Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Sermon text today is found in Romans chapter 3 verses 9-18. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Romans chapter 3 beginning at verse 9. What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written there is none righteous, no not one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside.

They have together become unprofitable. There is none who does good. No, not one. Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues they have practiced 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 and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Let’s pray.

Father, we pray that your spirit would do its work now, Lord God, his work to illuminate this text for understanding. Open these ears which we so often put our fingers in not to hear from you. Remove our fingers and remove the impediments to hearing from your word. Write this word upon our hearts that may pierce down into them and remold them and reform them, Lord God. that our lives might be different this coming week we might mature in service to the king.

In Christ’s name we ask him. Amen.

We’re working our way through the Canons of Dort. We’re on this, the second sermon on the topic commonly known in terms of the TULIP formula of Calvinistic soteriology. Soteriology is the doctrine of salvation—Calvinistic based upon what some people say the teachings of John Calvin, which were nothing more than the teachings of scripture of course, and really were a reiteration of what Augustine had written in the early stages of the church and that the church historically has held to be the orthodox faith for most of the last 2,000 years.

So it’s kind of bad we use the term Calvinism in a way because it points to this historical period in the 1500s which is a tremendous period of truth, but it’s not as if that’s when all this started. This is the orthodox faith once delivered. And we’ve considered unconditional election in the first of the five Canons of Dort. We’ve talked about limited atonement for several weeks and now we’re in the second talk on total depravity.

Now those little summations coming from the TULIP formula are not really the full title of the five heads of doctrine that the men—the church people meeting at Dort city in the Netherlands—met to consider the teachings of a man named Jacob Arminius. They said he was dead at the time, but he had followers who had put their beliefs in five positions. The fathers at Dort drew up Canons or statements of biblical truth in response to those five statements of men who followed this Arminius fellow, who are now known as Arminians.

So we had these five heads of doctrine that they wrote and that later became known as the five points of Calvinism. You know, nothing should be intimidating to you to hear about the Canons of Dort written and all that stuff. They’ve got to go consider these teachings and they formulated these heads of doctrine. This particular head of doctrine you can call it total depravity. That’s fine, but their title, as is on your outline, for this third and fourth head of doctrine is “the corruption of man, his conversion to God and the manner thereof.” And we explained last week they really lump together total depravity and irresistible grace in this third and fourth head of doctrine listed together. There’s seven points I believe of positive assertions about these things and then there’s I think nine paragraphs of errors refuted—nine paragraphs of errors refuted—deal with both these two together.

When we get to the part of the sermon today we actually deal with the Canons themselves, we’ll see that the first six of the 17 statements has to do with really mostly with man’s depravity and the balance of them have to do with irresistible grace or his conversion in the manner of it. So right now we’re dealing with the first few Canons and we’re dealing with total depravity and I want to review a little bit.

I gave it big outline, two outlines, one outline of just review, but I didn’t have an outline last week. I thought this would be a real good thing. If you don’t mind me exhorting you and encouraging you to do this, to take this home, to get somewhat familiar with it, at least have it in your library or your filing cabinet to pull out for reference when you talk to people about some of this stuff because what we talked about is kind of what man’s original state was and then what his fallen state was.

And that helped just to see what our redeemed state is as well. And then finally, the glorified state. I hope you don’t take offense at the rock lyrics that I sometimes put into these things, but the fact is, most of us have been raised in a culture where we’re familiar with these things and it helps us to remember things. I’ve got a reference here to an old rock group called Steppenwolf and a song they had called “Born to Be Wild.”

And in the context of that, I thought about this for years—the lyric of the first verse goes: “I don’t know where we’ve come from. I don’t know where we’re going to. And if all this should have a reason, we’d be the last to know.” So, the idea is let’s just party down. So, it’s significant because it says we don’t know anything about where we came from, our origins. We don’t know where we’re going, our destination. And so, as a result, what do we do today? We have no idea.

You remember we said that in terms of evangelism, we want to talk to people who do not have the scriptures, the pagans unschooled in the scriptures. We want to say that God created you. God is providing now for the earth. His providence is what sustains us and he’s going to judge us. There’s a past, there’s a future and there’s a present.

And so in dealing with the nature of man here and man’s fall, we want to think a little bit about his past, where we came from as well as that, and how that helps us understand our redemption in Christ and how that helps us to understand our present state as well.

