Man's Total Depravity

Well, good to have you guys here and I appreciate it.

When we closed last time, we were talking about two theologians and two books they wrote. One theologian was Martin Luther, who wrote The Bondage of the Will.

And the other theologian was Jonathan Edwards, who wrote The Freedom of the Will. And ironically, while both titles seem to contradict each other, they actually complement each other.

And I say that because both of these men were aware of and preached on the devastating results of what occurred in the Garden of Eden with our original parents, as outlined in Genesis chapter 3.

What happened there both impacted and infected the entire human race ever since. And I'm going to read that to you this evening.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

By the way, all lies start right there. And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden. But God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die.

But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

And she also gave some to her husband, now listen to this, who was with her, and he ate.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you?

And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. And God said, who told you you were naked?

Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? And Adam stepped up and said, the woman you gave me to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree and I ate.

And then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. I'm glad he didn't ask the serpent.

The serpent said, Tom Holland forced me into this. The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock, and above all beasts of the field.

On your belly you shall go, and thus you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring, and he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing, and pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, and he shall rule over you.

And to Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life, thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your face you'll eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living, and the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin and clothed them.

How did he do that? He killed an innocent animal. That's a picture there, guys. Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us, and knowing good and evil, now lest he reach out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.

Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden, to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Now it would be no problem to spend the remainder of this year, and part of next, on that chapter in the Bible. Here we see the human race as it fell into the bondage of sin and disobedience to God.

Here we have it. This entire chapter is a unit, and we must be careful to take it as a unit. Every portion of it is important to our understanding, our understanding of God, of mankind's relationship to Him.

But I'm going to mention a few things that are vital to our understanding of salvation by election, by predestination. Note the reactions of our parents when they sinned.

They tried to hide themselves from God because of their shame. They realized they were naked, so they devised a plan to cover themselves, to make themselves presentable to God, and thus, we don't have to hide anymore.

We've exercised our free will and made some choices here, and now we're okay. We can, again, present ourselves.

Well, beg some questions. First of all, where do you go to hide from God? Not a lot of times in my life I won't do that, but a few times I have. Where do you go?

Jonah said he went down to the roots of the mountains of the ocean and discovered God was there. We didn't discover mountains in the ocean until 300 years ago.

We should have read the Bible. And God was there. God knew precisely where they were at. We also have here the creation of human religion.

Human religion is always centered on man and his efforts to please God. And it always fails. Fallen man is incapable of doing anything to please God.

When God handed out justice for this great sin, He exercised equal opportunity for all who were present. He started by cursing Satan who had indwelt the serpent.

It manifested himself as a serpent. Even said, you're going to crawl on your belly. We have snakes now that do that. Interesting. 10, 12 years ago a group of scientists, not necessarily believers, but they studied snakes.

There's a word for that. Heptology or something like that. And they said that it's interesting. Snakes eat dirt to navigate. Isn't that interesting? God said, you don't eat dirt.

And God said something very worthy of our understanding of salvation God's way. That's the title of our thing here. God said, I'm going to put enmity between you and the woman.

And between your offspring and her offspring, he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. Now we need to define enmity.

What does that mean? It is the quality of being an enemy. It is the opposite of friendship. It is ill will.

It is hatred. It is unfriendly. It's unfriendly dispositions. Malevolence. I would suggest and submit to you that a war broke out in the Garden of Eden between Satan and our parents and this war exists between the descendants of Satan and the woman.

The descendants of Satan, of course, are demons and there's plenty of them around and a world of unbelievers who reject Christ. The offspring of Eve are lost people whom God will choose for eternal life and there is made mention of a specific offspring of Eve.

One day, one of your offspring is going to bruise the head of Satan and that is a fatal, fatal blow. But Satan will inflict a bruise on the heel of this specific descendant and that is a very painful wound but it is not fatal.

Now, if a snake bites me on the heel, I'm going to die anyway from a heart attack because I was that close to a snake but that's just me. That's Genesis 3.15.

That's the first messianic prophecy. That's Jesus Christ. That's Calvary in the Word of God. Satan bruised the heel of Christ but Christ delivered a fatal blow to Satan.

Satan hadn't figured that out yet but he will. And that war that broke out in the garden that day continues until our day and will go on until the eternal kingdom is established.

We also know that God disciplined the woman for her role in the disobedience. Her pain and childbearing was multiplied and her relationship to her husband was changed.

But this was Adam's sin. And it is referred to in Scripture as Adam's sin. You never see it called Eve's sin ever.

Adam was the head of the woman and in that position he should have stopped her from ever even talking to the serpent much less doing what the serpent said.

She obeyed the serpent and Adam who was with her went along. Went along. I used to tell my class he was busy tilling ground in the next county and then Diane would chime up and say no he was with her.

He saw and he heard everything. everything. Now what happened here in Genesis chapter 3?

