In this sermon, the speaker discusses the impact of sin on the human mind and its ability to comprehend spiritual matters. He highlights the irony of highly intelligent individuals who remain ignorant when it comes to understanding God. The speaker also references the story of the Israelites who, despite being freed from slavery, longed for the food they had in Egypt. He emphasizes the irrationality of their desire and relates it to the unreasonable nature of sin. Additionally, the speaker emphasizes the importance of sincerity and truthfulness in our words, as God sees through deceit and lies.

Alright, Romans chapter 3 tonight, and as we continue on with this, to me, it's a tremendous study on sin. Not something a lot of people like to deal with, but I think one of the most important things to deal with in all of life. And we're picking it up tonight in Romans chapter 3, verse 9. We'll have to, we get a little bit late here, so we'll have to move it on here a little bit faster tonight. So Romans 3, 9. What then are we better than they? No and no wise, for we have before proved that 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 all together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good, no not one. Their throat is an open sepulcher, their tongues they have used to seat. The poison of ass is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursings 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, and there is no fear of God before their eyes. Here Paul is giving quite an indictment here against us all as human beings and so we need to stop and take a good look at this, but let's pray and then we'll look at it. Father, we do thank you again and again and again for your word. Lord, may there never be a day in our life that we aren't grateful for it and may it constantly be more important to us than our necessary food. May we want to partake continuously again and again of your word. Hear what it has to say to us. Lord, even if the things that it has to say sometimes are very convicting or they show us how hopeless we are. But Lord, that at the same time is that which magnifies your love, magnifies the work of redemption, the cross that we've celebrated tonight, the forgiveness of our sins. Lord, we ask that as we study it tonight that you would just open our hearts, we wouldn't argue with it, and we wouldn't have to defend ourselves. But rather than that, Lord, we can just come and open our heart and say, God, your word is true. Now speak to me. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Well, here Paul now, he continues his brief, as I have kind of thought of this and called it a number of times, as if an attorney has gone before the Supreme Court to present his case. And here for three chapters, Paul is doing something I don't think is found anywhere else in the Bible quite like this. Because really from the first half, essentially the first chapter, all the way through the end of chapter three, essentially, Paul is going through one indictment after another, after another, after another, one argument after another. One explanation, one after another, where he finally is going to come, we won't get there tonight, in 323, where he says, all have sinned. And by the time he says all have sinned, virtually anybody who has listened to his argument up until then has got to agree with it. It's really indisputable. And when you would look at it and study it. And Paul is systematically working towards, I believe, that verse. Coming to the place where ultimately every person has got to realize, I am a sinner. Here he tells us in verse nine of chapter three, he says, what then? Are we better than they? No, in no wise, for we have before proved that both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin. So he said, I've already proven the fact that both Jews and Gentiles are all under sin. And nobody has one right to look at anybody else in all the world and say they're a bigger sinner than me, or I'm a bigger sinner than them. We're all under sin. And here when Paul, the first thing he has to say here essentially is he makes, again, kind of a broad statement. And then he's going to spend the rest of this section here arguing for it, presenting it. But he essentially here, he says, all of humanity, all are under sin. That is, all under the power of sin, essentially, is what it means in verse nine. When Paul uses the word under sin, he literally means under its power. The word that is used there in Greek, it's hupo harmeriton. And the word hupo simply means under the power of, under the dominion of, under the authority of, essentially. Here when a centurion in the Bible, when he makes reference to Jesus, that he has men under me, he uses the word hupo emation, which means under my command. He looks there and he says, I'm a commander. I have men under my command, subject to my command. A slave in the Bible is hupo zagon. That means under the yoke of his master, under his power. Well, here Paul says the Christless man, the man outside of God's love, God's mercy, God's grace that has yet to come in to the regenerating work, the forgiving, the atoning work of Christ that we've celebrated tonight. The person that is without it, he is somebody, that he is hupo harmeriton. He is under the command. He is under the authority. He is under the yoke, essentially, under the power, the control of sin. And it's a power that he cannot escape from. There is no escaping from it at all. That's true of all people, essentially, the