In Jesus name, amen. Let's turn to Romans chapter three this evening. We welcome you in our savior's name. Thank you for coming and representing your family, those who are watching in online. We welcome you to the house of God here in Portland, Owen, and those who are in the car park, welcome in the savior's name. Romans chapter three, familiar chapter. We'll come into the chapter at the verse number nine, just reading 10 verses from the verse number nine. The word of God says, Are we better than they? No, and 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 altogether become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good, no not one. Their mouth is an open sepulcher. With their tongues they have used deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways. We'll end our reading at the verse 19 as we said, and intimate it, and we trust that the Lord will even bless the public reading of His holy and precious word. Last Wednesday evening we came to understand that biblical doctrine and the preaching of it matters and we gave a number of reasons why doctrine and the preaching of it really does matter. First of all God commands his ministers to preach doctrine. They are to exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine. Jesus Christ legitimized doctrinal preaching for when he ministered here on this earth we are told that the people were astonished at his doctrine. The Bible is full of doctrine the bible is a doctrinal book presents to us many of the great doctrines all of the great doctrines of faith and that's why timothy or paul told timothy that the scriptures were profitable for doctrine god's people are edified and built up and comforted by doctrine. Whenever you come to understand the doctrines of Scripture, they become sources of great comfort to us as the children of God. Just think of the comfort that is derived from the doctrine of election. God choosing us in Christ before the foundation of the world. Predestination. Predestinated onto eternal life. The doctrine of God's sovereignty. God in charge of all things. In control of all things. The good and the bad. Or the doctrine of the atonement. how we think of that and the great comfort that it brings to our souls sinners are saved through the presentation of biblical doctrine and then we thought about how false doctrine is exposed when we know the truth then we are equipped to discern the teaching that is false heretical that is counterfeit to the word of God. And tonight we want to begin considering together the doctrines of grace. These doctrines of grace are also known by some as Calvinism. Now it needs to be said at the very outset that Calvinism is not restricted to five points. Calvinism has a thousand points. Calvinism embraces the entire remit of Holy Scripture and its teaching. Calvinism is as broad as the Bible is. We need to get that into our minds. One Christian author wrote, John Calvin's goal in his preaching, teaching, and writing was to expound all the Word of God and the Word of God alone, Scriptura Tota. or Scriptura Sola. Calvinism, he said, is an attempt to express all the Bible and only the Bible. To restrict it to five points is to misjudge and dishonor the man and the movement that bears the name Calvin. Now, we need to go back to the early quarter of the 17th century to Holland to understand the theological conflict that gave rise to two schools of theological thought or teaching. Those two schools are known as Arminianism and Calvinism. In 1610, just one year after the death of a man by the name of James Arminius, who was a Dutch seminary professor, His followers, one year after his death, drew up Articles of Faith. They were known as the Five Articles of Remonstrance, or Protest, and they were based on Arminius' teachings. Those who published the Articles of Faith insisted that the Belgic Confession of Faith and the Heidelberg Catechism, the official documents of the Church of Holland at that time, should be changed to conform to the doctrinal views contained in this remonstrance, these five articles of remonstrance. Now with the issue needing to be settled, a national synod was convened in a place called Dort in 1618. And that synod was established to examine the teachings of Arminius in light of Holy Scripture. That synod met 154 times. And by May the 19th, 1619, the following year, that synod had come to the conclusion that Arminian teaching was not in accordance to the Word of God. What materialized from that synod, the synod of Dort, was then five Calvinistic answers or responses to the five points of Arminianism. And so it isn't Calvinism that has five points, it really is Arminianism that has or presented initially these five points, and these five points of Calvinism that we know of, or should know of, these are really the answer or the response to this remonstrance by these particular men who followed this man, James Arminius. Those answers, those responses are familiar to most of us under the acrostic TULIP, T-U-L-I-P. T speaks of total depravity. U speaks of unconditional election. L speaks of limited atonement. I speaks of