Bible Lesson 150

THE DEPRAVITY OF MANKIND

“Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. So the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them” Genesis 6:5-7

“This is no dismal dogma invented by the Church in the ‘dark ages’, but a truth of Holy Writ. George Whitefield.”

In this lesson we want to deal with a fundamental truth of Holy Scripture, the Bible, and it is one that has not only been left un-preached, but one that has been denied and buried beneath a lie that men like to call evolution; however it is the foundation of true piety, and it gives us a correct view of ourselves, in relationship to our Holy God. That doctrine is call the depravity of man.

Whether we like it or not, whether we agree with it or not, every person is born totally depraved. That does not mean that every person sinks to the depth of depravity but every person is born with the potential to commit anything that they can conceive of, in the right circumstances and under the right conditions. We are born depraved because of our inherited or imputed nature. Adam, who was the federal head of the human race, passed his sinful nature down to everyone of us. The Bible speaks of depravity beginning with Adam and Eve, in the paradise that they traded for a world that was cursed by their sin.

Adam and Eve lost paradise because God separated Himself from them by driving them out of the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve produced sons, and one of them Cain, murdered his brother Abel. Men have steadily been sinking deeper into depravity since that time. Oh, don’t we love to brag about how man has progressed over the centuries, and how much kinder, loving and compassionate we are in this era. Only a fool would look around him at wars and murders, sodomy, adultery, lying, cheating, and every kind of evil that man can conceive, and say that the world is better now than it was in the Garden or at any time since.

I suppose that we think that because we now have airplanes, great ships, I-phones, space ships, and all of the amenities that the modern home is cluttered with, that we are at the apex of mankind. The nations of the world today have everything that they want but not a lot of what man needs to live and enjoy God’s Graciousness.

What the world needs, it is striving to destroy. Every day we read of those who wish to do away completely with the Bible, and the God of the Bible. The Word must have love because otherwise man will become a cannibal and begin to feed upon his fellow man.

Man must have discipline and that is a commodity that is in short supply in every individual, family, school, church, government and world power.We find ourselves afloat in a sea of things that Satan has devised to charm us and keep our minds on him and his inventions as we ignore God completely. We have all become so focused on ourselves and our special pleasures that we have forgotten our parents, siblings, children and brothers in Christ. So many love to talk about evolution and we don’t really know what evolution really is. We are certainly not evolving because God made Adam and He looked and acted just like we do today. What has happened is that we began devolving after Adam fell and we have been on a slippery slope sliding into a pool of evil that the world has never known before.

Does that mean that there are no good guys around today’ No indeed there are a few good people in the world; but their good deeds are covered and sullied by the paganism that exists around them. We have pretty much all become narcissistic, we seem to think that we are so pretty, smell so good, and so desirable to the opposite sex, that there is a special place in heaven for us. That’s what so many think but they should know that they are not as hot and smart as they think. We have even confused the words that we use in polite society. Take the word compassion for instance. What the word means is an attitude that exists within a person that feels the distress of others and reaches out to help when it is possible. Compassion has nothing to do with telling someone that you feel their pain or saying to them that they need so and so (James2:15-16).

We have watered-down love to the point that it is just something that we say to one another when there is nothing else to say. Christian love is not something that we do every now and again, instead it is something that is not drawn out by some feeling that may come over us, or only for those that we have some affinity for. Love seeks the welfare of others, all others, but first to the household of God (Christian brothers/sisters). (Romans 13:8-10; Galatians 6:10). True Christians always are considerate of others and love others because of God’s love for them. That, of course, is not the only place that modern man falls short. We can look around us and find the fake, plastic, go along to get along attitude that has recently caused great harm to America and it is probably true in other countries as well. People over all, have lost the concept of righteousness; and we lack honesty, integrity, ethics and most of the other social graces. I can’t explain how people can be awake and not realize that we are headed toward self destruction.

What do most lives today consist of’ Well, getting up a little late, and driving like maniacs to get to a job that we do not give our best efforts to. Eating whatever is quick and cheap for lunch instead of going home where it is necessary to eat a family meal, getting off work after not accomplishing much and racing to get home to neglect necessary chores, and watch television until time for bed. We live in an unreal world and we miss the joy and necessary connections with our families as we absorb sports, news (so called), pornography if it is available and the ever present time on face-book. What kind of life is that’ I signed up for face book but it didn’t take me long to find that I was not interested in the muck and mire that exists on it, but I also found out that there is really no way to get off of it. I took down my wall, but I still get inquires from them about it. I suppose that what I am attempting to get people to realize is that we have chosen the worst rather than the best way of life. Why would a people do that’ I think and in fact am sure that it is because as a whole people today have deserted The Word of God and as a result we have lost our connection to the God of the Word. Because we have done that, we no longer have the light of life and so we walk in darkness, we have lost our path because we have not light (Psalms 119:105).