So the original creation—and we started then with Psalm 8. The Canons of Dort do not start first with an assertion of man’s fallenness. They start first with an assertion of man’s original creation. And it’s very important to understand that the Arminians erred in this truth. They thought that man was created with a neutral will. So in the fall the will is not changed or depraved. It’s still neutral and it then can still choose. Fallen man’s will—since it’s neutral—can still choose what’s right. That’s all it ever did. And we say no. The scriptures teach that we were created in righteousness, holiness, knowledge, and dominion in the context of community.

And that means our heart and our will were righteous and holy. And so we looked at this. We looked at the high calling of man, the glory and honor and calling of the crown of creation, man. In Psalm 8 verse—Psalm 8—we said that the heavens, moons, and stars are symbols of God and they’re symbols of men. The scriptures tell us in Genesis 15:5. The idea of Psalm 8, in my view, it’s my understanding—Psalm 8 is not this tiny slug crawling around on the earth who’s such an insignificant creature compared to those vast heavens. That is completely wrong. The whole point is God doesn’t have relationship with the sun, moon, and stars the way he does with us. He didn’t deliver them. He delivered us. He doesn’t wrestle with them, but he wrestled with our one of our great grandfathers back there, Jacob. Okay? He wrestled with him. He’s involved with him. He’s constantly attentive to us. Okay? We have a relationship and covenant with God that is higher, so to speak, of a qualitatively different nature than the sun, moon, and stars.

Those things are pictures of God and reveal him, but they’re also talked about as pictures of men. Genesis 15:5—Abraham’s descendants revealed as the stars of the sky. You see, it’s a picture. You look up at the stars, it’s not to make you feel small. It’s to make you realize the state to which man has been called. That’s supposed to be the amount of people we evangelize for the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s how many people—I mean not one-for-one identification, but that’s the immensity of the people that will come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You see? See, it’s a different deal. And Psalm 8 gives us this proper picture of our original creation. And that’s important because when we’re redeemed, that’s what we’re redeemed back to—is that governance that’s spoken of in Psalm 8.

We talked about that fact that God is more glorious, or man is more glorious, than the heavens, moon, and stars. He has been placed a little lower than Elohim—governors, rulers—and ultimately Elohim is a reference also to the triune God. So man is placed for a short time under angelic rulers. We know that in Psalm 8, in spite of the song we sang in the version we read, it really says Elohim, it doesn’t say angels, but in Hebrews, when the verse is quoted, it does use the word for angels. In the Old Covenant time, for a short period of time until they come to maturity in Christ, we’re governed by angelic tutors as it were, angelic governance.

For a while, we’re placed under their submission. God, when man falls, kicks them out of the garden. And angels prevent man from coming back—an angel with a flaming sword. So men are placed in this probationary period until they kind of mature in Christ. The fullness of the Son of Man coming—man’s humanity now is reclaimed in Christ. And now we rule over the angels, Paul says. So, it was for a short period of time.

We have this. It’s not just a glory honor of man. It’s placed in the context of calling. Calling. Adam wasn’t just created and God said, “Aren’t you a neat thing?” He immediately began to command Adam. And so when we’re reclaimed in the second Adam, Christ, we want to understand our glory and dignity. We want to understand the glory and dignity that each of us should give to one another. But we understand that’s in the context of God commanding us to do particular tasks.

We’re here to serve God. Okay? And from the very infants at our homes, we serve God. And how do we serve him? We serve him through praise. God says that he ordains strength through the mouths of sucklings, conquering God’s enemies through the singing of God’s praises, the preeminence of worship and the praise of God in the flow of history. Man is made in God’s image. He’s made in righteousness, holiness, knowledge, and dominion.

He is made righteous, and his will originally in its creation was upright and just and conforming to God’s actions. As a king produces righteousness, man was created holy with the purity in his passions and in his affections and in his strivings. As a priest consecrates things to God. So, we’re made righteous as a king and holy as a priest who consecrates our actions and who is pure in his thoughts and intentions. This is in the original creation.

Man is made not just to have intellectual knowledge about God, but he knows God himself. You see, he has relationship. He walks with God and God walks with him in the garden in the cool of the day. And so, man, as a prophet, all knowledge comes from his personal knowledge, his personal interaction and covenant relationship with the God of all creation. And man then is called to carry out dominion. Genesis 1 tells us that God says he’s going to make man in his image and let them have rule over the fish of the earth, etc. Psalm 8 repeats that. And so the image of God is specifically related in Ephesians and Colossians to righteousness, holiness, knowledge, and specifically in Genesis 1 to dominion.