irresistible grace, and P speaks of the perseverance of the sins. And tonight we want to consider together the answer that Calvinism gave to the first of the five articles of remonstrance that were put forth by those who were following the teaching of James Arminians, namely the teaching of total depravity, total depravity. Now Arminianism teaches that although human nature was seriously affected by the fall, man has not been left in a state of total spiritual helplessness. God graciously enables every sinner to repent and to believe, but he does so in such a manner as not to interfere with man's Freedom. Arminianism teaches that each sinner possesses a free will to do whatever they choose to do, and that his eternal destiny depends on how he uses that free will. Man's freedom consists in his ability to choose good over evil in spiritual matters. Arminians state that man's will is therefore not enslaved to his sinful nature. That sinner has the power either to cooperate with God's Spirit and be regenerate, or to resist God's grace and to perish. The lost sinner needs the Spirit's assistance, but he does not have to be regenerated by the Spirit before he can believe, because they see faith as man's act. an act that precedes the new birth or regeneration. Faith is seen then as a sinner's gift to God. It's seen really as man's contribution to salvation. Man has faith, man believes, and then as a result of that, The sinner is then converted, born again, regenerated by the Spirit of God. Now if all of that has gone over your head, let me give you a little illustration that I trust will really summarize what Arminianism teaches concerning the Fall. You see, Arminians, their view of man and his fall because of sin, they view him like a man or a person who falls out of the first floor window of a building. And though that man is badly hurt, a few broken ribs, some cuts, some bruises, maybe a broken leg, that man still has the ability to call for help with regard to a passerby or to drag themselves to a phone in order to call an ambulance. The fall is unquestionable. Obviously, the man has fallen out of the window. The ramifications are felt by the man, cuts, bruises, broken ribs, broken bones, but that person in the eyes of Arminianism still has the ability to call upon those for assistance who pass by. However, Calvinism looks at man and his fall in a completely different manner. Calvinism teaches that because of the fall, man is unable of himself to savingly believe the gospel. The sinner is dead. The sinner is blind. The sinner is deaf to the things of God. His heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. His will is not free, for it is in bondage to his evil, his sinful nature. And therefore he will not, he cannot choose good over evil within the spiritual realm. The natural disposition of his heart, the inclination of his will, is always towards that which is sinful. and that which is unrighteous. Consequently, it takes much more than the Spirit of God's assistance to bring the sinner to Jesus Christ. What it takes is regeneration. It takes life being imparted to the dead. It requires sight being given to the blind. It requires deaf ears to be opened. It requires a complete new nature to be given. And so faith is not something that man contributes to salvation, but rather faith is a gift of salvation. It is God's gift to the sinner, not the sinner's gift to God. God gives man faith. He gifts him with faith so that that man can believe the gospel. It traces it all back to God. God's grace is seen in this, and so back to our illustration. You see, Calvinism doesn't view a man or man as one who falls out of a first story window and gets badly hurt by the fall, but rather Calvinism views the fall of man like a man who falls from the roof of the Europa Hotel, the top story of the Empire State Building, and whose fall results in their immediate death. lying in a state of deadness on the ground. That man cannot call for help. That man cannot search for help. That man doesn't even know that he needs help. Such is his deadness. The man is completely dead. He is incapable to evil. There are many verses that verify, I believe, this view of God. We read some in Romans chapter 3, but Psalm 14 is another key text, a good passage to read. Psalm 14 in the verse number 1 down to verse 3, I suppose it is, but the repetition of Romans chapter 3 or Romans 3 is the repetition of Psalm 14. The fool has said in his heart there is no God. They are corrupt. They have done abominable works. There is none that doeth good. The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand and see God. They are all gone aside. They are all together become filthy. There is none that doeth good. No, not. But what does it mean to be totally depraved? Totally depraved. Well, let me first relate to you what it doesn't mean. Being totally depraved does not mean that a man or a woman is absolutely depraved or is utterly depraved. The notion of total depravity, it conjures up the idea that man is, that every human being, sorry, is as bad as that person could possibly be. You know, you might