Would you please turn in your Bibles to Paul's letter to the Romans, chapter 9. Having become a Christian as an adult, I can remember reading the book of Romans for the first time. I'm not sure if it struck me the first time, but one of the very first readings of the book of Romans, it made me want to go in the kitchen and get what you call a kitchen mitt. You know, you reach in the oven with this thing you put on your hand because it's really hot in there and you don't want to grab a hot rack or a hot dish that's in the oven, so you put on an oven mitt. Well, when you get to Romans chapters 9, And 10 and 11, I mean, there's nuclear stuff in here. There's hot, hot, hot doctrine that you're dealing with. And I can remember thinking it'd be so perfect if I just get out my oven mitt right now to turn the pages because we're dealing with cosmic things here, things way above our pay grade. And this evening we're going to be looking at a portion of the scripture. We're going to be looking at one concept and one idea. It may have hit you before, it may not have. You may be confused by it still today. You may have puzzled for years, what in the world does this mean? We're going to look at the concept of God-hardening sinners. God-hardening sinners. And our text is going to be Romans 9, 15 through 18. Let's read God's word together. For he that refers to God said to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So then, it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I raise you up, to demonstrate my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth. So then," that's a conjunction of conclusion, he has mercy on whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires. What in the world does that mean? Like I said, it can be a confusing subject for some people. I thought God was supposed to be nice and warm and fuzzy and fluffy and it doesn't sound very warm and fuzzy here. I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion and I will not have compassion on those I choose not to. I will harden some and I will give mercy to others. Where's the compassion and love of God? It's a subject that can be puzzling, a subject that It's rife for the potential for sinful human beings to mess it up. And if we're fallen sinners without any grace of God, we will certainly take these verses and mess them up. We will think hard thoughts about God. For these verses, this concept of hardening is really the whole understanding of salvation. And as we see what it means, it's just a shorthand way for the biblical authors, and the idea of hardening is dealt with 50 times in the Bible, 30 times in the Old Testament, 20 times in the New Testament, and it really has to do with the whole question of salvation. How is a sinful human being, a boy or a girl, a man or a woman, your child, your parents, your friends, your relatives, how are they to be saved? Like I said, it's a subject with potential for misconstruing, for thinking hard thoughts about God, for causing confusion. But if you rightly understand the biblical doctrine of hardening, it's a subject that will lead you to worship, and to awe, and to holy fear, and to sobriety. Let's look at some prime examples in the Old Testament of this problem of hardening. I'm not going to look up every possible verse with you. We're going to look at a few verses. I'll either mention them or wait for you to look at them yourself. But I do want you to eyeball some of them just so you can see, yep, he's really treating the Scriptures responsibly. So I'd like you to turn to Exodus chapter 4. The primo example, the number one example in the Old Testament of hardening is God hardening Pharaoh's heart. Well, I can remember the first time I read some of these verses, you know, you had the idea of here's Pharaoh kind of skipping down the road in ancient Cairo or some ancient city and suddenly this ray from heaven comes down and Pharaoh becomes this knuckle-dragging Neanderthal kind of insensitive person and he was a nice guy, but God hardened him. Is that your conception? Is yours as bad as mine was? Is yours as naive as mine was? When it comes to the idea of hardening what comes to your mind. Let's read in Exodus chapter 4. Let's pick it up at verse 21. The Lord said to Moses, This is the two chapters of the call of Moses to be the deliverer. He said, when you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders which I have put in your power. In other words, when you go back and confront Pharaoh, I've given you certain powers, I've given you the staff, certain other powers you're going to have the ability to do, and I want you to do them in front of Pharaoh. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. God says, I will harden his heart, and he won't let the people go. Turn over to chapter 7, verses 2 and 3. It's already begun. Most of the Old Testament references to hardening are in this passage, not all of them, but many of them are. Chapter 7, verses 2 and 3. You shall speak of all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall speak to Pharaoh, that he let the sons of Israel go out of his land. But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, that I may multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt. There are seven other times in the book of Exodus where God is said to harden Pharaoh's heart. You might be tempted to think, if you're not a Christian, to think, well, God's kind of mean. He tells us to come to Him. He tells us to repent, to believe. And then He hardens us. And I would guess that would make us impervious or insensitive to God. Why in the world does He do this? But there are also several verses to compound the confusion. There are several verses that say that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. Oh man, which is it? For example, in Exodus chapter seven, verse four, that's the next verse, we just read two and three, look at verse four. When Pharaoh does not listen to you, then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring out my host, my people, the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt. When Pharaoh does not listen to you, We're going to see in chapter 8, that's just another way of saying that when Pharaoh hardened his heart. Flip over to chapter 8, verse 15. It will put these two ideas together. Not listening is one of the aspects of hardening. Look at 8.15. But when Pharaoh saw that there was no relief, meaning from the plagues, he hardened his heart and did not listen to them as the Lord had said. Not listening when God speaks to you, not paying attention, not obeying, not heeding, not hearkening. Not listening to God is an aspect of hardening. And it says here that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, and he hardened his heart by not listening. So whose fault is it? I mean, is it Pharaoh's fault because he didn't hearken, he didn't heed, he didn't listen, he hardened his own heart? Or is it God's fault? Did God somehow cause Pharaoh to be harder than he would have been because God hardened his heart so when the truth came, Pharaoh blew it off? Well, there's more to understanding this than what I've just shared. When you're asking the question, what does it mean for the hardening of the human heart, you have to back up and ask a bigger question. What does the Bible teach, both Testaments, what does the Bible teach about the human condition? What has happened to the human condition since the fall of our first parents? If you went to the book of Exodus, for example, It says that every man and woman, every boy and girl has been contaminated by Adam's sin. There are no sinless people. There are acorn sinners and there are oak tree sinners, but there is no one on the planet who is not a sinner. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, Romans says. Genesis 6.5, listen to God's prognosis of the human condition. Then the Lord, the covenant God, saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continuously." He's piling up superlatives. He's saying there's no way getting beyond this. Everything that was going on in the human heart was, to God, sinful. Maybe you didn't kick your dog. but that doesn't rate as righteousness before God. Maybe you kissed your wife when you went to work back then. That doesn't rate as righteousness before God. Everything everybody did came out of a sinful motive. Look at the text again. Every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continuously. This is before the fall. before the flood, and then the flood comes. And God says again regarding the condition of men at this time, 821, the intent of every man's heart is evil from his youth. It doesn't mean that every person is as bad as he can be. The Bible does not teach absolute depravity. It doesn't teach there is no good. It doesn't teach that nobody ever does anything halfway decent. But the Bible does teach that no man can make himself fit before God, that every one of us comes from a flawed heart, and the deeds and the words and the intents and heart desires that flow out of this flawed heart are flawed. I have never done a 100% righteous thing in my whole life. Not once. This came home to me one time when I was pastoring and a deacon called up and he worked for Delta and he had had a really hard week and he'd been sick and he was exhausted and we were meeting at a school at that time and it was his small group's turn to set up all the chairs and get things ready for Sunday and there's quite a bit of work involved and I had my work done for the week and I said, well look, why don't you stay home, I'll go meet with your group and we'll get things set up and you don't have to worry about it, you can just kind of crash. Oh, thanks, okay. And I took about two steps and I go, you're a great guy. And I sat down in my chair and I started crying because I couldn't take two steps without pride entering in. That wasn't a 100% righteous deed. My sin was just waiting to latch onto that. C.S. Lewis used the illustration that he'd been dealing with a particular sin and each day he would take a mile walk around Oxford and there was little benches you could sit on a quarter mile, so you'd go a quarter mile, sit down, rest a while, and go a quarter mile. You know, a really rigorous workout. Anyway, he was sitting on one of his little benches, and the thought came to mind, you know, this sin used to be a bigger problem in my life than it is right now. I've made real progress. And before he could get to the next quarter mile marker, he started crying because he realized that pride