The Verdict on Humanity // Romans 3:9-20

Come on, we're in church. Don't lie. You've seen it. Okay. I mean, I haven't seen that. Well, the main actor who plays Saul, his name is Bob Odenkirk. Okay. And I watched the interview with him recently and, you know, he's rich. He's successful. He's toward the end of his career and they asked him in this interview, who are you jealous of? And I wasn't only surprised by his answer. I was surprised by how quickly he gave the answer. Here's what he said, I'm jealous of dads who still have kids in the home. And he said, I'm jealous because that was the one time in my life. I knew what I was supposed to be doing. Let me ask you, mom and dad, do you know what you're supposed to be doing? Okay. The reason we're having a parenting conference, okay? Don't worry. It's just the last time I'm talking about it because it's this weekend. We've already got like 600 adults, okay? Signed up. We're super pumped about it. Here's the thing. This is kind of the same with marriage, but the problem with parenting is you don't have that many examples, right? Some of you, the only example of parents that you had, unfortunately, were your parents. And they weren't great and it was a broken home. I mean, the amount of people, right? In our church, you know, a lot of new believers, a lot of young believers, a lot of people were turning to church and they're like, uh, no, we never saw a Christian family. We never saw a Christian marriage. We never saw devotionals. We never knew how to have good conversation at dinner. We didn't do repentance and forgiveness. And here's the problem. If you've never experienced it and it's never been explained to you, how are you going to do it? Well, hopefully through building relationships in this church, you will get to experience some Christian hums, but we're taking an entire week and to try to explain what the Bible says about parenting. We're bringing pastor Adam Griffin from Dallas, Texas up here. And here's what I want you to know. I know what you're thinking. Okay. You know, at this parenting conference, we're going to talk a lot about your kids. Actually, not so much. We're going to talk a lot about you. Why are you so anxious, right? It's like we have less kids and bigger homes than any of our ancestors and we're more for some reason, we're way more anxious about parenting. We're going to talk about, you know, how do you deal with a strong will child? Anyone got any of those? Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. We're going to talk about, you know, how do you engage with your kids, which is the principle of the gospel, right? They're not going to come to you as much. You've got to go to them because they won't come to you. We're going to talk

about a lot of things. Here's why, because we don't want you to win at work and to lose at home. And your family is your resume. Your family is your witness to a watching world. And if you're like a mom and dad and you love each other and the kids love each other and they respect you everywhere you go, people will be completely shocked and they'll ask you how it happens. And you'll have the opportunity in that moment not to give a biography but to give a testimony. A biography is about you, a testimony is about God. With that said, it's not too late to sign up. I'm going to pray for us and then welcome if you are a first time guest with us on a baptism Sunday, we are just walking through the book of Romans for an entire year. And today we'll be starting in chapter three verse nine. Let's pray together. Across all our campuses we pray for our parents. Many who just, they have a great longing to be a Christian home and they read verses that say, "Raise your kids in the fear and admonition of the Lord." And then they say, "I want to do that and I don't know how." And we want to be a church that helps with how. And so we pray for all of the parents, whether they are in the little years or they are at the very end and about to send their kids into college. We know the truth is that as it's been said, the days are long but the years are short. And it is such a special and unique time that we have when we have our kids in the home. We pray that you would now bless the teaching of your word in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, there are 8.3 billion people on earth, okay? As of yesterday when I looked, 8.3 billion people on earth. And what's interesting is as soon as you start talking about all the people all over the earth and you think about Africa and China and India and Russia and all these places, everybody, as soon as they start talking about the massive amount of people, even in our nation, what does everyone want to talk about? Diversity, diversity, diversity, diversity. Listen, you can't build a community on diversity. Did you know that? Probably, you don't even know the word community. Community is two words put together. You probably can figure out what they are. Common, unity. Now, we believe in all the good, a moral diversity that there is out there. And we can talk about skin color and language and culture and food and personality, okay? But what I want to do for a second is I want to talk to you about what every person on earth has in common. We only have two things in common. Every person that you'll ever meet every person and every You don't have to turn it to Genesis 1, but here's what you know. What you and I and every person