What changed for the human race through Adam and his sin? The human race fell into sin and disobedience.

the wellhead was poisoned and everything that has flowed from that wellhead has the taint of poison the poison of sin and disobedience in it.

There are none righteous not even one. The entire human race fell and people say well I'm not very fair.

I wasn't there. Yeah we were there. Our DNA was there. And then people still come back and say well I just don't like this. I wasn't there.

Well my fallback position is have you ever committed one sin? If you've committed one you would have plunged the human race into the same predicament that Adam did.

We all sin don't we? we call this the fall of mankind capital F-A-L-L nothing to do with autumn I like autumn and there are a number of theories relative to the fall whole bunch of theories all but one is correct so instead of spending valuable class time discussing the incorrect views let's focus on the correct view and I believe it's the biblical view the theologians going back hundreds of years said called it the federal view of the fall this is the view that teaches that Adam acted as a representative of the entire human race he was at the head he was at the federal head of the human he was the first

Adam Christ is often referred to as the second Adam who's going to make it all right he was the first Adam and he was the representative of the human race and God set before Adam and God was very specific even before Eve was created these are the things you're going to do sound kind of nice to me till the garden name the animals be a good farmer and there's one prohibition and he set before Adam both a command and a test concerning the forbidden fruit and that test was for the human race Adam was acting for himself Eve and all his future descendants down to everyone in this classroom tonight he was our federal head he was our representative in the garden so the chief idea of the federal view is that when Adam sinned he sinned for all of us and he did a good job because everybody sinned since him except the

God man Christ Jesus we were in his DNA when Adam fell we fell God punished Adam by taking away his original righteousness when Adam was punished we were all punished the fall into sin in the garden was devastating and it had real results and it had immediate results and it had long term results and it has results down to this very day and this very hour for every human that is on earth right now that has ever been on earth or ever will be on earth everyone even creation was impacted creation itself Paul talked about that in Romans chapter 8 verse 20 to 22 for the creation was subjected to futility not willingly but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from the bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of

God for we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now and you know living in Oklahoma we can bear witness to some of those groanings can't we we get tornadoes we get earthquakes here I'm surprised we don't have tsunamis we seem to have everything else the entire creation is groaning and waiting for the full redemption of mankind because of Adam's sin we suffer as does every member of the animal kingdom and the new testament is clear on this let me read you some verses in Romans 5 starting in verse 12 therefore just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin and so death spread to all men because all sinned all sinned verse 15 but the free gift is not like the trespass for if many died through one man's trespass much more have the grace of

God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many and then down to verse 18 therefore as one trespass led to condemnation for all men so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men all who are chosen and then verse 19 for as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners so by the one man's obedience that's Christ the many will be made righteous no matter how we try no matter how we try to not focus on this entire process it still comes out often as unfair to the fallen mind maybe God could have chosen someone to better represent us perhaps

God could have chosen some one of us surely they would not have turned out quite as bad as they did but let us be reminded at this point that God's choice of Adam was made infallibly he made an infallible decision now Adam was not infallible but God is infallible Paul has a kind of sums that up in Romans 9 14 what shall we say then is there injustice on God's part by no means let it never be God forbid when Adam fell he lost much when Adam fell we lost much and let me tell you his free will had the taint of poison as does ours he lost his ability to choose without sin rearing its ugly head when he was making his choices and that's been true of humanity ever since it just rears its ugly head and this is important because most people think they're in a right relationship with

God based upon their free will choice to allow him to come into their life and nothing could be further from the truth we've been looking at that for a number of weeks now now I've got a little graph up here this is an instructive graph I'm actually for those of you who like to pick up copies of the lesson I'm going to I made some extra I had Evelyn do that in our first line there we talk about pre-fall man this is Adam in the garden this is before the serpent manifested himself to Adam and Eve and things are going well they're walking with the Lord when you read that they walked with God in the trinity that's the pre-incarnate

Lord Jesus Christ and they're walking in the cool of the garden with him and they're tilling the ground and they're it's producing and they named all the animals and lions aren't eating bambis you know and it's a pretty neat deal here so we have Adam pre-fall man and Adam was able to sin now we know that don't we and we have proof of that he had the ability to sin but let me tell you something else about Adam he was able to not sin Adam is the example of the freedom to choose he had free will untainted at that point he had the ability to sin and unfortunately exercised it but he also had the ability not to sin he made a choice well it didn't take long pre-fall man disappeared real quickly and now we have post-fall man and we still have that down to this day post-fall man is able to sin but now we leave this blank post-fall man is unable to not sin this is unredeemed this is lost people has no capacity to not sin sin is always lurking at the door even and there are unredeemed people in this world that do some great things one of the greatest when I was growing up was

Dr. Salk who invented the polio vaccine saved millions multiple maybe hundreds of millions of kids from premature death from the iron lung remember those days that was scary why get chills thinking about the iron lung and kids had to live their lives some of you guys are too young to know what I'm talking about but but had to live in an iron lung and Dr.