had come in and sucked all the value out of what he'd just overcome, and now he had a new problem, his pride ever having overcome it. How long does it take to walk that? A few minutes? Every intent of man's heart is evil from his youth. The Bible teaches that sin has corrupted everybody so that little children who are seen to be acorn sinners grow up to be oak tree sinners like those of us who are adults. In Psalm 14, David says about the human condition, men are corrupt. They have committed abominable deeds. There is no one who does good. The Lord has looked down from heaven upon the sons of man to see if there are any who understand, any who seek after God. They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt. There was no one who does good, not even one." And in case you were kind of sleepy the day that you read Psalm 14 verses 1 through 3, Psalm 53, 1 through 3, have the exact same verses in them. And then Paul picks up those same verses in Romans chapter 3 and says, this is the human condition in first century Rome. In Psalm 36, I can remember the first time this hit me over the head like a sledgehammer. Psalm 36, an oracle, a burden within my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked. There is no fear of God before his eyes. If you want to bottom line the human condition, There is no fear of God in the eyes of sinful men toward God. They could care less. God's not worthy of any awe, any reverence, any worship, any love, any service. I could care less. There is no fear of God before his eyes. For in his own eyes, he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin." In other words, I'm so great, I never think about anything me being wrong in my life. You're pretty screwed up, but there's nothing wrong with my life. He flatters himself too much to detect or hate his own sin. The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful. He has ceased to be wise and then he does good. He plans evil on his bed at night. That's what the human condition is. But the Bible says, no, it's worse than that. Keep reading. So we read on in the New Testament. Well, yeah, the New Testament, that's where Christ spends, Christ is the hero of the New Testament, and He's nice and loving. The God of the Old Testament was mean and kind of cranky, but the God of the New Testament is sweet and loving, right? Poor people have never read their Bibles or believed what they're told. but the same God as God overall, and the New Testament is just a continuation, an explanation of the Old Testament. So, what does the New Testament say? Well, as I mentioned, Christ the Apostle, Paul, spends 10 verses in Romans 3, or 9 verses, verses 10 through 18, repeating these very same verses I've just read to you from the Old Testament, from Psalm 14, from Psalm 53, from Psalm 36, But I think he even goes farther, and so we're going to take a minute, and we're going to backtrack to some property that your pastor has gone over for you. Look at Ephesians chapter 2. If there ever was an indictment of the human condition, it's in Ephesians chapter 2. Now Paul is writing to the Ephesians which are talked about in Acts chapter 19. And Acts chapter 19 is when Paul goes to Ephesus and he preaches and there is a riot and all kinds of things happen. And people come to Christ and a lot of them had been involved in the occult. Remember they brought out their occult, their sorcery stuff, their tarot cards and their Ouija boards or things like that we would consider. Everything they were involved in the occult. There would be this huge bonfire and Luke estimates there are about 50,000 working man's day wages in that pile from the people in Ephesus who were into the occult. So that's the background of the church that Paul's establishing. And so he begins in chapter 2 after, you know, chapter 1 is the Matterhorn. We're up high. He talks about eternity. Eternity passed and God's come down to earth to save you and then take you up to heaven. Chapter 2, well let's go down to the lowlands, to the mists, where we all live. And you were dead in your trespasses and sins. All the time you broke God's laws, that's trespasses and sins, you missed the mark. You were dead, you were spiritually dead. In which you formerly walked, that means you used to live this way, according to the course of this world. Whirlings determined how you lived. Whirling determined how you set your values. according to the prince of the power of the air, well that would be the devil, of the spirit or spirit being that is now at work or working in the sense of disobedience. You know I used to like to mock how naive unbelievers are about the devil because it's like you ever watched a puppeteer with marionettes? They kind of have these strings come down from their fingers Tell them there is no devil and I don't believe in him. Tell them the devil just manipulates humanity terribly. And people go right along with it, repeating what the devil whispers in their ears, so to speak. The spirit being that is now working in the sons of disobedience. That would mean if you're sitting here tonight and you're not a believer, whether you think it's true or not, God's word says that you're being manipulated by the spirit being who is at work in you, in the sons of disobedience. The sons