Psalm 51; Romans 5
Amen. Keep your catechism sheet handy that we use to recite questions six, seven, and eight, and then turn to Psalm 51 and also Romans chapter five, Psalm 51 and Romans chapter five. Psalm 51 is from the pen of King David. Of course, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, remember David and the anatomy of his sin.
He was not out at war with his, um, with his soldiers, but instead he stayed back at the palace. One day up on the rooftop, he saw that she across the way, bathing. I saw her and coveted, lusted the whole work sent for her, committed adultery with her. She gets pregnant, lies, covers it up, tries to get her husband to come home and you know, have a weekend away from war and be the one to get her pregnant as it were, didn’t work out. So he has Joab put him on the front lines where we’re sure he will be killed and that is what takes place. And I imagine just as we have done in days gone by, we think we have gotten away with it.
But what does Nathan the prophet do? He comes to David, tells him the story of the man who took the prize lamb from another. And what does David say? That man should be punished, and Nathan says, thou art the man. And so when David came to his senses, the grace of God and Christ led him to repentance, he penned these words.
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love. According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions and my sin as ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Behold, you delight in truth and the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. And I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God. O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.
For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite, O God, you will not despise. Do good to Zion and your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will delight in right sacrifices and in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then bulls will be offered on your altar.”
And then over to chapter five of Romans, one of the principles of the Christian faith is we are represented. We are either in Adam or in Christ. If we are in Adam, we’re dead in our sins and trespasses. If we are in Christ, we are made alive. So you look out at the world and you see people, they are either in Adam or in Jesus. There is no other category. They are either in Adam or in Christ. And of course, we want those who are not in Christ To know they’re not in Christ, that’s a nice thing to tell them. And we want them to be in Christ by telling them how to get in Christ. That’s the simple gospel way.
So Romans chapter 5, Through Him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace, in which we stand and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
For while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
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. There’s our answer for tonight, isn’t it? For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
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 the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin, for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. If because of one man’s trespass death reigned, Through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience, the many were made sinners, and so by one man’s obedience, the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
So we want to think tonight about this whole idea of mankind and sin and salvation. And we want to think about it historically for a moment. Lots of ink has been spilled. A lot of debates have been held, a lot of heartburn, a lot of blood pressure, a lot of church splits over the nature of man. St. Augustine, who was the Bishop of Hippo, which is a town in North Africa, in the 300s, 300s and maybe into the 400s, Some of you may be familiar with his city of God, his confessions. St. Augustine, one of our heroes, after St. Paul and the early church fathers, we think a lot of St. Augustine, and he wrote a prayer that went like this. Of course, it was in Latin, but it went like this.
Lord, command what you will, but give what you command. And what he was praying is, Lord, you can tell a man to do whatever you want, but you’ve got to give him the grace to do it. And don’t we say that in our own way? The Lord never gives me more than I can handle. The Lord never gives me something impossible for me to do. Now, the reason we can handle it, the reason it’s not impossible is because he gives us the grace to do it.
Well, when St. Augustine wrote that prayer, he had a I wouldn’t say a friend around the corner, but there was another man named Pelagius who took issue with St. Augustine’s prayer. He said, man has the ability to choose to do good. Well, St. Augustine’s prayer said just the opposite. Pelagius said, man has the power to choose good because God commands them to do so. So he was opposite. St. Augustine. Augustine said, Lord, tell me whatever you want me to do, but give me the strength and the power and the grace to do it. Pelagius said, God said to do it. It must be within me to do it. Two very different theologies. And you know, Pelagius and his cousin, Semipelagius.
We live as reformed-minded folks or biblically-minded folks or covenantally-minded folks. We live as people who believe in the sovereignty of God and the provision of salvation. We live over and against semi-Pelagianism in our American culture. We see it in how churches practice We see it in the hundred and fifty years or so of the the altar calls and the sawdust revivals You know if we just sing just as I am 97 times guess what will happen?
Somebody will get saved. Well, somebody will get saved because their friend says it’s your turn this week and I’m hungry and so they go forward But you’ve seen and understood all that So there was st. Augustine’s prayer and Pelagius. Well about a thousand years later Martin Luther wrote a book called on the bondage of the will and And he stated that our wills due to sin are in bondage and they can do no good.