Salk invented the vaccine that prevented polio and he died and agnostic Jew never settled in his heart that God even existed so unsaved man is capable of doing some really good things that's not the issue but lurking there is he's unable to not sin it's always lurking nearby but and we're going to be talking about this in a few weeks reborn man new creation man regenerated man we're going to be spending a lot of time on that and I've already started and it's neat now reborn man anybody here reborn I hope everybody reborn man is able to sin I know that's hard to believe but trust me come meet with me privately and I can tell you

I'm able but you know what we also have the capacity we are able to not sin who's that remind you of using this graph we're back to pre-fall man reborn man is back to pre-fall Adam able to sin able to not sin when we sin and we do don't we we choose to sin I read one guy and he said our desire to sin outweighs our desire to please God I mean there's no how else do you put it we the desire to sin is stronger and you know when I read that I got on my knees but reborn man is able to sin able to not sin what about glorified man that's heaven that's the kingdom that's

Christ has come back and he's taken the church and we're in eternity we're in our glorified bodies we are in glorified bodies we are able to not sin and thank God we are unable even the ability to sin has been cleansed by the blood of the lamb when we get to glory glorification we're able not to sin we don't want to sin in glory and we're also unable delivered from the presence the power and the penalty I guess it's the presence the power the penalty and the presence of sin there not going to be any sin in glory in heaven this is a great chart and for those of you who want a copy

I've got one and and by the way this was not original to me I know I don't have to tell you that unless you don't know me and every now and then I see guys that claim it I've seen it by two dozen people I don't know who came up with it but it's good stuff how bad off is mankind when it comes to sin there are three views the first view is you know man's okay he's well you'd be surprised how many people hold to that but a close inspection of people including especially ourselves reveals that man is anything but well he's not well he's desperately sick our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked who can know it the answer is

God by our very experience we can eliminate that category man is not well we see that played out every day and particularly me coming out of law enforcement oh my gosh I saw the inhumanity of so many people but there's another category that people try to sell us on and that is well man's not well so to speak but he's only sick or injured he's maybe not well he said we'll give you that but he's just sick and injured sin has injured him but let me suggest that if we are merely wounded let's let's go over next door to the pharmacy let's get some salve for the wound put a bandage over it

I got one right here I cut myself making breakfast this morning put a bandage over it and in a few days or weeks it will be well we just need to put a band aid on it we are far from merely injured the biblical view is that man is beyond sick he's beyond injured according to the scriptures he's already dead he's already dead and until a person is quickened by God all are dead in trespasses Paul was great about writing that particularly in Ephesians chapter 2 we are dead spiritually in our relationship with God in the garden spirit died spirit soul body and

God told Adam in the day you eat thereof you're going to die and people like to throw that up and say God wasn't serious Adam didn't die he lived hundreds of years he died a spiritual death and we see that because he was immediately separated from God God not only blocked the entrance to the garden Adam even ran off and hid himself so he could devise some human religion in the garden our spirit died that is separation from fellowship with God it was so bad that Adam tried to hide and listen to what he was doing before all that walking in the cool of the garden with God in flesh we presume flesh we don't know what form he took but so Adam's spirit died when he ate that fruit and by we don't know what that fruit was people said it was an apple we don't know that is broccoli a fruit it was probably broccoli at the same time when

Adam's spirit died separated from God his soul began to die and it didn't take very long in the human family for men to begin to lie to cheat and to kill didn't take long when four people were on earth one of them was a murderer and one of them was a murder victim wow what a testimony to humanity and when sin entered the human race man's body began to die and God said and if you get a copy of this it says gad but don't lose sleep it should have been God God said for dust you are and to dust you shall return I heard the late

R.C. Sproul just the other day in a obviously a tape and they were taking questions and this guy wrote had a big conference thousand pastors there guy wrote he's a pastor and he says why do we need why is God so stern if people don't receive Christ as Savior couldn't he come up and devise other alternate ways boy Dr.

Sproul these are pastors why am I looking at a pastor Dr. Sproul was livid and you can find it on YouTube he said I don't know who wrote this question but you understand that you're dirt your dirt dirt's going to talk to the creator of the universe with a stupid question like that oh he was mad I threw that in for free back in the garden the impact was immediate and devastating our alienation from God is total unless God steps in and solves that problem and this whole class and this is lesson seven has been on God's resolution of that problem and I think we've got them all up here if you want them our very nature now is to sin and even when we do good things

Dr. Salk sin is crouching at our door so we get an understanding of the magnitude of the problem all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God there is none righteous not even one all our works are as a filthy rag before the eyes of God in our lostness we are dead and we're going to talk about that next time what does it mean to be dead in God's eyes we're going to spend some time on that next time what does it mean to be dead and how can we come back to life Thank you.