of disobedience are people who aren't Christians. The New Testament says that we are to obey the gospel. What does that mean? Repent and believe. God commands that you repent. And if you haven't repented, you're disobedient. He tells you through his apostles, Acts chapter 17, God has appointed a day when he would judge all men, for he has raised a man from the dead, Jesus Christ, and through this man he will judge all men. So he's appointed that you repent and turn to Christ. He's commanded all men to repent. And Jesus himself promised in Matthew chapter 10, he says, if you're weary and heavy burdened by your sin, come to me and you'll find rest. Come to me and you'll find rest, for my yoke is easy, my burden is light, and I will take away the burden of your sins, and I will cleanse you from your sins. That's an invitation to come. You've been invited to come. And you've been commanded to repent. And if you're not obeying the gospel, What is obeying? Repent and believe. That is the message of the gospel. This is all available to you, but you can't have the world in Christ too. So come to Christ, and if you come to Him, He'll never let you go. He'll never push you away. But Paul is not so self-righteous that he says, you know, you poor sick son of a gun's out there enough. He says, boy, some people are really messed up and you guys qualify. No, how does verse three start? Among them we too, now what is we? First person plural. You have a problem and you have a problem and you have a problem and I have a problem. We all have a problem, we're all sinners, Jew or Gentile. Among them, among this kind of lifestyle, we all too formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, and what we felt like doing we did, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature, just how we were, by nature, children of wrath, even as the rest of humanity, even as these people we're talking about. We were just as messed up as they are. Verse four, but God. One of the greatest sermons you'll ever read, find it on the internet, is Martin Lloyd Jones' sermon, But God. I don't care how messed up your life is, if I put but God in front of it, everything can change. God can change your life from black to white, from darkness to daylight, and everything can change if God intervenes in mercy in your life. We have all these problems that is wrong with the human nature. Such that Jesus told the Jews of his own time, religious people, he said, no man can come to me unless the Father draws him. Now, you got to kind of go, wait a minute, what does that mean, no man can come to me? Let's go back to second grade. Miss Johnson Can I go to the restroom? Yes, Stevie, I'm sure you can, but no, you may not. What's the difference between can and may? May has to do with permission. Can has to do with ability. John, you have the ability to walk down and go to the restroom, but you don't have the permission to get up from class right now and go. What did Jesus say? He did not say, no man may come to me. He wasn't denying them permission. He said, don't you know your own hearts? You can't come to me. You don't have the ability. You don't have the ability unless my Father draws you. And then in case they weren't hearing well, he repeats the same thing 20 verses later in John 6, 65. No man can come to me unless the Father first draws him. Something has to happen in this messed up person, in this sinner who's befouled by all the things mentioned here in Ephesians 2. We're spiritually dead, we're impervious to God, we hate God, we're allergic to God, we have no natural desires for Him, to please Him, to glorify Him, or even to give thanks for Him. We have no love for Him, no desire to live by His laws or live by His counsel. We're blinded by the devil and we just, bottom line, see nothing desirable about God, no reason to love Him, no reason to fear Him. And left to ourselves, you might as well be taking a blind person to the art museum or a deaf person to the symphony, we could care less. You don't take blind people to the art museum unless you're punking them or want to make them feel bad, but you don't take them because they do not have the capacity to appreciate something in there. I know they can feel things with their fingers, but most paintings you're not going to get by feeling them with your fingers. And you're not going to take a deaf person to the symphony because if they're totally deaf, they're not going to pick up what's going on. But that's what's wrong with human condition. We're blind, we're deaf, we have a hard heart, and I have a chip on my shoulder, and I don't like that God who tells me He loves me and tells me to repent and believe. So what in the world is going to happen? So how does this all relate to the idea of hardening? The key to unlock whatever mystery is still in your mind about hardening can be dealt with by the key of God is the potter and you are the clay. Both Testaments use that illustration several times. God's the potter, and you and I are the clay, the raw material. The potter fashions the clay however he wants to, shapes it, forms it however he wants to. But the question is, what does the Bible say about how the potter hardens the clay? You go, I didn't take any of those pottery classes. You know, I was