Gospel of Ruin

The great doctrines of the gospel are Rune, Redemption, Repentance, and Regeneration. Today, friends, we will take a look at the first of these doctrines, which is Rune. A man in his natural state is represented in scripture as utterly depraved, dead in trespasses and sins.

He is blind and in darkness. Man's heart is full of sin. In Ecclesiastes 9.3 we read, The hearts of the sons of men are full of evil.

And in Romans 8.7 we read, The natural mind is enmity against God. Every natural man, because of Rune, is overrun with leprosy of sin from head to foot. I once heard what I felt was the best sermon on man's Rune condition many decades ago.

A country evangelist came to a church that was on the heels of revival and he preached a message I still remember to this day. I don't remember the preacher's name, but I'll never forget his message. He said he had a friend who was dying in the hospital because he had a poison in his blood.

The doctors couldn't help him and he only had a few weeks left to live because of that poison in his blood. Then this country preacher went on to relate that man comes into this world with a Rune nature and bent towards sin because man has a poison in his blood. And he proved it from text from the book of Genesis all the way through the book of Revelation.

We inherit it from our father who inherited from his father all the way back to Adam whose fall is imputed to every one of us. For Romans 5.12 states, Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. And so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.

I believe an apt description of man's total depravity in his natural condition is found in Job 15.16 that states, How much more abominable and filthy is man which drank of iniquity like water? If you don't believe that, friends, just watch the evening news and you'll see how ruined man really is. A man in his natural condition is completely corrupted by nature and thoroughly unaware of his own helpless, wretched, blind, dead, and undone condition and trespasses and sins. The sinner's heart is filled with enmity against God.

And if we were there in Eden, we would have reached up with Adam as well and pulled God down from his throne, because we don't want anybody to rule over us either. For a man to be saved, he must see the plague of his own heart that Jeremiah describes. The heart is deceitful, above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it? That man in his natural state is utterly corrupt and is blind to his helpless condition and a badness of his own heart.

That man's rune nature has made him totally an everlasting dead in sins. Unless God infuses a new principle in him, a man must receive the principle of regeneration or die in his natural condition outside of Christ and enter an eternity of misery and perdition and hell's torments. Because of rune, man lies under a dominion of sin, is an enemy to God, and is spiritually dead.

Paul states in Ephesians 2.1, And you, hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sin? And man in his rune nature is so dead in sin, it takes the work of grace upon the heart wrought by God to open his eyes, so Acts 26.18 declares, to open the eyes, to turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, until the heart is changed. Man remains in a natural condition of utter rune and corruption. In John 6.44 we see the extent of man's total depravity.

For Jesus says, No man can come to me except the Father, which hath sent me draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day. Well, I hope this little message on man's rune has helped you, friend, to better understand your own heart and have a clearer understanding of the gospel of rune.