And we need God to change us, God to regenerate us in order to be able to do good. Well, he had a friend around the corner, just like Augustine had his Pelagius. He had Erasmus of Rotterdam just around the corner. And Erasmus said something like this, man has enough good in him. that when he cooperates with God’s grace, then salvation is possible. There’s enough left in him, a spark left, where if he cooperates with the grace of God, I don’t know what he does with, and we were dead, in our sins and transgressions. But nevertheless, he had that view. And so Luther and Erasmus had some great debates.
Fast forward to our day. And I would suggest maybe perhaps the free will Baptist culture who would say, we have the freedom to choose. We have the free grace of God and we have free salvation. God offers salvation to all. God offers his grace. And so all we have to do is accept it. And I love the sound of that. As long as you nuance it with God saves you, right? You hear the call, the outward call, and the spirit is at work in you, and he gives you a new heart, and you embrace the gospel as it’s written in the scriptures. I love the sound of that.
But here’s where some will go astray. They believe that you have to keep the faith. And that if you backslide, and you backslide bad enough, guess what? You who were once justified, could lose that justification. It gets sort of Catholic-y if you’re not careful. And I know some of you, I think Jay went through this, you got beat every Sunday. You’re backsliding. You’re gonna lose your salvation, is that right? It just scared the heck out of you every week and no assurance. I never said those words, but you must come and recommit yourself. Yeah, you gotta get after it. But faith gets you in and faith keeps you in. I don’t know about y’all, but if it were up to my faith, I’d have been out of it a long time ago.
So you see how in all these historical misunderstandings of the gospel of God, the power of God and salvation and the deadness of men have caused us to have to duke it out. Now, we like to do theological triage where we say, is this a first issue? Is this a issue of first importance? Does it strike at the heart of the gospel? Or is it a second issue like baptism? Or is it maybe a third level issue of what version of the Bible to use, or wine, or welches, or scuppernong juice? Or is it like a fourth level issue? I would suggest the Christian view of man is a first level issue, and here’s why.
If we don’t believe in the historicity of Adam, we’re in big trouble. So you get people that say, I don’t believe in the Bible, Therefore, I don’t believe Adam was a literal person. Well, what happens if Adam wasn’t a literal person? Then he didn’t really sin and we don’t have his original sin imputed to us. But then it also goofs up the Jesus as the second Adam. And of course, if you don’t say there’s a first Adam, you probably don’t think there’s a second Adam. But these things can strike at the heart of the gospel. What about the nature of man? If we don’t believe in the depravity of man, does that strike at the gospel?
I think it absolutely does. The Bible clearly teaches it. It’s our personal experience, not only in our own lives with remnants of sin, but we see it in the world all around us. And so we have to understand God and His sovereignty, God and His prerogative to seek and save the lost. We have to put our faith in the scriptures that what it says about us is true. that what it says is the way of salvation is the right way, the only way, and what it speaks of about man and sin and the effects of sin and the only way to get out of sin through our Savior Jesus is true. And then we love to read the particulars of salvation. I am convinced more and more and more that as we understand the particulars, the nuts and bolts of salvation as they are laid out in the scripture. Things like predestination, effectual calling, regeneration, faith, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, and glorification, and the many other blessings we have when we are united to Jesus. I’m convinced that as we understand those, the better we can live the Christian life.
Now, I said before, you don’t need to understand how your lawnmower works to cut the grass. You just need to change the oil in the filter once a year and remember how to pull the string. You don’t need to know how your car works to get from here to Harris Teeter. You do need to keep the oil changed and a few things like that, but you don’t have to know about combustion engines and compression and spark plugs and, you know, what timing on the spark plugs, gaps, and all the rest. You don’t have to know all that, but I do think you ought to know, you should know, it’s better that you know the nuts and bolts of salvation.
And so this tonight will tell us how man was happy and holy in the garden before sin and how he became sinful and miserable. So let’s just quickly pick through the, we’ll call it the three stanzas. The first says, God did not create man wicked and perverse. but he created man good. And notice how this is indented and off. See, you see the logic of it.
God did not create man wicked and perverse. That’s what man is now wicked and perverse, but he created man good. What did God say a bunch of times in the account of creation evening and morning? And it was good. And what did he say after it created man? Behold, it is Very good.
So he did not create man wicked and perverse, but it created man good and after his own image, that is in righteousness and true holiness, that he might rightly know God, his creator, and heartily love him and live with him in eternal happiness to glorify him and to praise him. So you see in this little paragraph very quickly some of the things that we say very often. What is man’s chief end?