And Genesis 1 says he creates man in the image of God. And then he created man in the image of God. He created man and woman. He creates them in the image of God. He is—man has a—he’s both one and he’s individual and he’s society. He’s both, you know, individual and he’s plural as well. Man is created in the context of community is the point here—in his relationship to God and his image bearing relationship. It happens in the context of community.

I mentioned a reference to Groundhog’s Day. Last week was Groundhog’s Day and I forgot my illustration. I was going to use the Bill Murray movie Groundhog’s Day. And you know, if you’ve seen that movie, I—I think I do recommend that movie but hope you don’t take offense—but the movie guy is selfish, wicked. He is not righteous, holy, and he doesn’t have a knowledge of God in his state before the day starts. And over a long period of years—stuck on this one day over and over—happening to him, he becomes—he comes caring. He kind of is restored to a view of other people and he starts to do positive things. At first he just lets his license go and lust go, but then over time he’s kind of made into a better person.

And I thought to myself, you know, I don’t know what heaven is like, but in a way, I think—the way that this guy had one day kept reliving over and over Groundhog’s Day. And as a result, for instance, he got to learn to play the piano extremely well because he went back to the same teacher every day and nobody else knew that he was, you know, they were all stuck in that same day, but they didn’t realize it. I don’t want to complicate the story, but the point is that over time he learns how to play the piano. He learns to do everything, anything. And in eternity, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but maybe that’s it. Maybe we learn to do all these things.

So, it’s kind of like that, but it’s different because in Groundhog’s Day, he’s doing it still ultimately for humanistic moral reasons. He’s not doing it to glorify his creator. What our creation is in Adam—what Adam had and what we’ve regained in Christ and we’ll have in eternity—is purity of our emotions and our passions and justice in every one of our dealings with fellow man, with the rest of the creation that God puts us in the context of, and we’ll have that knowledge of God that drives the whole thing, that builds community and is proper service and thus reigning in God.

So it’s like the Bill Murray character but not done for wrong reasons—humanistic or personal, whatever it is—but done for the right reasons. Don’t you want that? Isn’t that—that’s what I want. I want to have this whole week. I would love to have every passion, emotion I have be dedicated to the service of God. See, and God says, “Yeah, he wants us to have that.” And that’s what he’s bringing us to in the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what we were created as. But that’s what we left in the fall.

Adam left all of that. And not only did he lose those things, he became positively twisted and depraved. He became more like—he became a servant to Satan instead of a servant to God. And he propagates that evil nature. The Canons of Dort tell us and we’re going to look today at Ephesians chapter 2 when it discusses that we’re children of wrath. And then just summarizing this review: the Arminian distorts the creation of man. He thinks there’s a neutral will. It’s not neutral. It’s righteous and holy and pure in affections. He thus distorts the effects of the fall: man is neutral, no original guilt or condemnation. Yeah, he says there’s original sin, but original sin in and of itself is not enough to condemn people. That’s what the Arminians said, and the Church Fathers said, “No, that’s wrong. We have original guilt and condemnation.” And they also pervert the new image in Christ.

They sinfully locate man’s problems in intellectual failings, moral lapses, and a neutral will. The reason it chooses the wrong thing is because you don’t quite get it. The fall—your mind became a little tough to figure things out and you’re kind of prone to emotional responses that aren’t good. And as a result, salvation then is a result of education and moralism is the means of salvation, not Christ and regeneration, moral reform, you know, and education is the key. And that is talked about in the rejection of errors in paragraphs 1 through 4. I have that outlined today too. Hopefully, you pick that up.

Those Canons of Dort—the actual listing of them. I end up here in the review by saying we live in a Pelagian world. That’s a Bob Dylan quote—not quite. He had a song called “We Live in a Political World.” And we do live in a political world. Our lives are more and more influenced by political actions of a formal type through Salem or Washington DC and our informal type—the way we deal and manipulate one another. But the political world we live in is a Pelagian world.

Pelagius said that man’s sins by way of imitation. Okay? And that’s what these Arminians were saying too. The cure for man—Pelagius said—is that man’s a blank slate. So the cure is education. Education is the messiah. And we live in a culture that teaches education is the way to cure all man’s ills, that everybody can be saved through a proper education. And then the second thing it tries to do is clear up—don’t want prostitution, don’t want that—is about moral reform in our communities, not Christian reform. Moralism is different than Christianity. You understand what I’m saying?