in tech school, or I was working, or I was like, I didn't take any pottery classes. Well, did you ever have modeling clay as a kid, actually before 1965, there was modeling clay, then they went to Plato because you know what happens with modeling clay when you leave it in a cigar box or a shoe box up in your shelf? It turns to a brick. It gets hard. Why? What was going on in that closet? Was somebody in there hardening my clay? Did somebody mess with my clay and harden it? Well, no. Well, what happened to it? It's the natural condition of clay when it interacts with the air to harden. Don't you know that from just watching a child working with a piece of clay? Here's a piece of clay. It's starting to get hard. How do you soften it? You start working the clay and that's what softens it. It's not going to get soft on its own. It's just going to naturally get harder and harder and harder. You don't have to do anything to clay to harden it. You just let it be. And it's for eternity. You pivot on your heels and you walk in the other direction and you let it harden until it's stone and totally impervious. Hardening occurs naturally by just leaving the clay alone. Now if you really want to harden it, you can put it in a kiln. Kiln brings some really extreme circumstances. take a hairdryer and put it on the clay and it'll really get hard. But it's still the clay just being the clay, just interacting with the air around it. So, we can get to the answer to the question, but how does God harden a sinner? Like I said, is it like, you know, here's Raj Doot walking down the street of Calcutta And God has this ray that comes out of heaven, people don't see it, but suddenly this nice sweet man, husband, father, brother, relative, becomes this terrible sinner? Is that what it means? Is that how God hardens? Does He have some magic potion where He infuses something mean and hard into a person who was otherwise pretty nice and a good fellow? God hardens a sinner by leaving them alone. God doesn't have to do anything to harden you. It's when God does nothing in your life, you don't feel anything, you don't see anything, you don't fear anything, you don't love anything, nothing he says even has a tick on your radiometric meter here. Nothing God does impacts you. If he just leaves you alone, God help you. God help you. God's hardening a sinner occurs when God simply leaves the sinner alone and lets their natural heart condition take over. They become spiritually harder and harder and harder and harder. It's my personal conviction, I taught when I was going through the Gospel of Matthew, that the unpardonable sin that the Pharisees were committed was not only attributing the works of the Holy Spirit to the devil, but being exposed to Christ and being exposed to Christ and being exposed to Christ and being exposed to Christ, and they hardened themselves every time. And that's like putting a hairdryer on a piece of clay. Every time you're exposed to God, the sinner just becomes harder and harder and harder. If God doesn't supernaturally work in the sinner's heart, every time He exposes you to truth, you just become harder. God does not make anyone to sin, nor does He tempt us with the goal that we sin. But all God has to do for us to sin more and more is just to leave us alone, just to pass you by. He didn't have to create you. You didn't have to exist. You know, you can study the banana slugs of the California sequoias and it's kind of like, okay, there's a dissertation for you waiting to happen. That's a pretty esoteric subject. But what about the idea of God just leaving a sinner alone such that they have nothing but hardness of heart toward God. They're totally impervious to spiritual things. He just leaves us alone. And if He keeps leaving you alone until you die, you're lost forever. Pastor, let me get this right. So you're saying... that our natural condition is we will ossify, we will turn to stone, we will turn to hard bone-like material. The word sclera in the Greek New Testament and the Septuagint of the Old Testament for hardening is used by some, is used by the medical profession for certain conditions like scleroderma where your skin hardens or you can have a condition of your lungs where the tissue in your lungs just hardens and doesn't function and you die. You mean just the natural condition as we are, as sin has left us, means that God doesn't have to do anything and we're doomed? That's exactly what I'm saying. If God does nothing in your life, you're doomed. I'm not saying that to be mean. I'm not saying that to be nasty. But it is the job of a communicator to communicate. And I want to be clear. If God doesn't work in your heart, you're doomed. He doesn't owe you salvation. You didn't have to be made. He doesn't have to make the banana slugs, and He didn't have to make you, but He chose to make both. And then the question is, is He going to save you from your sins? Is God a God of mercy and compassion on guilty sinners? Let me go back to throw in the question about sinners hardening their own hearts. There's all kinds of parallel statements or all kinds of synonyms. The Bible talks about having ears to hear. You know, Johnny, it's time to come in, supper. You keep playing. Why? I don't want to hear that. I want