We have lost the meaning of true love and as we live we spot and demean all that we touch. Parents have lost the love of children as evidenced by the numerous numbers of child abuse cases that we read about every day in the papers. We have become the kind of people who can tell someone we love them one minute and then beat them or rob them or even kill them the next moment. We have truly lost our way and until and unless we come back to the Word of God (The Bible) and the God of the Word, we will continue in the downward spiral of evil. Did it begin yesterday or last year or even hundreds of years ago’ No, it began after Adam and Eve sinned in the garden and God drove them out into a cursed world. It began slowly because there were not many people in the beginning but it has slowly but surely crept onward and upward until our time today. That is not to excuse our condition but to charge us everyone with it’s depravity! It could be and would be worse had not God restrained it by the influence of His Holy Spirit.

We have to remember now, that depravity exists and manifests itself in every new born baby. Most people love babies and I do also but we misread them if we think that they are innocent. They have minds that come into the word influenced in some way by the nature of Adam. Think about this, if a baby wants to be fed what does it do’ It cries, screams, holds it’s breath and makes all kinds of noise until it’s need is met. If it wants it’s diaper changed it goes through the same routine. We don’t normally recognize that the baby is demonstrating it’s Adamic nature but that is exactly what that is. Instead of going away as the baby ages a few months and years, it simply take on a new form. Watch one of these precious little ones grow and you will see it begin to bite, scratch, slap, hit or whatever to get it’s way. That again is a demonstration of the Adamic nature of the child. Since we are speaking of the child here let’s connect it to it’s parents. Why does any child grow up with this kind of nature, this kind of personality’

It is normally because the parents are too busy, too uninterested, uncaring or whatever to provide normally parental discipline to the child, and so it grows meaner and meaner as it ages. That is the problem that we find in our society today. We have allowed a bunch of restless, unaffected, mean and even cold blooded, little criminals to grow up without any guidance from home, school, or church. Much of the blame must go to the home and much more to the church in our society. First the home normally consists of parents who are unregenerate themselves, so a little shop lifting, a little bad conduct at school, a little drinking or drugs is laughed off by too many simple parents. The visible church must answer for never teaching parents how to discipline themselves and their children. We all have the best child rearing book that will ever be written, it is inspired and inerrant, and it’s author created us all so He alone knows what is best for us as we live here on this earth. We can look at what God said to us in Psalms 119:1-4, where God inspired the psalmist to write “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord!

Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, Who seek Him with the whole heart! They also do no iniquity; They walk in His ways. You have commanded us to keep Your precepts diligently.” That my friend is the best instruction that was ever given to man and it tells him that he is not the center of the universe, he is not as smart as he thinks and in fact he knows nothing except what you can teach him. God explains to us about our children, and this does not point out some children, but all children especially yours and mine. God says in Proverbs 22: 15, that “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of correction will drive it far from him.” I can hear so many of the heads full of mush around us today, screeching at me’.no, we will not whip our children. You are not talking to me, you are talking to God because God said that He is born with problem, and it is called a sin nature, and unless you care enough to discipline them you do not love them. That’s what God says to us in Proverbs13:24, where we read this’ “He who spares his rod hates his son, But he who love him disciplines him promptly.” Promptly there really means ‘early’.

If we understand our own condition and the condition of our children at birth, we will begin to read and understand the Word of God and we will begin to discipline our children. I do not believe that God means for us to cane a young baby, but instead we need to begin to demonstrate a godly lifestyle for them and we need to use talk when talk really works but if they do not respond, we escalate to the next step which would be denial of some privilege or their freedom to go when and where they want. But when that fails we resort to the physical application of what God calls the rod of correction. God reminds us in Proverbs 22:6 that if we do what He has commanded parents to do, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” That does not say that we should send him to church on occasions while we remain home, or it does not say that we are to send him to school with the idea that they are to train him up in the way he should go’while at the same time having instructed the school never to lay a hand on him!

One last command from God about our children’.From Proverbs 23:13-14, God says “Do not withhold correction from a child, For if you beat him with a rod, he will not die. You shall beat him with a rod, and deliver his soul from hell.” I am under no illusion that some who read this will ever obey God’s Word; however those who are smart and want to send a child that is prepared and able to survive and be productive into the world, should and will. We bring precious children into this world but they all have a problem which only God and His ways can eradicate, and it behooves us to follow God’s instruction. Disciple is as necessary as the air we breath for without it we have produced an unknown quantity and it could be at best a drag on the society and at the worst could be like a hand grenade thrown into a china shop. God gave children to Adults’.He did not give adults to children in the sense of having children run families.