think of someone like Adolf Hitler and say that there was absolutely no redeeming virtue in a man like Adolf Hitler. But I'm sure that Hitler, when he was a boy, I'm sure he loved his mother like any other boy loved his mother. And so he wasn't, as it were, utterly or absolutely depraved. I believe there's only one being, and that is the devil who is utterly and absolutely depraved. Total depravity doesn't mean either that a sinner cannot be moral. Unregenerate people, they practice morality every day. At times they exhibit a greater morality than even sometimes professing. Christians, we can all think of family members and friends and workmates that live morally upright lives even though they're not saved. And so to be utterly or totally depraved, sorry, doesn't mean that a person cannot be moral. Total depravity does not mean that fallen man is entirely destitute of doing any good with regard to his fellow man in acts of charity and benevolence and of mercy. Surely we see men and women doing such works of mercy and goodness. We think of firefighters who risk their lives to rescue those who are trapped in burning buildings. We think of doctors and nurses, they're not saved, and yet they tend to the needs of their patients with great diligence. We think of parents, unregenerate parents, and yet they go out and they work a day's work in order to provide for their children and for their offspring and to pay their taxes. And so we're not saying that individuals that are sinners, unregenerate, that they cannot do any good with regard to their fellow man. So the idea of total depravity does not mean that all human beings are as wicked as they possibly can be. Total depravity really reflects the truth that when man fell in the Garden of Eden, he fell in his totality. The fall was so serious And the fall was so far reaching that it infected and affected the whole man and left him unable to do any spiritual good. That's the distinction. That man cannot, in his fallen state, do any spiritual good. That's what the Scriptures tell us here. There is none that doeth good, no not one. Speaking of spiritual good. Cannot do good and any goodness that we do even towards our fellow man at times is tainted and tarnished even by our sin. Due to the fall, the entire being of man has been affected. The body, the mind, the will, the spirit, the affections, the heart, the whole person has been infected by sin. The fall affects our bodies. That's why we become ill and we die. The fall has affected our minds and our thinking. We don't have the capacity to think as we ought to think. And the Bible makes it clear that the mind is darkened and the mind is in ignorance. It has affected the will so that the will of man is no longer in its pristine state as it was, but it's now in bondage. the bondage of the well. We're enslaved to the evil impulses and desires of our wells until that inclination of the well is changed by the Spirit of God. Dr. Lloyd-Jones, he defined total depravity in the following way. He said, total depravity means that man in his fallen condition has an inherently corrupt nature. And that corruption extends through every part of his being, to every faculty of his soul and body. It also means that there is no spiritual good in him. Yes, there's plenty of natural good, he said. There is natural morality, he said. He can recognize virtue and so on, but there is no spiritual good whatever in man. Scriptures affirm really the entire corruption of man because of sin in many places I think of Genesis 6 in the verse 5 it says there and God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination and thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Psalm 51, 5, Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Isaiah 1, 6, From the sole of the foot unto 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. Jeremiah 79, the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Romans 8 verse 7, because the carnal mind is at enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. And it's very clear from the Scriptures that all of us enter this world completely ruined, completely helpless, spiritually blind, and dead in trespasses and in sins. Now this revelation that the Word of God gives to us concerning man and his fall and his state goes against the grain and the thinking of the general public. How often have you not heard it said, you know, there's good in every person. There's good in every person. But whenever we open the Word of God, that's simply not the case. There is no spiritual good in any one of us. Sin has affected every part of our being, makes us incapable of delivering ourselves from our sinful state into which we've been brought because of the fall. We're unable to raise ourselves out of the state of death. We're completely unable to give blind hearts sight. We're unable to free ourselves from the slavery and the bondage of sin. We're unable to turn from sin's ignorance to the truth of God. We're unable to stop rebelling against God and to submit to his commands. We are like Lazarus in the tomb, bound and fettered, hand and foot. Corruption has