whole world, the whole planet, the whole globe, everybody on it. Like that little nursery song he used to sing in Sunday school, you know, red and yellow, black and white. We're all wretched sinners in his sight. Jesus knows we're all the sinners of the world or something like that. I can't remember exactly how it was. I didn't I didn't listen much in Sunday school. But anyway, no. But here, Paul, he's wanting to he's going to go on and reinforce. He makes a statement. We are all under its power. There is no escape of it. No escape at all, essentially, here. And as he goes on, wanting to reinforce this truth, this statement that here he makes, he puts together something that was rather customary in Jewish teaching. The way that the rabbis would oftentimes teach is they would string together a collection of verses like oftentimes, I suppose, many good teachers do. There's a point that they want to bring and bringing that point. They will just go collect from the Bible a lot of verses that point again and again one after another to it. And as he strings them together here, Paul, in this section that we have just read earlier, he quotes Psalm 14, one through three, Psalm five, nine, Psalm 140, verse three, Psalm 10, verse seven, Isaiah fifty nine, verses seven and eight and Psalm thirty six one. And as he puts these together, it is something he is using what is again in Jewish teaching by the rabbis. It was called a charaz. In the word charaz, it actually means stringing of pearls. And when a rabbi would be teaching, it was like he would take one verse after another, after another, after another, and he would make a charaz. He would string these truths together and to bring home a point. Well, here, essentially, Paul does this very same thing that they were very used to seeing. He takes and he strings together pearls. My father-in-law, before he went to heaven, he used to always, all the time when I'd see him day after day or call him on the phone, one of his first things he always said to me, well, Don, do you have any pearls for me? And he was constantly just asked for something. Maybe I'd read that day something that the Lord had showed me or whatever. But but that's the here, Paul. It was like he he could string together a verse after another, after another. And he puts them all together as he gathers here from Isaiah, as he gathers from the Psalms and puts these things together. He makes this string of pearls. And as he strings them together, he ultimately, by the time we're through with this in a few moments, he brings home the point of what theologians have called all the way through church history, essentially nothing new about this at all, but the total depravity of man. He is going to bring home the great point that man essentially is absolutely, totally, hopelessly depraved, has no hope at all within himself. Left alone. He is absolutely, definitely, totally, completely lost. And to deny, I suppose, the depravity of man is some would even want to do. I don't know why, but it's also, though, to deny the total glory of God and the power and the wonder of our salvation. So on one hand, the wonderful thing in the Christian life is to be able to realize the absolute hopelessness, but that magnifies the glory of our salvation and the love of God. That just didn't, as he was one alternative. No, he wasn't one alternative, he was the only alternative. Otherwise, man is lost totally. And here, Paul, essentially, as he gives us here, he kind of gives us a string of Old Testament quotes where he says, there is none righteous. There is none that understands, none that seek God. There are none that are prophet. None that do good. And he doesn't really leave any room for leniency. He just lays them out, quotes the scriptures, puts them together. Absolutely nobody, none at all. And to look at those, the first thing that he has to say there is there is none righteous, as he says there in verse 10. The first one he quotes out of Psalm 14, 3. And as it says, they are all gone aside. They're all together become filthy. There is none that doeth good. No, not one. But here, of course, Moses here, he had told the children of Israel that, of course, that they were sinners. He had told them that they didn't do right and that they were unrighteous. He had taught them that they knew that. And he actually instructed them before they were to come into the land. Deuteronomy 12, eight. He told them, you know, when you get him to the promised land and you're walking with God the way you want, he says, you should not do after all the things that we do here this day. Every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes. You see here, you know, a lot of people just think if they're doing right in their own eyes, if they're just doing what they really believe is, they would look at a situation and say, I want to discover right and do it. I want to do the right thing. I want to say the right thing. I want to express the right attitude. I want to be absolutely right here. Moses told the children of Israel, don't try that when you get into God's will. You don't do what is right in your own eyes. The difference between a child of God and a lost man trying to get saved is whether they're doing away if they're doing something right in their own eyes. You're completely wrong. And over and over it tells about the children of Israel when they were in trouble and judges 17, six, it says. And in those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that, which