It’s to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. And so why did God make us? For His own glory. And so if God made us for His own glory, what are we then to do? We’re to live for His glory. Now, why did Satan not like that? Yeah. Cause he, he wanted the glory for himself.
And so God did not make, uh, or did not create man wicked and perverse. Remember last week, I think I mentioned to you, uh, Thomas Boston’s fourfold state of man, uh, in the original state of Adam and Eve, their state of innocence in the garden, it was possible for them to not sin.
They could have listened to God and never eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They could have continued in submission. They could have continued in obedience. They could have continued in trust and in faith. They could have continued in all the blessings and provision and goodness of God. And at some point when that probation ended, they would have taken from the tree of life. they would have lived forever in righteousness. But what did God do? He came in the garden and said, of all the trees of the garden, you may freely eat except of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.
And so it was possible for them to not sin, but it was also possible in that state of innocence for them to sin. And of course, we know that’s what happened. Then you get to the state of, after the state of innocence, you get to the state of sin, the state of guilt, and it was only possible for man to sin. And then you get to the state of grace where you’re saved by Jesus. Holy Spirit at work in you, it’s possible to not sin, Romans 7. It’s possible to sin, Romans 7. And we know that lifelong struggle we have of knowing the right thing, not doing it, knowing the wrong thing and doing it really well. And so we cry out with Paul, wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death, and it’s Jesus.
And then there’s the final state, the state of glory. It will not be possible in heaven to sin. And so one thing you can say very quickly is the story of redemption is creation, fall, redemption and now we have down payments on redemption and then we get the full thing when we go to heaven and when Jesus comes so it’s pretty simple isn’t it I think maybe the answers in Genesis folks use creation and catastrophe and Christ or something like that but you can very quickly describe the Bible in just a couple words so God did not create man wicked and perverse but he made them Good, he made man good after his image in righteousness and holiness.
The shorter catechism, Westminster, says we’re made after God’s image in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness with dominion over the creatures. And then here it says we are to rightly know, heartily love, and live with him in eternal happiness. So think about this for a moment. We, as the crown of creation, David affirms that in Psalm 8, with his man that you’re mindful of him, that you’ve made him just a little lower than the heavenly beings. We are made rational beings. We are made to take information given, draw proper conclusions and live rightly.
And so when God revealed himself, when the world revealed things to Adam and Eve about God, they should have been able to bear his image, live righteously, and live a holy life that knew God and pleased God and did no wrong. It would have been a happy life, a blissful life, a joyful life. No stubbing of the toes, no pain in childbirth. Everything you did produced a bumper crop, When you had dominion, it was perfect dominion, it didn’t exploit creation, it didn’t create pollution, all those wonderful things.
The mind of man, the will of man, the brain of man, the nature of man, all inclinations, desires, joys, happiness, whatever, the movements of the mind, the movements of the heart, the movements of the body, all were to the glory of God, but of course we know Satan entered the garden and he struck at the heart of God’s goodness to them. And he said, did God really say the heart of the goodness of God is that he comes and dwells in our midst and he speaks to us. He reveals himself to us. And that’s what, uh, that’s, uh, Satan’s point of attack. He does it through God’s greatest gift for Adam. That’s Eve. And he does it through God’s greatest gift to mankind. That’s his revelation. Did God really say?
And so in the second point, we have the depravity of human nature proceeds from the fall. That’s what we call that moment when Adam and Eve are tempted by Satan in the garden. Depravity of man, Uh, our human nature proceeds from the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve in paradise. Uh, hence our nature became so corrupt. We’re all conceived and born and sin.
What was it that Adam and Eve did? Was it the picking of the apple? If that’s in fact what it was, was it the plucking of the fruit or was it their apostasy? They went away from God. Was it their pride, their desire for autonomy? Was it their unbelief? Was it their contempt for God and his revelation? Was it for their ingratitude of all the goodness?
Isn’t that really the root of it? It wasn’t the picking of the fruit and the eating of the fruit, though that in itself was sinful as well. But it’s the heart of the matter. They said, God, we’re We’re cool without you. We think that we’ve lived on earth long enough where we can handle this.
And so their pride, their unbelief, their contempt for God, their ingratitude for all his provision led to apostasy. And so they went away from God after being seduced by Satan. And so one of the One of the test questions, if you have studied J. Gresham Machen a little, one of the test questions for Machen back in the day, a hundred years or so ago, when he was trying to sniff out the modernist who didn’t believe in miracles and they didn’t believe in the scripture, the test case is, do you believe in the virgin birth? If you say, yes, you believe in the virgin birth, it meant you affirm the scripture and you affirm miracles.