With that said let’s look at where we begin our journey here on the earth, first we are born (dead in trespass and sin), unable to commune with God. Most people probably never consider that they are born depraved; however Adam’s sin passed to everyone who has ever been born except to Christ who was born without physical union. Adam’s complete or total depravity passed to each of us, corrupting our entire beings, visible and invisible. We like to think of ourselves in a much better state than we actually are, and we have been influenced by popular opinion, to believe that we are better, smarter, more compassionate and good than we actually are. What do you think about dipping water out of the sewer and drinking it’

Can you dip any good water from a festering sewer’ No, and you can get nothing good out of a totally depraved person. Our problem is that we have left God out of the equation and when we see someone do some ‘good deed’, or something that looks good to depraved eyes, we think, Oh, that is good. But it is water dipped from a poisoned stream. A person who has not been saved by the death of Christ, washed by His shed blood, and with a new heart and mind is incapable of doing anything good in the eyes of God. Remember God said that anything that is not done out of faith is sin (Romans 14:23). The unsaved are people who are fleshly and they always cater to the flesh; and that does not simply mean the body that we walk around in, it means everything about us in the fallen state. Galatians chapter 5 furnishes us with a partial list of the things that the flesh goes after and it includes, but is not limited to, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outburst of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like. God goes on to inspire the Apostle Paul to list for us a dire warning about these sinful things; and in verse 21 of Galatians chapter 5, He tells us that “those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

We have been so careless in our understanding of the Bible, that we don’t even understand how absolutely abominable sin really is. We seem to think that if we think something or believe that something that we are doing should be alright with God, we don’t see that as a sin. Doesn’t matter what we think or what we believe about sin, if God has said that we should not do it, and we do it anyway, we are in a lot of trouble with God. Sin has great enormity in the eyes of God and the least sin will always carry with it a just penalty. Sin is the reason that the Son of God, God in the flesh, Jesus Christ went to the cross, because of sin (not His but ours). Sin ‘any sin’.the least of sin, is so enormous that it’s penalty requires us to be separated from our Holy God, to spend eternity in hell fire and all of it’s torment. That is why it frightens me to see people who simply ignore the Word of God and go about their lives, thinking that there is nothing to hinder them doing whatever they want to do.

We invent sin as we go about denying what God makes clear in His Word the Bible. For instance, we have taken the administration of the world away from God, or we act like we could do that, by making a great issue out of Global warming. Certainly, man has things that God has said we should do to keep the planet clean, but we did not create the world or anything in it and we will not be able to destroy the planet. The planet, just as the rest of God’s creation, including you and I, are being kept by God’s power, according to God’s eternal plan. Incidentally, the planet has been scheduled for destruction in the end, but it will be done by God because of sin. God destroyed his creatures in the universal flood that killed everyone except Noah and his wife, and their three sons and their wives, including all of the animals with the exception of those that were aboard the ark. God will destroy the creation in the future because of the sinfulness of sin. (Genesis6:13-17; 2nd Peter 3:7, 10, 12).

Mankind has gotten too big for his britches, to coin a phrase and God will in the end, bring man back to what he was made from and that was the dirt of the earth. God made man from the earth and breathed divine breath into him and almost as soon as man was created and given dominion over much of the rest of creation, God allowed him free will, the freedom to choose, and soon Adam the first man chose to be depraved and to go against the only commandment that God has given him. Now, we know that God is Omniscient (know all things before they happen), so Adam did not surprise God when he sinned. God knew before He created Adam and Eve what they would do and the question always becomes “well, why didn’t God cause Adam and Eve to obey Him’ And the answer is that God had a greater plan which included the sacrifice of His Son for the sins of those who would obey Him by Faith. We cannot explain it or understand it but we know that it is so because we read it from the Word of God. What is the answer to depravity’ God is the answer and God has already answered and told us exactly how we can come away from the depravity of sin and that is by our knowledge of God which exists only in the Bible, and our Faith in His One and Only Son Jesus Christ and His work on the cross.

The Psalms are filled with plans for man to defeat the devil and his plan, to condemn all men and we read in the First Psalm ‘.”Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord and in His law he meditates day and night’.” (Psalms 1:1-2). Rather than study the Word of God and obey it, we steadfastly add to our depravity by willfully sinning and we have raised a group of young kids that have no knowledge of God and who delight in putting down those who sincerely believe in God. If we cared for our children we would be demonstrating and teaching them that what matters most in the world is not how many people they can ‘get over on’, and how much money they can make and how depraved they can act; but what they do with the gift that God has for all those who come to know Him and obey Him.

Until next time,

may God bless and keep you

This is Bro. Bob