was right in his own eyes. Judges 21, 25. In those days, there was not no king in Israel. Every man did that, which was right in his own eyes. Proverbs 12, 15 says the way of a fool is right in his own eyes. And here a foolish man is somebody. He just simply does what he believes is right. In his own eyes, as he deciphers the information, collects it, evaluates it, deals with it. When then he even says not wrong. We think somebody is a sinner. If they're doing what's wrong in their own eyes. Now, the Bible says, if you're even doing what is right, you are, you are still unrighteous here. Paul says about men, but human beings, there is none righteous. Even the man who thinks that he does what is right. You know, we have this great tendency, as Jesus told the Pharisees, you know, he says, you measure yourselves by one another. We think we're right only because the person next to us did something wrong. And therefore, if we got a whole bunch of people doing something that we know is wrong and we tried to do right, we think we did the righteous thing. And Paul is going to carry this on. He's not going to let up on this thing. But so often, I suppose, and one of the interesting things in prison, I used to preach at the L.A. County jail and been around them and a number of times to go in and visit people. And one of the interesting things about prison life is that there's a code of what is right within even all the prisoners. Many prisoners, in fact, it's interesting if somebody gets thrown into prison for something like a child molesting or they do something, you know, in that category. Now, all the in all prison, that's a terrible thing. They all have a kind of an unwritten code. I mean, a lot of them are in there for things like murder. But hey, sometimes you just got a murder. But if you but I mean, sometimes it just calls for murder. And there's enough of them there that did it, that that's true. I mean, don't you agree? Let's have a word democracy in here. Let's vote on it. How many think murder is OK? And the next thing you know, you'll get enough that says it's not bad. Sometimes you just got to do it. And sometimes you just got to steal. You got to embezzle. I mean, you just got to do it. And so we're all here because of the fact that they're just a bunch of people out there that know you got to do it. And then I get upset when they catch you doing it or whatever else. But they justify it. But then somebody does something to a child and they'll kill him literally. They say, no, that's wrong. On TV the other night, I literally watched a thing where they had, you know, on TV, on the news. There was two fellas there being, you know, standing behind the glass and being charged for something. And as they were being charged there, they are both in their orange outfits, chained together. And they're just standing there. And one of them, as he is being charged, he is be I think the other guy was for murder, but when the guy who was when he was in there for child molesting, the guy that was chained to him, who was in for murder, looked over at this guy for child molesting and literally hauled up, they're chained in behind this thing, starts wailing on him, beat him into a pulp. He just jumps on him. They go down. The police are in there. Everybody's bailiffs pulling him off because that guy's looking at him. He says, you did what? You know, he's a terrible person, but he was right in this time. He had to do that. Well, that's essentially as Paul looks, he says, this is the mentality of everybody in our prison. We're all fallen. We're all under guilt. We're all incarcerated on this planet is sinners. And we have our own little unwritten things. But as far as the ultimate truth about man is all are unrighteous. Everyone in there, we just set different standards for it. And then he goes on in verse 11. In the first part, there is none that understands. He said, not only are all unrighteous. And he says, all are unreasonable is what it means there. Nobody understands. He says, people are without reasoning. They have lost the capacity to reason. Once you're unrighteous, you're all, you then become unreasonable. Paul says in first Corinthians two, four, the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God for their foolishness unto him, man looks at the things of God, the natural man. If you ever notice this on how so many natural men can be brilliant IQs that just seem to have left the planet. They're so smart. And guys that have the ability to do some unbelievable things with science and with technology and with medicine. I mean, an intelligence of brilliance that is astounding. And since you see here, we are doing heart transplants, liver transplants, kidney transplants. I don't know when we'll start brain transplants. I want to be in that line, I suppose. But anyway, poor guy that has to trade, I suppose. Anyway, but the, I mean, we're filling the heavens with satellites. We even talk now about, you know, the Hubble telescope and the suggestion that we may even see creation. I mean, with this thing and the awesome things people are doing, which would be quite exciting when all of a sudden the camera comes in, there's this big hand flinging something out. Whoa. Who put their hand in front of the camera? God. But anyway, but the thing is. But sin at the same time, the result is as brilliant as man can be. The things that we are able and capable of doing yet the blinding power of sin has kept man so unreasonable that