have in common is that we're made in God's image. This is the exact opposite of you're an accident in atheistic Darwinian evolution tells you the survival of the fittest and all that. Being made in the image of God is the only worldview that says every person, whether able or disabled, rich or poor, white or black has inherent dignity, value, significance and worth. But if you'll turn with me to Genesis chapter 3, it's going to tell us something else that all of us are sinful, that we're sinful by nature and by choice, that you sin because you're a sinner and sin isn't just an action, it's a condition. I'll show you this. Romans chapter 3, verse 9. What then? Paul keeps asking questions. We dealt with 10 questions last week, but now he asks another question. Are we Jews any better off? And what he's talking about is in our status and stamps before God. His answer, no. And it's not just no, not at all. For we've already charged that all, both Greeks, both sorry, both Jews and Greeks are under sin as it is written, none is righteous, no, not one. So Paul's going to explain to us for the rest of this text what it means to be under sin, right? I mean, we're Americans, come on. We don't want to be under anything, right? In fact, we like to say that we're on top of things. When we're doing well, we're on top of things. We don't want to be under things, but I can prove you, prove to you that you're under sin. Try not sinning. You know, you're like, all right, you know, we're always told death and taxes are the two realities of life. No, death, taxes, and that you will sin. Those are the realities of life. And we're under sin, which means literally it's harder to see this in the English. It's a domain. It has dominion. We're citizens of sin. We're prisoners of sin. And then when you know you're under sin because you feel guilty and you feel dirty and you feel enslaved. And those are the three things that sin does. So sin makes you feel guilty and your conscience will condemn you. Sin will make you feel dirty. I've talked to people before. And after they sin, they feel like they need to take a shower. What's that about? Or they need to clean their rooms? Like what? I never, but it is your soul telling your body, your dirty. And then sin enslaves us, right? And the modern word for sin enslaving us is addiction. So here's what we're going to do. For the rest of the time, Paul is going to do the, okay, this is the most, just get ready. This is the most depressing part of Romans. So if you're new, sorry, you know, come back next week. Next week's like all encouraging. It's, it's going to be great. Come back. Okay. But this is really, really depressing because Paul's going to say that we are sinful from our head to our toes. Literally, he's going to start with the

head, go to the heart, talk about the tongue, and end with the feet. So I'm going to read the whole thing to you. Okay, we're just going to just, okay, and by the way, you're going to notice, look at your Bible, verses nine through 20, you're going to be like, they're indented and italicized. It's because Paul is quoting six different Old Testament passages. He's like, I'm not going to tell you anything new right now. He's like, I'm just going to quote all of these Old Testament passages about our sinful condition before God. Here's what he says. Chapter three verse nine, I'll start at the beginning. What then are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we've already charged at all, both Jews and Greeks are understand, as it is written, none is righteous. No, not one. By the way, 13 times, Paul is going to use universal language. So no, not one, all of you, none of you, that kind of stuff. No one understands God. No one seeks for God. All have sin, all have turned aside together. They have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. And then he goes to the mouth. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps are important to pronounce the P. We're going to need to laugh a little bit today, guys. Okay. It's under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. In their past are run in misery. In the way of peace, they have not known. Here it is. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Then Paul summarizes. Now, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped or shut. in the whole world may be held accountable to God for in his sight since through the law comes the knowledge of sin. Now what I love, I've told you this forward, I love how the Bible is the Bible is honest. I think people, especially young people, are tired of hearing that they're okay. They're just tired of it. They're like, quit telling me that I'm a snowflake because I don't feel like a snowflake, you know, and quit writing in my yearbook, never change. Because I need to change.

And what I love about the Bible is that comes in and goes, okay, look, Paul's not trying to label you, he's trying to diagnose you. Paul's like, I'm a doctor, I'm a spiritual doctor, I'm coming in, I'm telling you that every person who ever lived has the same spiritual and legal condition before God. It doesn't mean that every person is equally sinful, okay? Your grandma, think about whoever she is for a second, is not as sinful as Hitler. But we know your grandmother, she's still a sinner, okay? You can't judge how sinful you are by comparing yourself to the nightly news 'cause then you'll feel really good about yourself. You have to compare yourself to a Holy God. With that said, what we're gonna do is, I'm gonna take this apart piece by piece, what I just read to you. And we're gonna ask this question, really? I mean, we really need that, I told you before, a good Bible reader is a confused Bible reader, and we're gonna look at each one of these and go, "Paul, come on." I mean, I always think about modern people, right? We're all modern people. I always think about like a modern secular person reading this and they're like, "This is the exact opposite "of what you're taught your whole life." Secular humanism tells you that you're a good person.