Moralism doesn’t posit that where morality is the morality of the scriptures. It’s kind of the shared morality of the culture and it’s an attempt to reform people without regenerating them, which is ultimately impossible. So, we live in a Pelagian—we live in an Arminian world. We live in a Pelagian world where the church and its failure to appreciate what we were created as and what our fall was has created a culture now church always leads that is Arminian and Pelagian as a result—political—because man gathers all his political forces together to bring about this education and this moralism that’ll produce salvation. And it’s a world of environmentalism, isn’t it—change the environment because that’s man’s problems is a little darkness of understanding and he gets polluted, okay, that’s the way over you.

Now let’s turn to Romans chapter 3 and we’re also going to look at Ephesians 2 in just a minute. And what we’re going to talk about today is more about that fallen state of man and what he’s like. Okay. So, turn to Romans chapter 3, the sermon text we read. And we’ll see here in verses 10-12 that man has a sinful condition. His sinful life is then portrayed in verses 13-15. And the source of that sin is positioned in verse 17 and 18, primarily in verse 18.

So 18 gets to the source and the first verses are his condition and then his life or action.

So let’s look at it. Actually begin in verse 9. And Paul says that we have previously charged—probably referring to Romans chapter 1 and 2. Okay? We have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. There’s the summary statement: total depravity. Actually, this means universal depravity—that all men universally are depraved. We’re all under sin. And then look at what Paul does. What a model for us. He quotes scripture for the next—what is it?—10 verses. He quotes scripture. That’s it. That’s all he quotes. Now, he quotes it very well, by the way. He’s quoting both Septuagint and the Hebrew Bible, but he does it in such a way to bring the real meaning of the Hebrew text out.

We won’t get into that, but it’s a fascinating thing to look at the quotes here from the Psalms and Isaiah that he does. But this is important for us, right? Because it’s so good when we’re trying to drive home points with each other to refer to scripture to quote scripture. That’s what Paul does here.

So, let’s look at the scriptures he quotes. He says, “First of all, there is none righteous. No, not one.” He’s quoting here from Psalm 14. And Psalm 14 says, “There’s none that does good.” Righteousness here is doing good according to Psalm 14. And it’s that justice aspect. They’re not doing things right. That’s their sinful condition here—is they’re not doing things good. There is not so much as one. That’s another way to put the phrase, “No, not one.” There’s not so much as one person in the entire universe who lives today who does good in his fallen state by himself. Everyone universally is under sin, under depravity, and they’re all under sin. It is the absolute negative.

There’s not one person who does good. If they don’t do good by way of justice, deeds, legal standing before God. Goes on to say as it is—let’s see verse 11—there is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. The source of this failure of actions, of deeds of righteousness stems from their darkened understanding and they’re not seeking after God.

Now remember we talked about Paul several months ago—you six months ago—in 1 Timothy saying that he sinned in ignorance. Ignorance doesn’t mean he didn’t know what to do. We’re going to look at that a little bit later from Romans 1. People know what to do but they don’t have understanding because they darken their own minds, right? They reject, they suppress the truth of God and unrighteousness. And then they become darkened in their understanding.

So when it says here that there’s none who understands, it doesn’t mean they have an intellectual problem. Ultimately, they have a moral rebellion to the truth. And now we’re moving from universal depravity to total depravity—that it affects all of man’s faculties. His intellect is not simply darkened, that he’s kind of has a hard time figuring things out and can be educated. His intellect actively suppresses the truth of God and unrighteousness. His intellect doesn’t understand, can’t understand and doesn’t want to understand. It’s actively working not to understand the things of God.

There is none who understands because there is none who seeks after God. And God is the source of all understanding and truth. And every person in their fallen state in Adam rejects God and as a result rejects understanding and knowledge. They have a problem. They have a big problem. They have culpable ignorance before God. They’ve rejected him. As a result of this, they all turn aside. They apostatize. That’s kind of what the word means here. And actually the quote here is from Isaiah about how the Jews turned aside from God. They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable. There is none who does good. Know not one.

That summary statement again. All together. He’s saying as a group as well as individuals. He’s talking about individuals now. He’s saying the group. All together they turn aside from the ways of God. They turn aside from his paths. They move—in terms of their covenantal representation in Adam as a race and covenantally as a group—have apostatized from their knowledge of God and from obedience to him. This flows from their rejection of God and as a result there’s none who does good. They’ve turned aside. They’ve apostatized and knowing God. They haven’t glorified him.