he's as thick as a caveman when it comes to spiritual things, you look at these brilliant human beings that have learned most anything it seems like you can learn. And yet there is dense as ever when it comes to the things of God, sin is so corrupted, is so weakened, is so ruined the mind of a natural man that his mind, actually, it becomes unreasonable. It cannot function. Sunday morning, Chuck mentioned on how the children of Israel here after these terrible 40 years of slavery, crying out to God by reason, their taskmasters, the terrible slavery. And they get out and they're no sooner on. They look back and said, you know, we remember the leeks and the melons and the onions and the garlic that we did so freely in Egypt. And you're looking, I beg your pardon. What is if we want to go back? I mean, first of all here, the interesting thing is they never ate that stuff. They were slaves. Secondly, it'd give you indigestion if you ever did. And you would remember he ate all leeks and melons and onions and garlic. And here, let's go have a wonderful meal. I mean, you remember that dinner. But here is something to where we remember it, but it didn't happen. But on how the spiritual mind, when it gets twisted, it loses all sense of reality of what there really is. And then we come up with with all the look at the religious thought of the world and how odd some of these brilliant people are, these geniuses of people. And yet you'll talk to them about spiritual things and they say, you know, I believe that it doesn't make any difference what a man believes as long as he's sincere. And you say, really, that's this. Let me write that down. That's the word of it. That's a brilliant genius told me that. But here, when you stop to think, I suppose this very hour, hundreds of millions of people on this planet, when it comes to things eternal, believe that exact same thing. I believe that if you are sincere. Now, I wonder where that guy got that the reasoning here is a brilliant mathematician. I wonder if any of his math teachers ever thought, hey, look, we don't really care how you multiply, divide, add, subtract or anything here. Just write down an answer. And if you're sincere, we'll use it, you know, or something. I wonder how far we would have got in space, you know, with this type of thinking. Just be sincere. There are laws that are fixed and he knows that. You imagine going into a geography class and being given an empty map of the United States in geography and saying here is the outline. Now, just write in there the states and where the capitals are and what the name of the capital is. And if you're really sincere, we'll change the name of the state to whatever you write, you know, I mean, or something. I mean, what logic is it is these brilliant minds actually believe sincerity counts for something. You imagine a physicist, scientist, if you're sincere, just step off of the 20 story building with a cape and a big red S on your chest. And if you're sincere, you can be Superman. I don't care how sincere you are, you will be super flat, you know, or something in a moment. I mean, what sincerity means nothing. And yet millions of people. I don't know why these guys. I never had a professor that went for that. I tried. I could write a whole paragraph knowing nothing, but just fill it in with sincerity. None of them went for it. They could see right through it. But on how we do these things, we have people that literally in philosophy and psychology and even religions in Eastern one that just say, let it go. Turn over a new leaf, breathe in, breathe out, release the past and now turn over a new leaf and we just. Turn over this new leaf or something that just kind of happens, and yet at the same time, the Bible says God requireth that which is past. God says, oh, no, you don't. You don't turn over any leaves with me. I wonder how many businessmen would actually these guys that believe they're going to turn over a new leaf. How would they like if one of their, you know, person that owns owes them thousands of dollars, just wrote him a letter and say, you know, this weekend I turned over a new leaf. All is gone. So I'm not going to pay you what I owe you. I'm just I'm just starting fresh and I'm going to pay you from now on out. I mean, they would look there and write right back. Hey, I'm not forgetting the past and neither are the courts. You're going to jail, you know, or whatever. But spiritually, they'll believe they can turn over a new leaf, try harder, do better. Indeed, here Paul says no one understands when you become unrighteous, unrighteous, you become unreasonable. You become unreasonable with yourself, unreasonable with God. And then the result when you're unreasonable, you're unresponsive because he says in verse 11 as well, there is none that understand. There is none that seek God. And here he looks now at this point, somebody might say, oh, wait a minute here, the whole world is filled with temples and with churches and with synagogues and with sex or with religions and very, very deep spiritual people that spend their entire lives in monasteries seeking truth, doing all that can be wonderful. And you are going to tell me nobody seeks God. I think there's billions of people seeking him. Well, first of all, Paul didn't say this, Bible said it. Paul quoted that from the scriptures when he says there is none that seeketh God. And he also in 1 Corinthians 6 and 10, pardon me, in 10, 20, Paul, I think gives us a little light