taken hold upon us. And just as there was no glimmer of life in the dead body of life, so there is no inner receptive spark in any one of us. Certainly, whenever you read the description of fallen man within the Word of God, the picture is bleak. The diagnosis is terrible. The state of man is seemingly unalterable. But brethren and sisters, as unpalatable as this description of our state is, if we have deficient views about our state, then we're going to have deficient views with regard to the means necessary to bring us out of that state and into the state of salvation. A.W. Pinkie said, until we really behold the horror of the pit in which by nature we lie, we can never properly appreciate Christ's so great salvation. In spite of the overwhelming biblical evidence of man's total inability to do anything about his state, his state of alienation from God, man's proud flesh keeps inventing ways around this doctrine Many deny it outrightly. As I've said, they insist that people are basically good at heart. Others deny it by insisting that fallen man has free will to choose God and thus to be saved, not knowing that that will, though it is free in a sense, is not free because that will is dictated to by the very inclination of man. that sinful inclination towards sin, that inward natural bias that we have towards unrighteousness. And so the will is always going to choose that which is wrong if the inclination of the will is towards that which is wrong. Some people, they say, well, they have the free will to choose God and thus be saved, but does that not place man playing a part in God's salvation. That will give man therefore a grounds for boasting. I came to faith in Christ. I exercised faith in Christ. But the individual, the one who thinks biblically, the one who thinks Calvinistically, understands that even the faith, even the faith that was exercised when I came to trust in Jesus Christ, even that was a gift from God. Even that was a gift from God. We affirm the revelation of Scripture that every part of man, as I said, has been affected by the fall, and thus he is deemed to be totally depraved and incapable of delivering himself from that depravity. We are like the one spoken in the book of Ezekiel, the one line in blood. and how the God and how the Lord passed by, and he spoke the word live. We were like those who lay in the grave of sin, like the valley of dry bones, that was us, until the spirit of God moved upon our souls and brought us to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Total depravity and the truth of it and the understanding of it brings us into a pit from which we cannot climb unless divine grace reaches down a hand of mercy and plucks us out of the pit and sets us upon the rock Christ Jesus. Such a view of man is this which then brings the greatest glory to our God. And surely is that not what God has purposed in salvation? to bring the greatest glory to His Son and to Himself, where we've been picked from, to our understanding that we were blind and deaf, incapable of even bringing ourselves to God. And you may say, well, preacher, then why does God call us to Himself? Why are we told to repent and you say we cannot do it? God brings us to the realization that we cannot do it and therefore we need God to intervene. He brings us to an understanding of how incapable we are, how disabled we are, how we cannot do anything for ourselves. It's all of grace, all of grace. Now, what lessons can we learn from this doctrine that we are holy, totally depraved, every part of our being corrupted by sin, What lessons can we learn? Well, I believe the first lesson is this. Total depravity explains the wickedness that abounds in our world. You know, if men and women are inherently good, as some will tell you, why then is there such and why are there so many heinous sins and crimes committed by such so-called good people? The fact is that we're not good. The reality is that we're born with a nature that is bent towards unrighteousness and sin. Although the vast majority of individuals will not become mass murderers or child molesters in their lives, there is nevertheless in all of us potential of committing such crimes and such sins. The reason why tonight the world is at war, the reason why there's violence on our streets, the reason why there are murders taking place in our community, the reason why there is anarchy and chaos in this world is because it is populated by humans whose entire beings are corrupted, controlled, and contaminated by sin. And while governments scratch their heads as to why society is the way it is, the Christian understands full well the reason. The total depravity of their fellow men and women who have not yet experienced the grace of God and salvation. This doctrine explains why the world is the way it is. It is populated by individuals who are wholly depraved, totally depraved, minds, hearts, wills, given over to sin, given over to sin entirely, with not a spark of spiritual goodness within them, certainly not a spark to even cause them to seek after God. The second lesson that we learn from this doctrine is