Romans 1 says they turn aside again. Romans 1 says [they] suppressed the truth of God and unrighteousness. They know God but they don’t glorify him. They turn aside from the paths of thanksgiving and glory, glorification of God, and they turn to other paths. Then and as a result they don’t do good. They’re worthless. They don’t do good. That’s what the scripture is saying. Okay. The word here in the Greek that Paul uses means they become useless. In the Hebrew that he’s quoting from, it means they—it speaks of corruption. So Paul stresses the uselessness of man having rejected God. And he’s quoting the Hebrew text from the Psalter that says there’s a corruption that takes place in man as well. So we bring both of those—understanding of the Hebrew and Greek and understanding of what this text tells us about fallen man.

Man is useless but not just useless. He is actually corrupted in his being. And that of course goes on very graphically to describe that in verses 13 and following.

Their throat is an open tomb. There’s a progression here from the throat to the tongue to the lip to the mouth. Four references to the oral faculties of man—speech. And then a final reference to his feet. The feet are what motivate us around so that we can do these terrible deeds of corruptness and uselessness with our tongues. The emphasis is upon the tongue.

We’re made in God’s image and God’s emphasis in his word and his creation and our recreation in Christ is his judgments and his victory over the heathen through the babes of our families. Emphasis is on his word. And in our fallenness, our fallen state, it’s our tongues that really is the primary picture that Paul uses—scripture uses—to talk about our depravity. We’re depraved in speech.

Now, when it says that their mouth is their throat is an open tomb, some think this means there’s a stench that comes out of it—the way dead bodies are stinking in a tomb or supplicer. But probably the better way to think of this is that it’s not the word used for a single grave. It’s the word used for a big place where a lot of bodies are kept and the image seems to be more that the throat is open waiting for more dead bodies to put into it. That’s the picture of man, the fallen state. We think of the contrast then—tremendous picture of the glory of man in Psalm 8 and then the tremendous depth of the depravity of man walking around with open mouths waiting to devour everyone it comes in contact with. That’s what we are in the fallen state. That’s what the scriptures say.

Here we—with their tongues they have practiced deceit. In the Hebrew passage, it means they have smooth tongues. It refers to flattery. How do we primarily deceive—with our tongues and strike out and bring people into death? We do it through flattery. Smooth tongues, deceitful tongues—over and over again. If you’ve read the Proverbs much, you’ll know that flattery is spoken over and over, over and over again is something we’ve got to really—people are flattering us. Time to get real careful now. Get careful. Watch out because that’s what fallen man does. He flatters as a way to seduce people into death. He’s like that, you know, some of those snakes that try to kind of hypnotize you by their action. You know, he’s talking to me. I’m a nice guy. That’s great. And pop, then he strikes.

So that’s the picture given for us here. The poison of asps is under their lips. So they’re ready to swallow a bunch of people. They use the smooth, flattering speech that is deceitful, but in actuality under their lips they have these poison sacks in here with these fangs. And the reference here is to two things I think. One is the bite of the adder here is exceedingly painful. And if you’ve been flattered by people and then they strike, bow, you know that’s the most hurtful thing that can happen to you—is that kind of attack with the speech of men. Painful strike of fallen man. And what whose image is he bearing here? The serpent. Yeah. He’s children of vipers. A brood of vipers. Our savior said to the Pharisees.

But it’s not just them because Paul here in Romans isn’t saying it’s just these bad Jews. It’s Gentiles. It’s all of us. It’s you Roman Christians. He says prior to your conversion in Christ. This is your old Adamic nature being spoken of here. And it’s everybody’s old Adamic nature. We’re children of the serpent now—hell—and we want to swallow up people. We give smooth, flattering, deceitful speech and then we have these tongues that pop out there and cause tremendous pain and death. The end result of that asp bite, the adder’s bite, is death, and so we suck them in after we’ve killed them with our tongues.

That’s what apostate man does.

Our mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Cursing here doesn’t mean swearing about God. It means malediction. Now that prayer—malediction—we make for those who break God’s rule. Well, apostate man, fallen man in Adam, is totally self-interested and everybody’s accustomed by him. Everybody becomes a subject of malediction in his mind. Everybody’s around for his benefit. And so he ends up maladdicting all of them. Remember we impute apart from the atonement of Christ, we impute culpability of those around us. We strike out at them and blasting them with our tongues and speech and also with bitterness is the other thing that’s our mouth is full of cursing which produces bitterness in those round about us.

Now I would cause you to think about your—well, let’s go on and read before we contemplate a bit. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Okay, so rejecting the image of God, they strike out at God the best way they can, which is to strike out at other men through their tongue and now they’ve got these feet so they’re kind of like—you know, that movie Alien, you know, Alien was like the perfect killing machine. And they had those that mouth, you know, the things would come out from the center, those little things and chew you up. And that alien was real fast, you know, could go all over these real and then they grab, their mouth would open up, you know.