to keep playing. I don't have ears to hear. I don't have eyes to see. I don't want to see that. I'm just going to overlook that and pretend it didn't happen. I don't have eyes to see. The Bible talks about having a stiff neck. A stiff neck is when instead of bending your neck forward, you stiffen up your neck and you will not submit to the yoke. Think of all the other illustrations that are on scripture of ways in which we can show resistance, lack of submission, lack of faith, lack of trust, lack of love, and the hardening is the one I'm dealing with today. Sinners harden their own hearts when they're exposed to the truth of God and His Word, and they turn it off, they turn away, they suppress it. Romans 1 says, the truth of God is known to every person on the planet, but we suppress the truth naturally in our unrighteousness. To suppress means to push down. I don't want to think about that now, Scarlett O'Hara. I'll think about that tomorrow. I don't want to think about this now. It's too convicting, too condemning, too uncomfortable for me to deal with emotionally. And so I'm just going to think about it tomorrow. That's hardening your heart. Boy, that sermon was really speaking to me this morning, but I managed to get it out of my mind. Hardening your heart. My dad prayed for me last night in the family devotions, but I went up to my room and I blew it off. I hardened my heart. The pastor talked to me about my soul, but I disregarded it. I hardened my heart. The sinner hardens his own heart every time he bumps up to something about God and turns it off. Like air added to clay hardens the clay, so God added to any sinner's life begins the hardening process, unless God's merciful. You live in a gospel-hardened culture. That's different from missionaries going to places where people are gospel-ignorant. They're not without account before God. They're guilty of blowing off what they know from God from nature. But you live in a gospel-hardened culture, and that's very different. Everybody in America has heard something about Christ, even if it's messed up. But they've hardened their hearts. And unless God works mercifully in a person's heart to change that heart, it remains hard. So in the time I have left, let's look at the solution. What is the solution to a hardened heart? What is the Bible's solution? And for years this puzzled me, and I was looking for some verses that would say explicitly what it is, and one day I'm reading, well, bingo, here's the verse. And there's some other verses. Please turn to Isaiah 63. Isaiah is called the Gospel of the Old Testament because so much of Isaiah has to do with the promises of God's coming and working in supernatural ways to make a people. There's different portions of Isaiah that I'm sure are precious to you. In chapter 63, verse 17 says it all. See if my exegesis is correct. Why, O Lord, do you cause us to stray from your ways and harden our hearts from fearing you? He's saying God hardened their hearts. He's saying that God caused them to be astray. So what's the solution? Keep reading. Return, come back for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your heritage. These are people who had been professing believers and the whole nation had gone astray. So the solution to their hardening condition is, God, come back. Pick us up. Don't set us aside and leave us aside. Pick us up. Work with us. Do what you have to do, but work with us and make us soft and pliable before your sight again. Return. God, leaving a person to walk away, said, fine, you want to do culture your own way? You want to do marriage your own way? You want to do life your own way? Fine. Do it without me." And then everything turns hard. And he's seeing this and he's saying, he's calling out the solution. The solution is for God to return to his people, for God to work with his people, for God to work the clay again, make it soft and malleable. Why do you cause us to stray from your ways and harden our heart from fearing you? Solution, return for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your heritage. Your holy people possessed your sanctuary for a little while. Our adversaries have trodden it down. We have become like those over whom you have never ruled. like those who were not called by your name. Oh, that you would rend the heavens, rip them in two, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence, as fire kindles the brushwood, as fire causes water to boil, to make your name known to your adversaries, that the nations may tremble at your presence. When you did awesome things which we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence." In other words, he's talking about in figurative language that when God comes down and works with His people, spectacular things can happen. He says, like the mountains quake when you come down in spiritual power and force and change your people. For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear, nor has the eye seen a God beside you. First Corinthians 2.9, eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has it entered into the mind of man all the wonderful things God has in store for those who love him. And here's the Old Testament foundation for that. You meet Him who rejoices in doing righteousness, who remembers