I don't know, this is just a real time moment thing, but there may have been a change in this since I last read about it. But Savannah Guthrie's right, her mother was supposedly kidnapped is what we think right now, we're not sure if they're gonna come back. And I saw what she said recently, she appealed to the kidnappers. And in her statement to the kidnappers, she's hoping it's gonna get heard by them and they're gonna turn to her mother. She said, "We," speaking of her siblings, she said, "We believe in the inherent goodness "of every person, and we believe "that it's never too late to do the right thing." The Bible does not believe in the inherent goodness of every person. What Savannah got through, and I'm not making fun of her sufferings, they're also gonna throw a terrible tragedy. I mean, that sounds great on a hallmark card, but that is not a human condition. Let's take it apart. The first thing that we're told is no one seeks God and no one does good. Look here, no one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together we become worthless, no one does good, not even one. Okay, so let's just, okay, when I say to you, okay,

maybe you're new for a baptism Sunday, you've never been in church or you're de-church, you're on church or whatever. And I say, no one seeks God. And you're like, that's not true. I'm gonna get on chat GPT because there's Mormons and there's Muslims and there's Jews and there's the Buddhists and there's the Hindu, right? And then there's my friend and he's not really, here's the favorite phrase, right? You ready for it? You can finish it. He's not religious, but he's spiritual. And I got this girlfriend and she does yoga and helps her connect to God. And I got this guy and he goes into the woods to hunt and he says, that's how he meets with God. Here's what this means. When it says nobody seeks God, it means nobody seeks the God of the Bible. And nobody seeks the God of the Bible for the right reasons, okay? Let me tell you why people, let me give you other things people seek instead of God. And if you're not paying attention, you might think they're seeking God. They're not seeking the God of the Bible. Here's the first one. They're not seeking the God of the Bible. They're seeking the God of their own imagination.

So there's a guy named Christian Smith. He should look him up sometime. He's like a famous PhD guy and he does all these sociological studies and he did like this decade long study on high schoolers. Maybe middle schoolers too. But this is about 20 years ago. And he was trying to figure out what does the average American high schooler believe about God? So he'd ask a bunch of questions. Well, when he was done with the whole study, he had a phrase to describe what high schoolers, how they view God. But he's like, this phrase is so clunky. And the words are so big that no one's even gonna remember it and I may not even write it down, but he wrote it down and it went viral. Here was the phrase, moralistic, therapeutic, deism. Moralistic, what does that mean? God wants me to be a good person. This is what people think. Therapeutic, God wants me to be happy, deist. God exists, but he's not very involved in my life. Now, you know what's interesting? That American teenagers would say that about God because it's probably how they view their dad. My dad wants me to be a good person. He wants me to be happy.

They're actually seeking the God of their imagination. Some people aren't seeking God. They're seeking spiritual experiences, right? Which is not the same. Meeting God is a spiritual experience. But some people are seeking spiritual experiences. Now we're not against, I'm a big fan, if you know me, of camps, and of retreats, and of conferences, and of mission trips, and of all that kind of stuff. And events and all that. But what happens is a lot of people, they look back to a point in their life, and they had some spiritual experience out of retreat, but it never was fruitful, never bore fruit in their life. It's 'cause it was, they were seeking spiritual experiences, not seeking God. I don't talk about this a lot, but when I was at Duke Divinity, I took some classes. I took some classes at Duke Divinity. It's a long story, and my seminar degree's not from there, but I took some classes while I was there, and it taught me that people aren't seeking God oftentimes, they're seeking knowledge, or they're seeking philosophy. 'Cause I would be in this classroom, and I can't play junior varsity, Holy Spirit. But I think I was one of the only believers in any of my classes at Duke Divinity. And I just couldn't understand. I'm like, these people don't even believe in the Bible, but they're studying the Bible,