Well, that’s what it’s like here. We’re quick. Our feet are swift to shed blood. They’re just a vehicle to get us to the next person that we’re going to act like the alien to with our tongues, with this horrible nature we have, this horrible fallen nature in the first Adam.

Destruction and misery are in their ways. That’s what we do. That’s who we are. And the way of peace, they haven’t known. You see, we’re real familiar with the ways of destruction. We’re good at that. We want to walk in those paths as much as we can. Well-worn ruts, not of righteousness, but well-worn ruts of destruction and misery in our paths. But the single path of God’s peace, God’s order, and God’s blessing, the Prince of Peace—that no, they don’t know that.

It doesn’t mean they don’t know where it is. It means they’re not accompanied. They’re not rather they’re not accustomed to that path. They don’t have a knowledge based upon being in that path is what the word mean, what the phrase means here. The ways of peace they have not known. They have not experienced. It’s a knowledge that’s not intellectual. It’s a knowledge of experience here. And that’s the way we don’t know in the fallen state. Why?

It sums it up here at the end. There is no fear of God before their eyes. No fear. See Psalm 10, which is quoted—by the way—in this psalm, with that a lot of few years here at RCC. You know, they think that God doesn’t look. He’s not taken account. He’s not going to bring me to judgment. And in our fallen state, we’re confident little dudes. We’ll go around doing evil.

Now, think of yourself. And I don’t mean think of yourself before you were a Christian. This is the Adamic nature which we all struggle with. When we see another Christian using their tongue inappropriately and hurting people, recognize that you’re looking at a mirror as well. That’s your Adamic nature. And there probably—I would bet you, you know—we could go right down here and if we had a videotape of your life this last week, I could probably show you footage of most of you. I know I could of myself where I didn’t use my tongue to minister grace where my tongue struck out the ones I love most.

We rehearsed that old Adamic nature. We need to know that’s our state. We are totally depraved. We are not just—we are universally depraved. All men. We’re totally depraved. Every bit of our faculties, our understanding, our hearts, we don’t—we’re not just—the scriptures say here: remember, we’re made in justice or righteousness. We’re not that anymore. We’re depraved in our ruling ability and are conforming to God’s standard. We don’t do it. We conform to a standard of evil. We’re depraved in our passions as well.

We want to go out and suck up other people and kill them. And we’re depraved in our knowledge. Having rejected the knowledge of God, we become depraved in every aspect—our will, our intellect, our ability to consecrate things, all that stuff becomes fallen.

Now, turn to Ephesians chapter 2. We’ll look at one more scripture here. You see, now what we’ve tried to say is that as you’re turning there, you can listen while you turn. What we’ve tried to say here is that these sermons will do no good if they don’t reform your lives. And they’ll do even better if you can get down some scriptures to relate to each of these points of doctrine that are so important about the nature of man and what salvation in Christ is all about, that you ought to be able to talk to people about this—total depravity.

If you understand this truth alone—how dead man is, how he cannot and will not turn to God himself—our Arminianism goes out the window. It can’t be true if man is totally depraved, if he’s totally unable to help himself, then our Arminianism is gone. You see? So it’s a very important truth here.

And it’s so easy to take people to Romans 3 and Ephesians 2 and to show them this stuff. This is not difficult. New Testament, then you got to go to the Old Testament. Paul does that for us. He quotes the Old Testament. But see, it’s very easy. So remember these things: remember Romans 3 and Ephesians 2. Don’t you have to remember the verse references, but just—you’ll find it if you turn to Romans 3, you’ll find that list of quotations, and that’s where you take people to show them what fallen man is like. And that’s where you take yourself as you evaluate your actions on a regular basis—of how well you’re moving away from putting off that old man and putting on the new man who ministers grace at his tongue. Okay.

Ephesians 2 verse 1: “And you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.” There it is. All we need, isn’t it? Man is fallen. And in his fallen state, he’s dead. What does dead mean? Well, dead can mean different things in the scriptures. You know, you got to look at the context. Well, the context here is the quickening or the resurrection that he’s speaking of in Ephesians 1—quickening and life. So dead means not having a quickened life, you know. I mean it means dead. It means not breathing. It doesn’t mean sick. It doesn’t mean you got to be not healed. You got to be resurrected. You don’t got to get a little medicine. You got to be recreated. You see, because you’ve been decreated in your sin and rejection of God.

That’s what it means. So people say well dead isn’t dead. Well right here in the verse it defines death in terms of quickening or resurrection. So it does mean dead. It doesn’t mean deadly sick. It means dead from sickness—dead.

