My friends, this morning I'm beginning some messages
that I've announced, I think, last Lord's Day,
on the five basic teachings of the Word
of God, to which we've been making reference
for the last several Lord's Days, and about
which we've said that they foundation the gospel
of God Almighty in Jesus Christ our Savior
and our Lord.
We have taken time over this broadcast to
go into the twofold controversy or division that
to a greater or lesser extent determines our
gospel preaching, and that certainly is among us
today to divide us in our conception of
the nature of salvation that God has provided
in Jesus Christ the Lord and Savior of
men and women.
Now, I promise that after going into the
divisions of the past we would take up
these five basic teachings and seek to come
to some knowledge afresh of what the Bible
says about each of these five.
The five, let me remind you, are first,
the condition of man, second, the eternal purpose
of God in salvation, third, the person and
work of the Lord Jesus Christ in salvation,
fourth, the person and work of God the
Holy Ghost in salvation, and fifth, the character
and nature of that faith by which a
man is vitally joined to the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Now, we need to remember that no man
can speak as an oracle of God.
We are shut up to what the Bible
teaches, and I'm saying to you that there
is a thin line between truth and error.
Sometimes it's much thinner than we surmise, and
it's mighty easy to go off in the
wrong direction in the matter of truth.
And another thing is that truth is hard
to come by now.
We are not living in the days of
the fullness of the Spirit, and everything is
agony, agony to come to God in prayer.
It's agony now to try to find out
what the Spirit of God has said and
wants to teach us in the word of
God.
And we are influenced by prejudices and by
what we've been taught.
Some of what we've been taught may be
so, and some of what may be taught
may not be so.
But I say to you that the task
of all of us as witnesses of a
good confession of Jesus Christ in this day
is to do our dead-level best to
come to the truth of these five great
basic teachings of the word of God.
Now I hope I'm not wasting my time,
and I do not believe I am, in
talking as I have been for some months
and shall continue to do so in the
hope that I may encourage all who are
Christian, who've listened to a renewed study of
the word of God and do a renewed
cry to God the Holy Spirit for his
enlightenment and for his fullness upon our witness,
upon our testimony.
I say that we've almost lost the real
gospel.
I say that it's high time we quit
bemoaning the fruit of what we've been preaching
and begin to look at what we've been
preaching.
I say we ought to be on the
mourner's beach, every Sunday school teacher and every
public preacher and every witness of the Lord
Jesus Christ.
I say it's high time that we frankly
face the fact that the gospel would not
turn out the kind of people we call
Christians today.
I'm glad for the awareness of the fact
that by the fruit you shall know them,
and we are having to turn the searchlight
in upon ourselves to find out where we've
heard, where we've made the Bible say what
it does not say, and where we've made
the Bible say less than it says.
And so this morning with your indulgence, and
I hope your interest, I want to talk
to the subject of the condition of man
that needs to be saved, or who needs
to be saved, as it is taught in
the words of the living God, in the
language of the old timers.
The Calvinists said man is totally depraved.
The Arminians said he is depraved, but not
totally.
And I do not want to get involved
in those terms so much as I want
them to drive you and to drive me
back to the Bible that we may come
to have the truth, not what somebody said
in the past, but what the Bible teaches
now.
I believe that you'll agree with me that
the condition of man determines the salvation that
he needs, that the condition of man cannot
be ignored in the prescribing of the remedy.
If we prescribe a false remedy or an
inadequate remedy, we have not preached the gospel
of the salvation of Jesus Christ.
And so this morning for the next Lord's
Day or two, I want us to have
before us the subject of the actual condition
of man since the fall he experienced in
Adam, which is, of course, one of the
great teachings of the Bible and is a
fact of our experience.
I want us to frankly face the condition
of every man outside of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Now to introduce from the Bible standpoint this
series of messages that we're going to give
on the condition of man, I want you,
if you have time now, to turn in
the word of God, if you have time,
to the book of Romans, at chapter 1,
and let's have a scriptural foundation for these
discussions.
And the messages for several Lord's Days will
be based, as far as we're able, on
these passages of scripture.
They are two, and the first one is
Romans 1, beginning at verse 18, and reading
through verse 32.
The scripture is saying, and I'm reading from
the authorized version, "'For the wrath of God
is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in
unrighteousness, because that which may be known of
God is manifest in them.
For God hath showed it unto them.
For the invisible things of him from the
creation of the world are clearly seen, being
understood by the things that are made, even
his eternal power and Godhead, so that they
are without excuse.
Because that when they knew God, they glorified
him not as God, neither were thankful, but
became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish
heart was darkened, professing themselves to be wise,
they became fools, and changed the glory of
the incorruptible God into an image made like
the corruptible man and the birds and four
-footed beasts and creeping things.
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness
through the lust of their own hearts, to
dishonor their own bodies between themselves, who changed
the truths of God into a lie, and
worshiped and served the creature more than the
creator, who is blessed forever, so be it.