when he says there's none that seek God. For here, Paul says, but I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to God. And I would not that he should have fellowship with devils. Paul's analysis of the world religions is that it's something that people that are unrighteous and unreasonable create as a substitute for God. And here he looks at all of these things, he says they're merely spiritual, though they're spiritual. All right. But they're not God. They're distractions and diversions from from Jehovah, from from the true God, the one true God. They are not things that are after him. Their religious experience is trying to fill in for the God they don't know. They're unrighteous against that. They're unreasonable about. And now they become hardened and actually unresponsive to him. They're not seeking God. They're seeking religion. They're sinking, seeking some way that might pay off their failures. And here, Paul, he just says, when you get a look at the rest of the world and all of its ways of worshipping and sacrificing is behind it are spiritual forces, not of God. And and here is something just set up essentially by demons themselves. Jesus says that no man comes to the father except by me. And he says, and no man can come to the father unless I draw him. And here it is something there that that that the the work of redemption, the work of becoming responsive is because God begins seeking us. Bible says we love him because he first loved us. Jesus even told his disciples who thought they'd left their nets, thought they'd left their careers, thought they made all sorts of choices for their own volition. But yet Jesus, one day after three years with them, he said, you did not choose me. I chose you and ordained you. My hand is upon you. I've called you. I'm quickening you. I am doing the work. And here it is, is something that that only God can do. Essentially, the Bible tells us we can't seek him because we're dead in our trespasses and sins, not will be dead. God told Adam in the garden, the day in which thou sin is in Hebrew, it's literally present, progressive dying. Thou shalt surely die. You'll die that very moment just in. To go on progressively to ultimately die, you'll have a death that will result in death in the moment Adam died, God took his presence, his spirit, his life out of Adam, a three dimensional being spirit, soul and body. But that moment he said he died spiritually. He remained bodily alive and soulishly active for a period of years in this wonderful grace period. God gave man to repent and say, I miss you. I miss your spirit. I miss your life. But he was dead. The wages in his death not will be. We're already we're born dead. And just like your parents told you, you were born dead, kid. Well, they were whatever they were thinking. Who knows? But as far as eternal things, we were. David said, I was conceived in iniquity. I was altogether born in sin, was born outside of the life flow of God's love and of his power. Fortunately, God calls us. But we can't raise ourself from the dead. We can't. You know, dead people don't seek anything. You know, there, you know, and you put a guy in a tomb and, you know, it is like, well, now, you know, let's leave a little crack in it because maybe you'll get tired of being dead and you'll want to come back to life and whatever he's going to think it over. You know, well, they don't do that. Dead people tend to stay dead. And so also spiritually, people, we don't seek him until he does something. Well, but not only then are we unresponsive, but the result is, in verse 12, we're unrepentant. And this is they are gone out of the way. They're all together become unprofitable. And there is none that do it good. No, not one. And here he turns now and he says the result of all of this, when you're you're unrighteous, you're unreasonable, you're unresponsive, you end up to be unrepentant. Then the result is they've all gone out of the way. And when he's talking there about the way, he says the result of this is that man has lost the way of life. He has lost the way to live, the way to experience life. It means they're the way it means a designated path, a predetermined method of acceptable living. And he says, man, as a result of this, he has gone out of the way. Every one of them, the way that we were made to be, the life that we were made to live. We're not living it. All of us. It's as if the Wright brothers, you know, Orville and Wilbur one day when they decided they drew out their plans and made up this airplane, drew it up, put it together, you know, got the whole thing up and going. And then they kind of take their little flight and decide, hey, this is really good. We made an airplane. And then on the second flight, they kind of hit a tree limb and it knocks the wing off and and somebody else comes along and well, let's knock the other wing off and let's make a car out of it, you know, or something. And then they just go driving around the streets. It'd be a little dangerous, I suppose, if you're a pedestrian, but it'd be quick, I suppose. But anyway, the thing is, is let's make a car. Let's do this. And they make something else with it. No matter what they make of it, it has gone out of the way. Orville and Wilbur Wright would forever look at whatever we've done with it. I don't say I don't care what you do with it. You can use it to beat eggs. You can do with it to ride to the grocery store. You can do it to use it to dry your clothes, you know, or something. But