. And our
approach to preaching What we're doing here, the content of the
message that we preach at the rescue mission, at this church,
on the broadcast, however it is we do it, the content of the
message is conditioned by the knowledge we have of our total
depravity. We speak as we do because we
understand and believe that it is a totality. It is a completeness
of inability. And men and women are either
able to save themselves or they're not. And if you believe that
there is something still good in an individual that they can
use to commend themselves to God, then you are saying that
man has still the ability to save himself by his approach
to God, or else we acknowledge what Scripture teaches with respect
to the totality of the fall and the depravity in which we're
in. And this is the Bible's teaching. Although these old guys debated
it during this 15 and 16 hundreds, and it's been going on in many
places since, and the majority of churches in this town will
take the other view to the position that this church takes. But the Bible's teaching is that
our nature is completely fallen. There was a totality of depravity
arose because of the fall. And in our fallen nature, as
in Adam, we are separated from God. Psalm 14 verse 1 says, the
fool had said in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt,
they have done abominable works. There is none that doeth good.
The Lord looketh down from heaven upon the children of men to see
if there were any that did understand and seek God. They are all gone
astray. They are all together become
filthy. There is none that doeth good,
no not one. And the clear teaching of the
word of God is that men and women are totally depraved. Now I could
provide you with a whole load of Bible verses right now in
support of this. And I'm going to. So sit back and wince. Genesis 6 verse 5. God saw that
the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination
of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Job 15, verse 16. How much more abominable and
filthy is man which drinketh iniquity like water. Psalm 51,
15. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me. Psalm 58, verse 3, the wicked
are estranged from the womb, they go astray as soon as they
be born, speaking lies. Isaiah 1, 4 to 6, ah, sinful
nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children
that are corruptors, they have forsaken the Lord, they have
provoked the Holy One of Israel into anger, they are gone away
backward, why should ye be stricken anymore? You will revolt more
and more. The whole head is sick, the whole
heart faint, from the sole of the foot even to the head. There
is no soundness in it but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. They have not been closed, neither
bound up, neither mollified with ointment. Isaiah 53, verse six,
all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his
own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Jeremiah 13, 23, can the Ethiopian
change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then may he also do
good that are accustomed to do evil. Jeremiah 17, verse 9. The heart is deceitful above
all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Matthew 15,
19 and 20. For out of the heart proceed
evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness,
blasphemies. These are the things which defile
a man. Romans 3, 9. What then? Are we better than they? No,
in no wise, for we have before proved, both Jews and Gentiles,
that they are all under sin. As it is written, there is none
righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth.
There is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of
the way. They are all together become unprofitable. There is
none that doeth good. No, not one. Romans 3.23, for all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. Romans 5.12, wherefore as
by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and
so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. 1 Corinthians
2.14, But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit
of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know
them, because they are spiritually discerned. Ephesians 2, 1 to
3, Have you and you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and
sins, wherein in time past ye walked according to the course
of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air,
the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience?
among whom also we all had our conversation in times past, in
the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and
of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as
others. John 3, 19. And this is the condemnation,
that light has come into the world, and men loved darkness
rather than light, because their deeds were evil. Well, we've read some verses,
but Paul puts it all together in one verse, and this is what
he says. He says, the testimony is clear.
The testimony is clear. The evidence is in, my friends,
and the testimony is clear. The scripture hath concluded
all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might
be given to them that believe. You see, if Paul had just written
the first part of that verse, all it would have been telling
us was what we knew from the garden, from the fall, from the
death, from the separation. He says, the scripture hath concluded
all under sin. But Paul didn't go on his missionary
journeys in order to tell the Gentiles that they were sinners. He didn't go to tell them that
they were idolaters. He didn't go to tell them that
they needed circumcised. He didn't go to tell them that
they needed to take a sheep or a goat up to the temple in Jerusalem
and cut its throat and spill its blood on an altar. He went
to tell them that there is hope for the hopeless. that there
is life to be found for those who are dead in their sins. You're a sinner, and I'm a sinner,
and your children are sinners, and your families are sinners,
and your friends are sinners. Why do we sin? Because that was
Adam's gift to us. That was what he gave us. That
is what he gave all of his children. And there is nothing that we
can do to fix it. And there is nothing that we
can do to alter that situation. But praise to God, he did not
leave us in this awful state. He provided a way of salvation. There is a work of grace and
mercy. There is a love that extends
to sinners like us. The promise by faith, says Paul,
the promise by faith of Jesus Christ given to them that believe. This promise is God's covenant
mercy. It's his sovereign grace. It
is freely given to chosen, elected individuals. It is granted freely
to those who were redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. And it is a free gift that quickens
the dead, that enables the helpless, that liberates the captive, that
sets us free to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and the completeness
of his accomplishments. Romans 9 says, so then, 9 verse
16, so then, it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that
runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. We believe that God created the
first man, Adam, after his own image, in his own likeness, upright,
holy and innocent, capable of serving God and glorifying him. But Adam, having sinned, he and
all his future children sinned in him and came short of the
glory of God. The guilt of whose sin is imputed
and a corrupt nature derived from Adam to all his offspring. We believe they are by our first
birth, we are by our first birth carnal and unclean. averse to all that is good, incapable
of doing any good, and prone to every sin. We believe that
by nature we are children of wrath and under the sentence
of condemnation, subject to physical death, moral death, and spiritual
death, liable for eternal death. Considered in Adam, we are fallen,
we are sinful, and from that state, there is no deliverance,
but by Christ, the second Adam. May God be merciful to us. for mercy is the only hope we
have. May he be gracious that by the redeeming blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ, we might find that cleansing and that
forgiveness that we need to be reconciled and given access into
the presence of God. And may God, the Holy Spirit,
in his powerful, enlivening work, save us from this death which
we got from Adam. Amen.