that without God's intervention, sinners will remain in that state. The doctrine of total depravity causes the sinner to despair completely of themselves. Recognizing that they cannot rise from the state of deadness that they find themselves in. Recognizing that they cannot give to themselves the spiritual sight to their blinded eyes. Recognizing that they cannot unstop their spiritually deaf ears causes then that sinner to look to God alone. who himself can only do for sinful man what we cannot do for ourselves. When we understand the spiritual state into which we are born, we come to see the need for divine intervention in our lives and in the lives of our fellow man. And as God's people grasp the wretched state of our fellow man, Then we come to appreciate that it is not our talents or our gifts of any preacher. It's not a well-crafted or a homiletically correct sermon that that preacher will preach. It's not the style or the presentation of the preacher with regard to the gospel message that we'll see to the deliverance of the sinner. But we come to understand that nothing short of divine intervention will see to the deliverance of the sinner. And that's why we pray. That's why we pray. That's why we gather for prayer before the gospel service. That's why we gather for prayer before the morning service. That's why we're here tonight. Because we've come to understand the full extent of the fall. And the miracle that it's going to take. A miracle that's going to take. The third and final lesson that we learn from this doctrine of total depravity is we learn how powerful the gospel of Jesus Christ is. Think of it. The gospel of Jesus Christ takes spiritually dead sinners and brings them to life. It takes wells that are wholly inclined to sin and inclines them towards righteousness and holiness. It takes an entirely polluted sinner and washes them in the blood of Christ. It takes a child of wrath and makes them a child of God. It opens blind eyes. It unstops deaf ears. It illuminates darkened minds. It subdues rebellious hearts. The depths of sin to which we have been taken into because of our sin only magnifies then the grace of God that delivers us from such depths. The black backdrop of our sin only but amplifies the radiance that shines forth from the light of the glorious gospel and the salvation that it offers. The power of the gospel is only fully appreciated when we come to understand the extent of sin's pollution from which sinners are delivered. There's no doubt that the carnal mind hates the doctrine of total depravity. Nothing cuts across the grain of modern religious, psychological, philosophical views of man as much as the truth that man is a totally depraved sinner. However, it is only when the fact of total depravity is accepted by us that sovereign grace is seen to be then man's only hope, his only hope. As long as this fact is rejected and man's sham goodness is exalted, the sinners will merely find more ways to justify their rebellion against God and His revealed truth. Sin takes us to a grave, not to a hospital bed from which only the power of God can raise us. Whether many will put the sinner on a hospital bed, biblical preaching, Calvinism teaches that man is put into a grave, the grave of a sin. and only the power of God can cause that deadened soul to live. May this truth then, this truth of our fellow man's total depravity, may it stimulate prayer among us, knowing that only then God's power can deliver our loved ones who are dead, and who are blind, and who are deaf, and who are helpless, and who are hopeless, understanding that only God's power can deliver them from that state. And let us pray that God's power is manifested every time that the gospel is preached. And when it is, and souls are converted, that we'll understand that it was nothing of man, but it was entirely, wholly, completely of God. Think of it, sinner, what God has done in your soul and the depths from which you've been drawn and plucked from. Oh, the miracle of grace. May we revel in it, may we joy in it. And may we see many in our nation delivered from their sin in these days. May the Lord bless now these thoughts to our hearts for Christ's sake. Let's bow in prayer. O God, our Father, we come before thee and we marvel at the miracle of grace. We can say in the words of the hymn writer, from sinking sand he lifted me. With tender hand he lifted me. From shades of night to plains of light, O praise his name. He lifted me, lifted from sin, out of the quagmire and pit and dunghill of sin. He's plucked us from that place. We could never bring ourselves to thee. Thou didst go and find us. Surely we see it in the very thought of the lost sheep. How the shepherd went after the sheep. The sheep was lost. and would have stayed lost unless the shepherd came. Oh, glory be to thy name. The day that the great shepherd came and found me, he found the sheep that was lost. Oh, we thank thee for it. And we pray, Lord, that we'll come to appreciate then the truth of thy word and accept it as it is from thee. For we pray now these our prayers in and through Jesus' precious name.