you in your ways. Behold, you were angry, for we sinned. We continued in them a long time, and shall we be saved? For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all of our righteous deeds are like filthy garment, and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on your name who arouses himself to take hold of you, for you have hidden your face from us and have delivered us into the power of our iniquities." We're becoming awfully hard. The only solution to our national calamity is for you to come and work in power. Go back to Romans chapter 9. The passage I read earlier for you where Paul's reading these atomic verses let's read again Romans 9 15 through 18 for he God says to Moses I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion so that it does not depend on the man who wills I'm gonna make myself a Christian I'm gonna deal with this I'm gonna do all these things or the man who runs who runs away I don't want anything to do with this maybe It doesn't depend on man, but on God who has mercy. What's the most powerful man in any nation? Well, prior to late democracy, it was the king. The Bible says unequivocally, God controls the king and the king does whatsoever God wants him to do. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, the Egyptian king, for this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth. I'm using you as my illustrative toy to show that he's not a toy that he's toying with, but he's in God's hand, in God's power, that I control you, and you're going to do my will, and you don't control even Egypt, you don't even control your own life, I do. And God controls Pharaoh. So then he has mercy on whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires. The opposite of mercy is hardening, so the opposite of hardening is mercy. Has God had mercy on you? Was there a time when you weren't a believer, you weren't a repenter, you were not of the people of God, but now you're a believer, now you're a repenter, now you are of the people of God? How did that happen? Were you smarter than your friends? Were you more spiritually sensitive than those people around you? Were you more humble? I wasn't any of those things and I was just clueless. I was lost. But God who is rich in mercy, but God who is rich in mercy, not just a little bit of mercy, not just a handful of people who will be saved, But as he promised to Abraham and as he says in the book of Revelation, if you can count the stars in the sky or the sands of the seashore, so shall your descendants be. I am a God who is rich in mercy. When I was a child, I used to read certain comic books. I read classic comic books and I read Uncle Scrooge comic books. Okay. Uncle Scrooge was Donald Duck's uncle, and he was famous for being very rich. How rich? The family insignia was a dollar sign, and all of his blazers had a dollar sign. If you come into his estate, there's a big dollar sign above the entrance. There's stacks of money in the living room. Money everywhere. You got the point. And when I used to think of wealth, I used to think of Uncle Scrooge, the guy who had money. God who is rich in mercy. He has mercy stacked up in the living room. He has mercy over the top gates of the entrance to heaven. Mercy written on his jacket. Mercy on the head plate of the high priest. He's a God of great mercy. He loves to save sinners, hardened sinners, people who are clueless, people who had no capacity nor desire. I wasn't looking for God. I wasn't lost. I wasn't an alcoholic yet. I wasn't a druggy. I didn't have an STD. I didn't have all these other things. It was worse than all that combined. I was just lost. Ephesians 2 says, without God, without hope, and in the world. without God, without hope, and in the world. And that's what every hardened sinner is until God intervenes in mercy. The final encouragement to you this evening is 2 Corinthians 4.6. Here's a good verse to memorize if you're not a Christian, and it's a good verse to memorize if you are a Christian to remember or find out how you got there. Paul talks about One other problem that non-Christians have, there's a veil in front of their eyes. They don't see their native Christ. They don't see Christ. They have this veil, this impenetrable glaucoma that makes them unable spiritually to see and appreciate Christ. He says in verse 3, But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. He says, In whose case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God." In other words, if a person up to the very end of their days doesn't say anything glorious about Christ, then the veil has remained in front of their eyes. Christ is not snatched away. They're still lost. They're still condemned. Paul says, but we do not preach ourselves. I can't change your life. Nothing about Steve Martin is miraculous or amazing. I'm not going to change your life. We do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your bond servants for Jesus' sake. We're messengers to tell you about how great Christ is and how he saves sinners. Now look at verse six. Here's the verse to memorize. For God who said, light shall shine out of darkness. When did that happen? at the creation. Boom! The universe exists. Everything's out there. Talk about a Big Bang Theory. God just speaks