Then he says again, wherein in times past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience. We’re going to—how about children of wrath of another verse? But recognize here the children that abide under God’s wrath are children of disobedience whose ways are always disobedient. That’s what they’re characterized by. And they’re under they’re under the influence of the prince of the power of the air. Most people would take that as a reference to Satan or the devil. So having rejected God, we don’t get to be autonomous.

Again, to quote Bob Dylan, you got to serve somebody. And he says here that we, being children of disobedience, serve Satan. We’re under control of Satan and we’re under control of our fallen nature that hates God and is quick to shed blood. It’s like a double whammy put upon us in our deadness. We’re dead to life.

Verse 3: “Among whom also we all—we—he includes himself. Every person again universal depravity—among whom also we all had our conversation—our walk, our life—in times past and the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and we’re by nature the children of wrath even as others.”

Now we read this and we think we’re so attuned to sexual sin in our culture. I think that’s because in our fallen state we strive for the ability to be creative and recreative in our twisted state and we pervert that into sex. I talked about a little bit last week, but I think that’s what’s going on here. But that’s not what Paul is talking about. He’s talking about himself here. And Paul’s sin wasn’t that he went around and laid around with prostitutes or had bad thoughts about women, right? What was his—what was Paul’s lust of his flesh? What was the desires of his flesh? It was self-righteousness. It was the ability to cohability and become righteous with God on the basis of his work. It was to be able to claim some credit for his salvation.

Flesh refers to the old Adamic nature. And I mean I’m not denying the fact that obviously you can look here in terms of the lust and flesh being also the—you know, wanting bad things, eating too much. It’s all that sort of stuff. But don’t limit your understanding to that because then it’s pretty easy to think you’re okay. But what Paul is doing is blanketly condemning all people in their fallen state in Adam. And what he’s saying is that he’s an example. We all were like this. And his example is one of works, righteousness—an attempt to have a part in his salvation.

And you know, you want to be real careful, you know, with saying these kind of things. But self-conscious Arminians, you know, I believe they’re being motivated by those lusts of the flesh the way Paul was. Now, I said self-conscious. I mean, you know, 90% of people who would call themselves Arminian today would hold positions that are Arminian. They’re doing it not as a high-handed rejection of God’s word. They’re getting bad teaching. There are other circumstances still, you know, not right to hold those truths or to teach them. But please understand that I’m not, you know, saying that everybody outside of a five-point Calvinist is not a Christian. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that people who are self-conscious—so understand what Paul’s talking about here. And he’s talking about the old nature and the lust of the old nature—fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.

See, so he’s talking about—see, again, once you understand how God makes us, that we have a knowledge of him and we’ve not a righteousness and we’re also created in terms of holiness, you’ll see then you see here that his mind and his desires are included by him in the effects of the fall in Adam. He says lust of the flesh and the desires of the flesh and of the mind. Desires—mind, intellect, knowledge—is now depraved, not just neutral or darkened by way of rejection of God. The desires aren’t just, you know, given to over sometimes to bad things. They’ve totally become twisted, totally depraved. See, and his will is exercised in these things is what he’s saying.

And now here’s a summary statement. This is again, you take this one down. You put this file this away for your next conversation with someone who thinks that we’re not dead in sins and trespasses and that somehow we’re not totally under the wrath of God because of our nature. “And we were by nature the children of wrath even as others.”

So we’re children of wrath. Man in his fallen state, the wrath of God continually is abiding upon him. God has settled indignation against all men apart from the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s mad at him continually, angry. Not like we get mad or angry unrighteously or out of control, but holy, righteous wrath abides upon these children, children of Adam. And notice, it’s not because of what they do. The Arminian wants to say it’s because of what we do. We don’t have condemnation because of Adam’s sin. That wouldn’t be fair. You know, Ezekiel says that, you know, children shouldn’t suffer because of the parents. Well, that’s true except for two exceptions: Adam and Jesus Christ.

We’re all guilty in Adam. By our nature, man has propagated his own sinful nature from Adam on. And by our nature alone, we’re children of upon whom the wrath of God abides perpetually. That’s what the scripture says.

Verse 4: “God who is rich in mercy for the great love with he loved us. Even when we were dead in sins, reiteration for emphasis—said it in verse 1. Need quickening, regeneration. We were dead in sins. He hath quickened us together with Christ. By grace are ye saved, not as a result of works.”

So our fall is picked [picked up?] for us in these verses and it is a horrendous fall.