you've gone out of the way. It is not what it was created to be. And by that identity, it has now become unprofitable. For he says they've gone out of the way and they've become unprofitable. The word they're unprofitable, it means, well, this literally unprofitable, but it means useless and unserviceable. God now looks at men, though our heart is beaten and our blood is flowing. When we're talking and walking and doing things, we have become entirely unserviceable for eternal things, for the real creative design. And then as a further result, there is none that doeth good. No, not one. God now looks at all human beings, the verdict on fallen man is no matter what you do in your fallen state, it is no good. It will not work. And here it's something that you may be a good person. A lot of people say, wait a minute, a lot of people do good things. No, they don't. Good as far as, you know, the prison mentality is concerned. As far as the jailhouse standards of what's good. Yeah, I helped a little old lady across the street. I gave money to build a park bench, you know, or I did. That's a good thing. You want to say that's not a good thing? No, that's a good thing, but not as far as God's concerned. Any more than if that if you, you know, somebody came and stole a million dollars from you and you watched him take a thousand bucks and buy a park bench with it, you would tend to say, no, that was not a good thing because that's mine and whatever they did with it on their agreed evaluation of good is they stole it, their stolen lives, stolen hearts, stolen thoughts, stolen minds, stolen bodies, all doing whatever they want to with them. And God has this way of looking at all this thing. And he says, you're entirely unprofitable. And as a result, nobody does anything good. And then the result of that in verse 13 is that the results in wicked words for in verse 13, it says their throat is an open sepulcher, their tongues. They have used for deceit. The poison of ass is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursings and bitterness. God now looks at men when they, when he watches us talk, he watches us speak high and wonderful and gifted and brilliant things, high IQs and doing all the scientific things that we do that we say, this is great. And this is wonderful. God's commentary on the whole thing is he watches it. He says, every time you open your mouth, you're lying. Every time you say a word, you're lying. You're lying about God. You're lying about man. You're lying about yourself. You're lying about why you exist and what you're truly were made for everything. You may be on your own little level of agreed commentary on life and saying in the jail house thought of it. Well, this is what I'm doing with my life. This is what I'm doing with mine. And this is good. And I'm think I'm pretty good. And I'm not as bad as that other guy. But God looks and he says, every word you utter is a lie. It isn't my word. It isn't my love. It isn't my life. It isn't heaven that's flowing through you. It's earth. It's man. It's yourself. And he looks there. He says, your throat is an open sepulcher. What a comment here. God. I mean, when you think of somebody's mouth as an open sepulcher, an open to, you know, I mean, you open it up and there's a dead body inside and they tend to stink, you know, sort of a thing here. God looks everything you say stinks to me. Remember when Lazarus, when he was dead and Jesus, you know, we, we do nice things to bodies these days to make them stink less or not start stinking for longer or whatever else with formaldehyde and other sorts of things. But basically you just let a body die and sit there. And over in the East where they don't do that stuff, they bury him that day. They don't sit around and say here, why don't in three days, we'll just have all the friends over and we'll have this time. We're all come in and visit the body over in the East in three days. I don't think I want to visit uncle Remus in three days. No, I don't. I think he will be stinking really bad by then. Well, here, this is God says you are an open sepulcher. You're an open tomb. From heaven's perspective, when God looks at man, instead of speaking the melodies of heaven, the love of heaven, the, the joys, the attitudes, the heart, the behavior of our created design, when God looks at every one of us and he says, this is the life, this is the love, this is the power. This is the magnitude. This is the way of life I can give to you. And this is what every one has gone away from. I don't care what you say. And I don't care whatever it is. He looks there and he says, it stinks to high heaven to me, an open sepulcher. Talk about halitosis. This is kind of halitosis or something. But anyway, it, God looks at it and he says, I don't like it. And the result of having wicked words is you have wicked ways. For in verse 15, he says, 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 in their eyes here because men, they get unrighteous. They get unreasonable. They get unresponsive and they get unrepentant there. The next thing, you know, is their, their, their thoughts, their words, their behavior, their nature. From God's perspective there, he looks there and he says, you know, you, uh, your feet, wherever they go. And shed blood, you hurt people. You walk all over people instead of being somebody that everywhere you go on our blessed are on the mountains are the feet of them that bring good news, people that wherever you go, that when