Ruined Sinners to Reclaim - E29

Announcer: Welcome to the Unchanging Truth, the verse-by-verse Bible teaching ministry of Dr. Jerod Gilcher, lead pastor of Christ Community Bible Church in Arlington, Texas. Through the living and active Word of God, the Unchanging Truth exists to encourage your soul, transform your life, and help you trust and treasure Christ as Redeemer, Savior, and King. Now, opening the scriptures and proclaiming the truth that never changes, here is Dr. Jerod Gilcher.
Dr. Jerod Gilcher: What does it mean, Paul, that all people are under sin? To prove his point, Paul could legitimately quote statistics of crime and murder and rape and theft, and that would probably be persuasive. He could cite history and gruesome examples of atrocity, and that would probably be compelling. Maybe he could go to psychology or sociology or logic or reason or philosophy to try to prove that all are under sin, or he could simply quote God’s own Holy Word and settle the issue at once, which he does in verses 10 through 18. Let’s read that whole section, 10 through 18. All are under sin, he says. As it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless. There is no one who does good; there is not even one. Their throat is an open grave; with their tongues they keep deceiving. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Swift are their feet to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Oh, how I’d love to put a copy of that text on the desk of every politician, every social worker, every police officer, every school teacher, and psychologist on the face of the planet. Why? Because that text reveals what people truly, actually are. The true nature of man: that people are not born good, that people are not blank slates, but that they are in fact, when they are born with every single faculty that they possess, irreparably corrupt and polluted by sin. Maybe you noticed there, every word in verses 10 through 18 comes from Scripture, and in particular, Old Testament Scripture. Why does that matter? It means two things. Number one, to prove that all are born in sin and totally depraved, Paul appeals to the highest authority on the face of the planet, namely the sacred text of Holy Scripture. Meaning this isn’t negotiable, this isn’t debatable. This isn’t just Paul’s opinion or some PhD dissertation. No, this is what God has spoken. Therefore, it is real, and it is reality. Number two, citing the Old Testament in particular is indicative of how ancient the witness and testimony of the sinfulness of man really is. This is not a recent phenomenon. This is not some New Testament invention by Paul or the Apostles. This isn’t some cutting-edge, hot-take psychological fad for Paul. He didn’t make this up; this is what God has declared for ages: that all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. This is why God is angry, and even more than that, this is why all people, Romans 1:16, need the saving righteousness of God in the Gospel. Believe it or not, that text, 10 through 18, it’s highly structured. It’s even artistic, and it comes with a logical power that unfolds in three parts, which we’ll look at one at a time. Part one: I call the totality of depravity. The totality of depravity, meaning every single person without exception is born in sin and under condemnation. Starting in verse 10, Paul says there is no one righteous, not even one. There is not one who understands; there is not one who seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless. There is not one who does good; there is not even one. You can see it and hear it, the "alls" and the "no ones." Do you see that? And that’s a problem. There is no one righteous, not even one. The thing about that word "righteous" is that’s law court language. That’s the language of the courts. To be a righteous person in secular Greek thinking meant that you met a legal standard, you fulfilled what the law required. When it comes to the Bible, that word "righteous" is absolutely loaded because, get this, to be righteous isn’t just mere morality or external conformity to a code of ethics. No, to be a righteous person, biblically speaking, you know what it means? It means that you value supremely what is supremely valuable, namely the glory of God. That’s God’s standard of righteousness: that you treasure him as matchless and supreme, that God is the treasure and the prize. This is what we were created to do; this is what we were created to be. Since no one is righteous, well then that very simply means that we were all born with a reflex to idolatry and a craving for poison. Bottom line, to be unrighteous very simply means that you and I were born guilty of treason. We take what’s not God and we love it, and we worship it, and we try to be satisfied in it as if it were God. You can see in the text, this isn’t just the low-lives or the dirtbags of the world. What does it say? No one is righteous, not even one. No one on their own meets the qualification of righteous. We have a tragic solidarity with every single human being in that we are totally, judicially, and cosmically unrighteous, which is exactly why we needed the saving righteousness of Christ that comes in the Gospel, and that’s called justification by faith. We’ll get there. The problem is that sinners don’t get it. They don’t understand. They think they do, they think they get it, but they don’t. That’s what Paul says, verse 11: there is no one who understands. Do you know why? Because there is no one who seeks for God. No one seeks for God. Did you know that? No one. Unless God intervenes first with the miracle of regeneration and awakens them from the inside out, no one seeks for God. That phrase, "there’s