everything into creation. Boom! The God who said that is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. The same supernatural power it took to create the cosmos, everything that exists, is the same supernatural power that God exerts in the saving of one single sinner. New creation, new properties. But this never existed before, now it exists. Things exist in your life now that didn't exist before He intervened, and through supernatural power put them there. The same power that created the universe is recreating men and women and boys and girls for the new heavens and the new earth. I don't have an assignment for you. If you're a believer, I hope that you go home thinking, God could have passed me by. We're going to close with a great hymn. Pass me not, O gentle Savior. If He passes you by, you're doomed. I'm sorry. There's nothing that can happen. There's nothing that can be done for you. You're doomed. But if he intervenes in your life, everything will change. Everything. I have a friend of mine who grew up in Jerusalem, and his parents had emigrated from a nation where they were persecuted by Muslims, and they were in a poor part of the city of Jerusalem. And he said, Jerusalem is a weird place to grow up, because every day when you go to school, you pass by, okay, here's the garden tomb where Jesus was laid, and outside, here's the Kidron Valley, and here's all these places listed in the Gospels where Jesus did something. And he said one day he played hooky and didn't go to school because he didn't like the religious school his parents sent him to. And he went into the garden tomb and sat there. And he thought about what the gospel account said. And it happened. It happened right there in that tomb. Christ rose from the dead. And if he rose from the dead, then All bets are off. Everything's new. God visited this planet. God can change people's lives. He had an epiphany. He had a, I found it. He saw it. He got it. He became a believer. There is hope for the very worst person in the world. I have the privilege of telling the worst people in the world anybody I meet. No matter who you are or what you've done, Jesus Christ can save you, cleanse you, forgive you, pardon you, give you new life, give you eternal life, and make you a different man or woman. What a privilege! The same power that spoke the universe into creation is the power that is exerted when one sinner is saved. I hope you have a sense of awe and a sense of sobriety. He could have passed you by. He could have left you in your sins. He could have just let you interact with the sinful culture you're in until you became as hard as a stone. But he didn't. And if you're not yet a Christian, then the word for you is, you need to ask the Lord to be merciful to you, a sinner. You need to ask the Lord to be merciful to you, a sinner, saying, I have no capacity to change myself. And if what the Bible says is true about my condition, I'm doomed unless you intervene. And the Bible says the only provision that you give us is Jesus Christ. I need Him. I want Him to be my Savior. Change my heart. Make me new. Exert your supernatural power and change me. Help me to live for Christ the rest of my life rather than for myself. Help me to glorify Him rather than live for big old Mr. Me the rest of my life. But if God doesn't change you, you're doomed. But if He changes you, only eternity will show the wonder of how great that is. Let's pray. Our Father and our God, sometimes we can speak with boastful words and we can laugh and act like it's no big deal. but you are God and there is no other. The sentence of condemnation of eternal death has been placed upon all rebel sinners and all of us by nature were rebel sinners. The Bible says that left to ourselves there was no hope and we would be doomed but that you sent your son on a rescue mission to this fallen planet where every single person he met every day was lost was broken, was depraved, was a God-hater, self-lover. And it's these very kinds of people that he came to save, to give his life a ransom for. I pray this evening that for those who are still out of Christ, they would lose all of their jauntiness, all of their pride, all of their, I'm in control of this ship. I'm the captain of my own fate, fool of foolishness. And they would see that their lives lie in your hands. And should you simply pass them by, should you simply, so to speak, just stand there and do nothing with them, they will indeed become totally hard. They will indeed go to hell. But we have a good report of your very word that you are a God who intervenes in the lives of sinners. Lord, would you humble those who are still outside of Christ? and make them into humble, penitent pleaders for mercy, and may they find it in the name of Christ. For those who already have found mercy in Christ, would you make us more sober, more thankful, more grateful, more amazed, more in awe that you would not pass us by, but that you would exert supernatural power to save us, the same power that created the universe to make the light of the gospel of the glory of Jesus Christ shine in our hearts. Oh Lord, do not let us hear these things and go away unmoved, unchanged, but rather make us more like Christ. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.