For this cause God gave them up unto
vile affection, for even their women did change
the natural use into that which is against
nature.
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural
use of the woman, burned in their lust
one toward another, men with men working that
which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that
recompense of their error which was meek.
And even as they did not like to
retain God in their knowledge, God gave them
over to a reprobate mind to do those
things which are not convenient, being filled with
all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full
of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whispers, backbiters,
haters of God, despiseful, proud, boasters, inventors of
evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant
breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful.
Who, knowing the judgment of God, that they
which commit such things are worthy of death,
not only do the same, but have pleasure
in them that do them.
That's the description of men in olden days,
and it reads like the front page of
a modern day newspaper now.
Now, another scripture, Romans chapter 3, just turn
the pages one time, and we'll begin reading
at verse 9 of Romans chapter 3.
The Apostle Paul, describing the condition of men,
says, What then?
Are we better than they, that is, the
Jews?
No, in no wise.
For we have before proved, both Jews and
Gentiles, that they are all under sin.
As it is written, there is none righteous,
no, not one.
There is none that understandeth.
There is none that seeketh after God.
They are all gone out of the way.
They are together become unprofitable.
There is none that doeth good, no, not
one.
Their throat is an open sepulchre, with their
tongues they have used deceit.
The poison of asp is under their lips,
whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction
and misery in their ways, and the way
of peace have they not known.
There is no fear of God before their
eyes.
Now, here are two classic passages of the
word of God that talk to us about
the kind of people folks are.
They introduce wonderfully us to the subject of
the actual depraved, crooked, bent, deformed, misshapen condition
of man as he comes to this world
as a result of the fall he experienced
in Adam.
Now, the term depravity is a Latin term
that we have carried over into the English,
and it means crooked or not straight.
It means misshapen.
It means deformed and so forth.
Now, the Bible certainly has something to say
about the crooked, misshapen, deformed condition of man.
The extent, therefore, of man's fall in Adam
is the subject before us.
How crooked is man in the sight of
God?
How misshapen is man in the sight of
God?
How deformed is man in the sight of
God?
That's the question.
We have to find out what the Bible
has to say about it, and our answer
there will determine whether or not we preach
a Savior who makes salvation possible if, or
a Savior through whom and from whom, comes
salvation itself, not only providing the purpose of
God and the death and resurrection of Christ,
but the gift of faith and the power
of God to keep us united to the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, the Bible teaches something about that condition
of man.
And when we speak of the depravity of
man, we refer to the extent of man's
fall in his father Adam.
We ask some questions, naturally.
We say, what does the Bible say about
how far man fell when he fell?
And since the fall, and that includes us
because we are people living, in whatever condition
that fall brought upon us, not only how
far did man fall, but in what condition
is man now?
As we try to witness to people, what
kind of folks are we to witness to?
What is their condition, spiritual and every other
way, in the sight of God?
And that question, of course, will lead to
another question.
As we witness to men and women, do
we seek to bring help to them, or
do we proclaim God's full and free and
whole salvation, a salvation that will meet every
need that man has, a salvation that will
do justice to every requirement of God Almighty
and his righteousness?
These are important questions.
Now, by the term depravity, we do not
refer to the degree of man's depravity, but
to the extent.
In other words, what I'm saying, when we
say that men are utterly depraved, we do
not mean that they are altogether morally depraved.
We do not mean that some men could
not be worse morally than others.
We dead sure know that's not so.
And the Bible doesn't talk in the language
that says that all men are morally alike
and that there's no difference in their standards
and customs and their acts.
But the Bible, talking about the actual spiritual
condition of man, says as to the extent
of man's lostness or his fall in Adam,
that that extent reaches to all of man's
works, that it reaches to all of man's
ability to save himself, and that it reaches
to every faculty of a man's soul, his
mind, his will, and his emotion or his
affection.
And there we'll notice a tremendous difference as
we go along.
Is man depraved in every faculty of his
soul?
Some say yes, and some say no.
And as they answer that question, it colors
the gospel that they proclaim in the salvation
they offer to sinful men.
Thus, my friends, as to the extent of
the fall, we believe the scriptures teach, not
as to the degree of his badness, but
to the extent of the fall as it
has to do with his works, his ability
to save himself, not his ability to do
a lot of things, but his ability to
save himself, and to every faculty of the
man, we believe the Bible teaches that man
is totally, utterly, absolutely L-O-S-T,
lost and cannot recover himself.
And he'll either have to go to hell,
or God Almighty will have to save him
entirely.
Now, later we're going to talk more on
this broadcast of the difference between the term,
the extent of the fall, and the degree
of the badness of men.
Now I want to consider with you how
this teaching of the Bible, whatever it is
about the condition of men, has been in
the past, and God has possessed being today
perverted.
And it is being and has been perverted
in two ways.