no one who understands," that’s interesting because if you notice carefully at the text, it doesn’t have an object. It doesn’t say what they don’t understand, which I think the implication is everything, or in this case, nothing. Unsaved, unbelieving, spiritually dead sinners, they don’t understand. We didn’t understand anything, not the true significance of things anyway. Because you understand God is the great reality that makes all things make sense, and if God is not at the supreme, all-satisfying center of your life, you are missing the very thing that makes all things make sense. No wonder Solomon says the hearts of the sons of men are evil and full of insanity throughout their lives. They’re crazy. This is who we were, groping in the darkness, having no hope, having no idea of the danger that we were in. Beloved, you and I, we are surrounded by these very same people every single day. Yet, if no one seeks for God, then consequently that means all have turned aside, verse 12. Together they have become worthless. There is no one who does good; there is not even one. Do you see the totality there? All have turned aside, no one does good. This is the human race; this is who we were. To turn aside from God, you know that’s nothing but rebellion, rejection, mutiny, a revolt. We were born hating God, and running from God, and wandering from God. We were all born evil nomads, wandering in wickedness and pursuing a life of God-ignoring self-independence, self-dependence. As Isaiah says in Isaiah 53 verse 6: all of us like sheep went astray; each of us have turned to his own way. Paul pulls no punches, verse 12: together as one, he says, we all had become worthless. That’s literally the word, worthless. That doesn’t mean that we ceased to be in God’s image. That doesn’t mean that God didn’t love us, but what it did mean is that sin is so deep and catastrophic in its power, sin is so lethal and toxic and destructive to the soul that we could do nothing but sin. We were slaves. Titus 1:16: we were detestable, disobedient, worthless for any good work, Paul says. Speaking of good, verse 12: there’s no one who does good. The grammar is very emphatic there; you could almost render it "not even until one." We can’t even find one person who does good on their own. I can really imagine the church, not this one but the church being so influenced by humanism and the self-esteem movement, finding a statement like this to be inconceivable, if not downright offensive. Yet Paul will not be moved. He’s not going to budge to the culture on this, that there’s not one person born doing good. Now, to clarify, there are moral unbelievers, but that’s not the same thing. There are kind and generous and selfless unbelievers, but that biblically doesn’t actually qualify as good. The reason why is because they do those things owing to motives not for the glory of God. Put it this way: even the best deeds done by an unbeliever were still considered acts of rebellion and worthy of hell. That’s how serious this is. I hope you see what Paul’s doing here. Remember, this is heavy and this is thick, and this has a lot of gravity to it. You have to remember, Paul is talking to believers, right? He’s talking to a church, and a really great church, by the way. He’s not saying, he’s not mad at them. He’s not saying this is who they are, but this is who they were. The point of the text, get this, is not the doctrine of sin itself, but what God has done to save us from sin, which is the very next verse, verse 21 all the way to chapter 8 verse 39. You see? But we need to be led through the corridor of darkness that we may understand the light of our salvation. Part two: the anatomy of depravity. The anatomy of depravity, look at verses 13 through 15, and listen for the parts of the body. Their throat, Paul says, is an open grave; with their tongues they keep deceiving. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Swift are their feet to shed blood. You see the parts, don’t you? The throat, and the tongue, and the lips, and the mouth, and the feet. Even verse 18, we see the eyes. Then each one of these same things is given a gruesome description. The point of the text is not that the parts themselves are evil, but that they are agents that express the evil of the heart. I also think it’s really telling and interesting that almost all the parts Paul mentions have to do with speech. Notice that? Language: what comes out of our mouths, what we say. I think the point is, when it comes to wounding other sinners, the words that we speak are the weapon of choice. Out of the overflow of the heart, what? The mouth speaks. The pictures that he uses are ghastly and they’re highly appropriate. Look at verse 13: their throat is an open grave. Taken from Psalm 5:10, the picture is of an open casket with a rotting cadaver inside. The point is, the words that unbelievers speak reveal a state of spiritual death and a soul at enmity with God. Just read the comments online posted by unbelievers, and it smells like an open grave. It’s brutal. Then he moves to the tongue. With their tongues, he says, they keep deceiving. That’s true, isn’t it? People who belong to the father of lies look and sound exactly like their father. Fraud, deception, slander, flattery, twisting of the truth, manipulation of the truth, and lies. It just makes sense that the tools of the trade of those who hate the God of truth will be deception and lies. Let me just pause here and say and ask you: you’re done with this now, right? What I mean is, as a believer, I hope that you’re done with lies and deception. As people of the God of truth and as people who are freed by the truth, we must be a people who always speak the