you walk in your feet, bring life and they bring hope and they bring joy and they bring a message of reconciliation and regeneration. Here, this is what God says, man was created to know, but without it, wherever you go, you're in trouble. Feet are swift to destruction or to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways. The way of peace. They just don't know it. They don't know. Where do I find peace? And the result is there is no fear of God in their eyes. Isn't it amazing on how many people you look at right at the brink of dying and yet they'll sit there and say, I've made my peace with my God. And they're fearlessly dying. Did you say, well, I'm going to take my chances. I feel I've given a good life and there's no fear. I would just think somebody say, wait a minute, you know, something I've been really messing up my life. I've done a lot of dumb stuff and I'm about to go into the final exam and what I better make sure I got it right or what I got to do to get it right. And yet a lot of people dying every day with no fear of God in their eyes. As they look at the world around them, they have been so wrapped up in their own sin, they don't even know the trouble they're in, but you know, as we close something that I guess that the wonderful thing about this and the reason I suppose that we hopefully are ought to be brutally honest about sin and its nature is, as I alluded to earlier, I believe that the hopelessness of man magnifies the love of God. Not only I believe that the Bible teaches that Bible says he that is forgiven much loves much in the more. I realized this is exactly what Jesus Christ saved me from. This is exactly, you know, what he, what he died for. Here's somebody that I was. I was unrepentant. I was unresponsive. I was unreasonable. I was so far out to lunch. It was crazy. My mouth, my behavior, my life, my attitude, you know, was, and in so many ways, maybe better, but still I fail. And the wonderful thing is, is to the degree we know that is the degree that tonight is we took communion saying, thank you Jesus for making it right again. My mouth still does not reveal you my words, my, my actions, my feet. I hope they've slowed down and aren't quite so swift in destruction and to shed blood and that with my mouth, it isn't something so cutting and so wounding and so hurtful instead there to being sent out as ambassador of your love. I fail how we all need communion. There's anybody here that is not a sinner and you don't need communion. You need to realize you're a sinner. Then you'll need communion. But the wonderful thing is when we realized Jesus, this is what it's all about. And we're living in a day and age where even the church itself, there's such a user friendly thing in the church. We, nobody wants to talk about sin any longer. People are getting the place. We don't like to hear about sin. Please talk about something else. And they are so churches are, we can do that. What do you want to hear about? We got all sorts of great stuff. We can talk on home and marriage and family and raising your kids and having great times and having good learning on relationships and learning how to get along all the way till you die. Then we're out of hope for you, but we can make you as comfortable as we can until you die. If you don't want to hear about sin, then you die and you'll be mad at me, but you'll like me all the way till the day you die. That's what the church is doing to people. But the interesting thing I say, he that is forgiven a little, I suppose, loves little. And a lot of people think they've just been forgiven a little sin. We just say, I'm not a big sinner. I'm nearly, I did. I've never done this thing. This is pretty radical. Paul, Paul's talking to some real hardcore sinners here. No, he isn't. I mean, yes, he is. Of which we all are. Oh, and the wonderful thing is, is this is what he has died to forgive us for. And the wonderful thing is we gather tonight. Hopefully we can go out of here and there ought to be much love because there's been much forgiven in each one of our lives. Realize, Jesus, this is what you have saved me from. And for that, I love you forever. And how we ought to know what terrible sinners we are. Or you are. I'm a person. And if that isn't true, may lightning strike Brian Broderson right this moment. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you for your love. And your goodness. Your mercy in Lord, help us to be ones. There's no need whatsoever. Deny any of this stuff. But to be a look and say, this is me. I was a walking, talking, living, breathing sepulcher. No life in me. And Lord, you died for me. And for that, I will love you forever and ever. You forgave me. And Jesus, may we be able to come tonight. And maybe if we've been unreasonable, maybe there's somebody here doesn't know your love. Or thinks that they're okay outside of it. Doesn't really see the depravity of their own life. Lord, may we be courageous enough to be honest. Though initially it brings us to a hopelessness. That door of hopelessness brings us right to the door of heaven. Where Jesus, now we realize what you have done for us. And for that, Lord, tonight, we just want to turn and say thank you. We love you and love you and love you and will forever and ever and ever. For your goodness and your mercy and your love. And as we have taken communion afresh tonight, may its joy radiate within us. This is what he's done for me. We praise you, Jesus, in your holy, wonderful name, amen.