And so, the modernist who would say, oh, that’s all a myth. Adam wasn’t real. That’s all a myth. No way a virgin could give birth to a child. It’s where the historicity of Adam comes under attack and we must hold to the historicity of Adam. If Adam wasn’t real, then there was no real infraction, no original sin. And so the depravity of human nature proceeds from the fall, from the disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve in paradise.
Remember in chapter three of Genesis, God comes walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And what does he ask? Adam and Eve, where are you? Did God know where they were? Of course he did. But he came looking, which was a grace. He asked, where are you?
And they were hiding. Why are you hiding? Because we’re naked. We’re afraid, we’re ashamed. Who told you that you were naked? Remember how painstakingly the scriptures are before in chapter two of Genesis? They were naked, but they were not ashamed. What does sin do? What does the law do? It points out our sin and we don’t know shame unless we see law. We don’t know shame unless we are disobedient.
What does your puppy dog do when, you know, they eat something, their head goes down, their eyes are averted, and they shrink down? Or what does your two-year-old do when, you know, they’ve loaded their britches, they kind of go hide in a corner, right? What do we do when we know we’ve done something wrong? We get sheepish. And so we become aware of our shame. We become aware of of our nakedness.
And so what happens with, with Adam and Eve when they sin, they’re lined up, uh, there it’s, I always have it pictured, you know, there’s Satan, there’s Adam and there’s Eve. Genesis three, Satan, what is it you’ve done? Adam, what is it you’ve done? Eve, what is it you’ve done?
And because Satan did this, he’s going to crawl on his belly. He’s going to eat dust. And the seed of the woman is going to, you know, whoop up on the seat of the serpent. That’s the promise of Jesus versus the devil. Um, And so Satan gets his curses. Then Adam gets his curses, thorns and thistles, lack of productivity, the sweat of your brow, and then death, dust you shall return.
Then Eve, you’re going to have pain and childbearing. Your husband’s going to be your boss, not going to like it. You know, the whole submission thing, all the rest, your desire is going to be for him. It’s going to hurt to have children, hurt to have babies, and a little gospel hope. You’re going to have a baby way down the line. And that’s where the genealogies of Luke and Matthew are so sweet. Jesus comes right from Eve down the line. Was it 14 generations, 14 generations, 14 generations we get, but there’s promise of gospel, but they lost communion with God. You’re out of the garden.
They lost their righteousness. They were no longer sinless, but sinful. They lost their holiness. They lost their ability to do good. They lost their direct access to the will of God. They lost so much, their communion, their fellowship, their knowledge, their revelation, all those things they gave up in their pride, arrogance, autonomy, and apostasy. But what happened to human nature who would come from Adam and Eve?
It was corrupted. We read in Psalm 51, what does David say? I was conceived in sin. He gives a tip of the hat there to the corruption that comes. Why was Jesus conceived by the Holy Ghost? So that original sin would not transmit. And so we are born, each of us, not innocent and not in a state of grace. We are not cute, innocent babies that have a blank record, a tabula rosa, I think the Catholics may call it, or somebody may call it. No, we are conceived in sin, and what proceeds from the original sin are actual sins proceed from it, from that corruption.
I think I put as the title for tonight’s message, Naughty by Nature. I’ve always thought of pop culture gives a lot of just good phrases for the theological things. And I thought I was clever doing this, but I think Mark Jones in his book called Knowing Sin, he uses all rock and roll songs for his titles about the various stages of sin. Just reading the table of contents is worth the purchase of the book. But I love, I think Naughty by Nature is a great way to remember what we are in Adam.
Our nature so corrupt we are all conceived and all born in sin. I want to think about the last stanza for a moment. It says we are indeed so corrupt we are wholly incapable of doing any good. It’s a bad diagnosis. We are prone to all evil unless We are born again by the spirit of God.
So we talked a minute ago or 10 minutes ago or whatever it was about St. Augustine’s prayer and he upset Pelagius. Luther and Erasmus had their discussions and there’s always the Calvinist and the Armenians and whoever’s duking it out these days in our culture. In the Dutch church in the 1600s, there were a group of Dutch ministers, I suppose, Christians. They were called the remonstrants. Don’t ask why, but that’s what they were. I guess they remonstrated. That’s a big word. Look it up. And they were remonstrating against Calvinism.