truth. Unless you’re Rahab hiding Jewish spies on the rooftop from Canaanite soldiers, lies and deception have zero place in the Christian life. This is who we used to be, not only deceptive but also destructive. Look at verses 13 and 14: the poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. From Psalm 140, Paul draws the image of a cobra filled with deadly poison, and the point is clear: the words of the wicked are often reptilian, cold-blooded, savage, and brutal, designed to hurt, intended to wound, meant to destroy. Verse 14 describes whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. You ever curse anybody before? That doesn’t mean a witch’s spell and it doesn’t mean you cuss. It is cruelty and malice. It’s the Bible’s word for the lowest of the low, the things that we say to hurt the most. "I hate you," "Go to hell," "I wish you were dead," or whatever we can find in the moment. It’s no wonder, right? No wonder James 3 declares: the tongue is just a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things. The tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity, which defiles the entire body and is set on fire by hell. No one can tame the tongue, he says, for it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison. It’s true, isn’t it? Yet, vicious words, they often escalate into violent actions. Look at verse 15: swift are their feet to shed blood. From Isaiah 59, corrupt and ruined sinners oftentimes have no hesitation resorting to physical violence or assault or even murder. You have to understand: violence is not an anger issue, it’s a worship issue. Do you see? People who worship themselves like to harm and hurt other people who do not worship them in the way they want to be worshiped. You understand, don’t you? The point of Paul in the text is not to make you feel bad. If you walk away from this sermon like, "All I heard today is I’m a really bad sinner." No, you’re a redeemed sinner! That’s the point. The point is not to make you feel bad; it’s to make you feel relief. "I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it, this is who I was, and yet God intervened. I can’t believe it. I should be in hell right now, and yet the grace of God intervened." It’s all about perspective. The better we see the bad news of depravity, the greater we see the goodness of the Gospel. The better we know the doctrine of sin, the more we love the doctrine of salvation. Do you see? Once we wrap our heads around what sin really is and where we were headed forever, only then can we understand all that God had to do to save us from destruction. Part three: the gravity of depravity. The gravity of depravity, and here Paul moves to the effects and damage that sin causes, or rather the damage and effects that sinners cause. Look at verses 16 through 18. He says, destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. There they are, the effects and ruin and chaos of sin. Quoting Isaiah 59:7, Paul says destruction and misery are in their paths, meaning where sin and sinners go, this is always the result. You’ve seen this in people’s lives, haven’t you? You probably saw this even in your own life before you got saved: chaos and madness and sadness and sin and idolatry, leaving behind a trail of pain and the wreckage of ruined lives. The reason why that happens is because, notice verse 17, the path of peace they have not known. What’s the path of peace? It’s the path of humble submission to the Lord, dependent on his grace, trusting in his love, obedient to his word. This is the path of peace and they didn’t know it, and they never knew it, and they didn’t want to know it. Because, verse 18: there is no fear of God before their eyes. Paul put this last because it is the worst and it is the root of all the other things that came before it in the list. Mankind doesn’t fear God; that’s the problem. In fact, God is the one subject that unbelieving sinners feel the most freedom to speak about, to speculate about, to presume upon, to blaspheme, to assign evil motives, to mock and scoff and criticize and belittle and deny, having zero idea that no one can see his face and live. Psalm 7:11: God is a righteous judge and is angry with the wicked every day. This is the totality of depravity. We’ve got to wrap our heads around this. The text is here to be read, the text is here to be preached, and it’s essential to the Gospel. Sinners need to know that something is wrong. I believe there’s people today, people probably in this room, you’ve never seen yourself in the mirror of the Word of God before. Today you see it, don’t you? The bad news that precedes the good news. You were born dead. You were born at enmity with God. You are cosmically, judicially unrighteous, and you cannot stand before a holy God and live. Unless you see it, unless you believe it, then you can never believe the good news that Christ died to save sinners just like you. Oh, the better we see the bad news of depravity, the greater we see the goodness of the Gospel. Amen? Amen. Let’s pray. Father, we are humbled and broken as we look in the mirror and we see who we were, and sadly who we still often are as we turn from you and from your grace. We just pray that the Holy Spirit would seal this truth to our hearts that we would walk away with a profound sense of relief that you intervened, you acted. You stepped into our lives when we were not seeking you, when we were not following you. You rescued us from the miry pit, you set our feet upon a rock, and you put a new song in our mouths. We are so grateful, Lord. Help us to never lose sight of where we were so that we would always love and adore and treasure where we are in Christ. It’s in his name we pray. Amen.