but they're not really seeking God, they're just interested in more anthropology and the history of religion, and how people view God. Some people aren't seeking the God of the Bible, they're seeking blessings, or they're seeking God's hand. By the way, this is why people get mad at God when God doesn't answer their prayers, 'cause they're seeking God's hand, not God's heart. What's the old saying? You don't meet somebody until you tell them no? As soon as you tell somebody, tell somebody no, and then you'll meet the real them, whoever they are, okay. And the final one is, a lot of people aren't seeking God, they're seeking a community, or they're seeking a cause to be a part of. I had to learn this, I'll just speak real directly about this for a second. I had to learn, in my years of college ministry, that insecure people will come with you to Christian events, 'cause they have no other friends. And I would have these guys show up, I'm like, I don't think they believe, I don't think they want a relationship with Jesus Christ, I don't think they want to repent of their sins, I don't think they have any friends. And because Christians are uniquely kind, and we want to love people, and we want to welcome the stranger and the least and the last and all that, then you have all these people

that sometimes are in the church, and they're like, this is where I belong, yeah. But you really can't fully belong if you don't believe. Okay, here's what I want you to understand. We don't seek God, God seeks us. You can check me on this, there's not one command. I learned this this week, and I was like, well, there is not one command in the Bible for non-Christians to seek God. Now, I know what you're thinking, you're gonna go back to the Old Testament, seek me while I may be found, that's all God speaking to Israel. He's basically talking to rebellious Israel. Here's what, here, if you only remember one thing I said, this morning, maybe this will be it, God is not lost, you are. People are like, you know, I get it, they sing, you remember that song by the fray? ♪ I found God on the corner of ♪ Okay, you don't, I'm not gonna say it for you, but like you don't understand, but look, God isn't, God isn't like, you know, God lost his cell phone, and you know, he didn't have a flashlight, but I found him. Now, let me explain this, here's what this means. If somebody is seeking God, it's 'cause God's first seeking them. Jesus says this, he says it like this, you probably heard this verse four,

"No one can come to me unless the Father draws him." That's what he's saying. See, I'm gonna give you some new theological words today, but you can learn them because if you can order your vente caramel macchiato, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. If you can order that drink, you can remember these words. Montergism and synergism, synergism says work together. Montergism says one work. God, the picture of us before coming to Christ is not that we're like treading water, but about to fall under, but we're screaming for God to throw us a raft, or, you know, whatever, a lifesaver. It's that we are dead at the bottom of the ocean. And God comes and he seeks after us. Now, here's the thing, once you are Christian, there's tons of commands for you to seek up. Ask and it will be given to you, seek, and you will find knock and the door will be opened. Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and everything else will be added onto you. So let me ask you, Christian in here, are you seeking God? So next time you're doing your Bible recap, next time you're doing your, there's so many different names for it. Devotional, quiet time, Bible reading, you know, personal worship, what if before you did it? This morning, I was in Luke chapter one earlier this morning. This is where I wasn't my pop reading. I just took a moment and I said, "Lord, I want to seek you this morning." What would it look like for you before you did your robbery and I said, "Lord, my heart posture toward you is I'm chasing after you, Lord.

I'm passionate about getting to know you better. What if, and I know it's crazy, and I know you get here late, and the parking lot's full, and you fought with your spouse on the way here. What if you just pulled into the parking lot and just said to your whole family, "Hold on, guys, hold on. Can we just take 30 seconds right now before we walk in here and just remind ourselves that the reason that we're coming to church today is to uniquely seek God together?" It's powerful. So he says, "No one seeks God, but then he says the second thing." And you might go, "Okay, Kyle, because you told me that there's other things people seek, that makes sense." But then the second thing might be even more hard for you to believe, because the second thing says, "No one does good." And you're like, "That's not true. I got this non-Christian neighbor, and she waters my plants when I'm gone." Right? And our best babysitter isn't a believer, and I got a great boss, and he doesn't know the Lord, but he is the best boss ever. In fact, John Calvin wrestled with this. John Calvin was a famous Christian. He wrote a two-volume set called "Institutes of the Christian Religion." Very famous. And he wrestled with this idea, because he's like, he knows history, you know? And he was like, "Man, there's so many great things, and there's so many blessings and resources and inventions and discoveries that non-Christians have made that have benefited humanity." See, it doesn't say that people don't want to be good. We want to be good. In fact, here's what's interesting. I learned this this week as well. So there's a famous, I think he was like a family psychiatrist, family counselor, John Gottman. And in all of his research on social dynamics, here's what he noticed. You're going to know this is true as soon as I say it. For every bad interaction you have with somebody, you have to have five good interactions to make up for it. And so this is why marriage is getting trouble, because you do one thing wrong, and then you try to do one thing right. You go, "Why didn't the one thing right make up more than one thing wrong?" It's because that's not how humans work, unfortunately. This is why if you've ever had a bad first impression with somebody, like you didn't like them, you don't like have one good one and you're like, "Oh, they're not a bad person." You're like, "I need him to do that four more times." See, we want to be seen as a good person so much. Have you heard of slactivism? It's lazy activism, slactivism. And basically they give examples. So it's basically when you change your profile picture to communicate your for the current thing.