So y’all are familiar with the five points of Calvinism. Well, Calvin was dead and gone before the remonstrants or these Dutch folks said, this is what Calvinists believe and boiled it down to five points. You read all of John Calvin’s teachings and writings and sermons, wonderfully smart man, wonderful lover of God and the gospel. Everything he wrote was generally wonderful. Of course, he’s sinful and finite. He made his mistakes. But what they did is they boiled his theology down to the tulip. Right? Total depravity, which is what we’re talking about.
Unconditional election. God does not look down the corridor of time and say, oh, look, you’ll be swell. I’ll pick you to be saved. It’s unconditional election. He loves you with an everlasting love because he wanted to, not because you were the greatest of nations. What is, what is it? God says through Moses to Israel, you were in fact the least of nations. You weren’t lovable. You weren’t desirable, but I picked you. So he got total depravity, unconditional election, the ill limited atonement. Jesus died only for the elect. He didn’t just shed his blood and come get some if you want.
And then there’s irresistible grace. If God comes after you in his gracious ways, you cannot resist God. When he calls into your sepulcher and says to rise, you rise. He is God. And then there’s the perseverance of the saints. He who began a good work in you is faithful to complete it.
Well, the Remonstrants believed all the opposites. So the five points of Calvinism are not from Calvin. They are the responses of maybe Reformation minded people to these Remonstrants, these Dutch folks. But go back to the T, total gravity. They did not believe in total depravity. Don’t ask me how you can read the Bible and come to that. Also, don’t ask me how you can’t look at the world and come to it. In fact, I can’t remember who it is.
It’s an unbeliever, but he says, unbeliever over in Britain sometime ago, he said, the one doctrine of the Bible that I confirm that demonstrates itself clearly is the depravity of man. That’s an unbeliever. But also we know it in our own experience. We are hurt by the unrighteous. We see unrighteous people doing unrighteous things. But we’re also hurt and we hurt others by the remnants of our unrighteousness that remains in us. Even though we have faith in Jesus and have been made new, those remnants of corruption wreak havoc in our lives and in the lives of others.
Well, total depravity. We are indeed so corrupt that we are wholly incapable of doing any good. That’s why Luther wrote On the Bondage of the Will. That’s why Augustine prayed, Lord, tell me whatever it is you want me to do, but you’ve got to give me the grace to do it. And so we are wholly incapable of doing any good, prone to all evil, unless we are born again.
Doesn’t this explain the world? Go back to people either in Adam or in Christ. People are either in Adam or in Christ and not all in Adam are as messed up as they could be. We call it total depravity or R.C. Sproul would call it radical corruption. We are not as bad off as we could be. It could be far worse. You have non-Christian people in your lives that because of common grace, they might be pretty nice people. They might help little old ladies across the street.
They might keep some of the commandments. It’s why people in the South for so many years were considered to be Christian, right? It was the Christ haunted South until maybe the 1990s or so. And we had all the Yankees come down or maybe the secularization of culture, little mix of both.
But you see vestiges of good in people, common grace, Uh, it’s not enough to save them and it’s not enough to see their need for a savior. Uh, they, they need the gospel. They need the spirit. Uh, they need to get knocked over the head by the power of God.
Uh, but we, um, we see all around us the depravity of man and sometimes it’s worse. We’re watching right now the whole Gaza thing. Maybe in your time you’ve seen criminals like Jeffrey Dahmer, Probably a little bit more out of the ordinary, the kid out in Idaho that killed the college kids. From time to time, we see a level of heinousness that beats all. But generally speaking, we see lots of vestiges of the image of God and lots of, I don’t know, I want to say people are good because they are wholly inclined to evil, but you see remnants of the image of God. You take a Coke can, like a can, and you crinkle it up, ball it up. If you try to blow some air in there, what happens when it comes back? Never fully gets back to shape, does it?
How does God remake us? Well, we’re born again. We get a new heart, we get a new mind. He gives us the word, he gives us the means of grace. And he works on us our whole life long until we are glorified, our spirits made perfect, raised up in glory. And then one day our bodies being raised up. And so salvation is a long process, but God has a big mess to clean up. And thanks be to God that he does it. What’s the great word we think of in Ephesians 2? It’s that little, is it a preposition, but God, and here, I think it’s the, unless look at your very last sentence, unless we are born again by the spirit of God, we are in.