I want to read a couple of quick quotes from John Calvin. They’re interesting in his commentary on Ephesians. The first commentary he has here is on the fact that men are dead. And this is an interesting historical quote. He says:

“The papals—by that he means the Roman Catholic Church people that obeyed the pope—the papists who are eager to seize every opportunity of weakening the grace of God say that outside Christ we are half dead. But it was not for nothing that the Lord himself and also the apostle shut us out from life completely while we remain in Adam and declare the regeneration is the new life of the soul by which it rises from the dead.”

Now you know, he makes the point as I just made also, that the relationship here is to the need for resurrection. But he makes a historical point that I’m trying to reference here as well—that is that the Arminians of his day were the Roman Catholics. The papist, papals, who wanted to say man isn’t totally dead in sins and trespasses. As I did my study of the Canons of Dort in the historical setting, it was amazing to me that really you could make the case that while they’re happening in the context of the Protestant church, that the Arminians were really the resurgence of the Roman Catholic perversion of the truth at that time being taught by the Roman Catholic Church. It was a resurgence of papism and Roman Catholicism.

That’s why I believe another quote from Calvin. And now he’s talking upon the second big point I’m trying to make of Ephesians 2—that we are by nature children of wrath. And he says this:

“This is a remarkable passage against the Pelagians and all who deny original sin. What dwells naturally in all is certainly original. But Paul teaches that we are all naturally liable to condemnation. Therefore, sin dwells in us, for God does not condemn the innocent. The Pelagians quibbled that sin spreads mada to the whole human race not by derivation or by propagation of the nature, but by imitation. But Paul affirms that we are born with sin as serpents bring forth their venom from the womb. Those who deny that this is really sin are not less at variance with Paul’s language. For where condemnation is, there must surely be sin.”

So if we come out of the womb under condemnation, Calvin is saying that means that we have sin present in our nature, inherited covenantally from Adam. Forget the sins of imitation. We have sin in our very nature. And so Ephesians 2 and Romans 1 gives us a picture of the fall of man.

Now let’s turn to a discussion of total depravity more specifically defined. We’ve looked at a couple of scriptures you should lock away and we’re going to look at some other texts now. Probably won’t get through very many of them. We’ll look at a few of them.

Total depravity. Total depravity. We said that Romans 1 teaches universal depravity. That means every last person is subject to this depravity. Total depravity is that no one can really do good. Every bit of the human nature is tainted by this by the fall of and by sin. Nobody can do what is good. Evil pervades every faculty of the soul and every sphere of his life. He is unable to do a single thing that is good.

Now, that’s what Paul just said in Romans 1, right? So, we know that’s true. But we also want to say that when we’re defining good in this way, we want to say that man can do some things in a qualified sense that are good. Total depravity does not say that people are totally given over, are totally at the end of their rope, and do everything as wickedly as they possibly can. Our children fight because they’re depraved, but they don’t typically gouge out each other’s eyes. Yeah. See, they’re not as bad as they could possibly be. And they actually do some things, you know, let’s say pagan children now, in their in their actions to one another that’s kind of good. Looks good. They do them for wrong motivations to do really good works.

Here’s a definition I think from the Heidelberg Catechism that good works are only those which are done from true faith according to the law of God and to his glory. So it’s based on the faith of God. You’re doing it for the right purposes or motivations—the glory of God. You’re doing it conforming to his law self-consciously. That’s what true good is. Now unregenerate people can’t do that. But they can do some things that are called good in scripture even, right?

For instance, and I got some passages written down for you in 2 Kings 10:30, it says of Jehu, God says, “Because you did well in doing that which is right in mine eyes.” Moving ahead of verse, “Your sons of the fourth generation will sit on the throne of Israel.” And of Jehoash, it says in First Kings 12:2, that he did that which is right in the eyes of Jehovah. And yet these kings were then later shown at the end of their life to be cursed by God or under his wrath and condemnation. So these kings can do some things good in a qualified sense. Now, they’re not ultimately saving good works because they’re not done for the glory of God. But they did some things that were right.

In Luke 6:33, our savior says, “If you do good to them that do good to you, what reward do you have? For even the sinners do the same thing.” So, you know, we’re not saying you don’t want to misrepresent the position to say that people can’t do anything that has some degree of a qualified good sense to it. But they—when they do good, when you know a philanthropist does good things and helps people out, they’re really not ultimately good because they’re doing them if they’re not Christians, for the wrong motivation. They’re not doing for the glory of God. They don’t look to the law of God as to how to structure their attempt to help other people.