The teaching of the word of God about
the actual condition of men, and thus the
kind of salvation that will meet their needs
and God's requirements, can be perverted and is
being perverted in two different ways.
It can be and is being perverted by
making the term depravity, or the condition of
men, to mean more than the Bible makes
it mean.
We're going to consider that in a moment.
It can be and is being perverted in
the second place by making the condition of
man mean less, or his depraved condition, making
it mean less than the Bible makes it.
Either way we depart from the truth.
People we call Calvinists are in great danger
of making the depravity of men mean that
which the Bible does not say.
And people who lean to the other direction
are terribly in danger of ignoring the utter
extremity and awful lostness and utter depravity of
sinful men.
Before I take up these two ways in
which truth may be perverted, I want you
to notice this very simple and apparent fact,
but I think we ought to have it
before us.
How can the truth about man's depravity be
determined?
You say, Brother Barnard, are you the judge?
No, sir.
And you who listen or not?
Well, there's what my church believes.
No, no, no, no.
How can the truth about man's condition be
determined?
The answer is very simple.
In order to determine whether anything is crooked
or straight, you have to have a rule
or a straight edge.
If you're going to build a house or
something, you know what I'm talking about, make
a dress.
And you lay that rule or that straight
edge down alongside the thing you're going to
measure.
Now, if your rule is crooked, this is
important, then the thing that you compare by
your rule may appear to be straight so
far as that rule is concerned.
It is therefore of the utmost importance that
we find the right rule or the right
straight edge by which we are to judge
and determine and measure the actual straightness or
crookedness of man, the actual deformity or rightness
of man.
Do you see it now?
Bless the Lord.
There are two rules that can be applied,
one of them as good as far as
it goes.
One is the rule of moral standards of
society, for society does have its moral standards
called by philosophers Moore, M-O-R-E
-S, by which we judge the rightness or
the wrongness or the crookedness or the straightness
or the deformity or the non-deformity of
an object.
Now, most men today, listen to me now,
most men today measure up pretty well when
measured by the moral standards of the day.
But when we put the straight edge or
the rule of the standards of Christ or
Christ himself and lay that standard down alongside
the best man or woman that ever lived,
then we've got a different story.
And when the Bible talks about the deformed
condition and the crooked condition and the misshapen
condition and the depraved condition of man, it's
not saying that some men don't live better
lives than others.
It is saying that when we lay down
by the side of the life of the
best of us, the Lord Jesus Christ or
the standards of Christianity, that's just Christ, then
all men are shown to be crooked and
shown to be deformed and shown to be
misshapen and shown to come short and thus
that men stand in dire need of being
not straightened out, not helped, but rescued, regenerated,
born again, made new creations in the Lord
Jesus Christ.
My friends, when we speak of depravity in
relation to man, we're not talking about his
moral standards, which may be better or worse.
They are changeable and change from one country
one day to another.
But we are trying to find out what
the Bible says is the truth about man
when the rule of the straight edge of
the standards of God in Christ are laid
down beside that man.
And, brother, I may be wrong on everything
else, but when that's done, God knows we
find that man's condition is perilous, it's desperate,
and that man is utterly lost.
Now, that's so with me.
That's what we need to do today.
Oh, how we need this.
People say to me, Brother Barner, old Bill
got saved.
He quit drinking now, I know.
But that isn't his trouble, not his drinking,
it's himself.
And by the standards of society, that's good.
If he's got to where he doesn't drink
booze anymore, he doesn't do this, he doesn't
do that anymore.
But when we lay him up beside the
Lord Jesus Christ and his teaching and his
example and his requirements and his provision, we
find that that man is still utterly lost
and utterly ruined by the fall.
Now, by making depravity mean more than the
Bible teaches, that is done in two ways.
I'm not going to have time to do
anything except state these and then begin next
Lord's Day and teach them as best I
can over this radio.
We can pervert the truth of the Bible
about the condition of men first in making
man's inability refer to things that the Bible
does not refer to.
We'll talk to you next Lord's Day about
how it's easy to fall into the trap
of preaching that the gospel, therefore, is to
be preached to nobody but the elect.
Now, that's just not so.
And that man is physically unable to listen
to the gospel, that's just a plain untruth.
But we'll find a deeper truth there, and
I want to labor that next Lord's Day.
And then we make the Bible teach what
it does not teach when we make depravity
concerned with the degree of badness morally of
men, not as we lay the rule of
Christ right slap-dab up against them.
Now, I've taken time largely to introduce this
subject and just say to you that I
want you to stay with me.
God knows I long to do you good,
not evil at all.
I'm trying to face some of these things
that wound us and divide the body of
Christ and cheapen the gospel we preach and
by which we sin against those to whom
we witness.
And so, Brother Barner, this time is now
up, but until next Lord's Day for the
message, I ask you to stand by and
hear us, and may God bless you, everyone.