You know, if you're new, you know I can't go more than one or two sermons. I'm talking about COVID. Okay, here we go. You're ready. Put your tin foil hat on. Everybody, like overnight with the whole COVID thing has got the COVID-19 smiley thing over them and get the vaccine. I got the vaccine. I'm a good person. I'm for the current thing. And then put the Ukraine flag up. As soon as something happens because you're a good person and you're for the current thing. Here's another thing people love to do online, have selective outrage. But don't be consistent in your outrage. Be selective. Make sure you're a good person and you're for the current thing. See, to be a good person is very hard because in the Bible to be a good person means that your action is good, here's theologians say, inform and in motive. Which is just a way to say outside and inside or external and internal. So, at one level, to be a good person, you know, if you've been raised in a decent home, okay, to be a good person in form in public is not that hard. Okay? It's like, okay, that basically means that my life is conforming externally to God's law on the outside from what people see. What's hard is to have the form and also internally the motive that what I'm, the reason that I'm doing something is because I genuinely want to please God and I genuinely love people. So, I'll tell you a story from my life, okay, and I'm going to lose my reward in heaven for doing this. That's okay. It wasn't a big reward.

A couple months ago, maybe longer than that, I'm at the grocery store with my boys. And I see this guy, he looked rough, looked young, looked rough guy in front of me in line. And he was buying some groceries and he just And I don't do this a lot, so don't think I'm a good person, but I just thought to myself, you know what, I'm gonna buy this guy, his groceries. And I promise, I thought, like part of what I thought was, I'm gonna buy this guy's groceries, 'cause I'm a Christian, and Christians care about the needy, and this guy, God's blessed me, and I can help this guy, I thought that. But here's what else I thought, and my boys will watch me do it. And here's what else I thought, and he doesn't have that many groceries in his grocery cart. (audience laughing) I thought all of that, true story. So then I buy his groceries, and you know, it doesn't always go, I have done this a couple of times. It doesn't always go well. Sometimes people are offended by that. But in this case, it went well. And he was like, "Dude, this isn't back, thank you, "and I needed this." And then he said this, "What do you do for a living?"

I thought, "This is awesome." I was like, "I'm a, I happen to be a pastor." You know, and he's like, and he said, "Oh, he said, what church?" I said, "To a city's church." And this was, he said, "I'm coming this Sunday." And I had two thoughts. I thought, man, this is how the gospel goes forward. You meet people's needs in Jesus' name, and you look for an opportunity to extend hope. I was like, I thought this, this is how the gospel goes forward. And you know what else I thought? Maybe he'll come to church and tell everybody what I did. That way, I don't have to get up on stage and tell everyone what I did. And this guy will just go tell people, they'll think I'm the best, they'll probably think I do this all the time. It's hard to be a good person, okay? I really wanted to do the right thing for the right reason, but sin was there to tempt me as well. Paul starts with our head and our heart. He moves to our tongue. Let me show you this. Here's what it says. Verse 13, "Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips, their mouth is full of curses and bitterness." So he spends a lot of time.

Actually, he spends the most time talking about the tongue. Four different words, right? Lips, mouth, throat, tongue, all for speech. Now, many of us grew up in a time where our parents told us, "Sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you." Okay, that's a lie. And then the first time like some middle score says something mean, you're like, ow! In fact, watch this. Some of you can still remember what your ex said about you five years ago. I have talked to people before, they're mad at what their dad said to them 15 years ago. And you know what the saddest part of that is? Their dad's been dead for 10. See, here's the interesting thing about humans, okay? Much of me is invisible to you and much of you is invisible to me. I mean, I can see you, but I only see you right now. And I only see the front of you, right? And most times I see you apart from your family. And I don't see what you do in private and I don't see your childhood, okay? And so, so much of us, we don't know about each other. And the only, well, one of the only ways that we can take what is invisible and make it visible is through words. And so, you know, the book of James and Proverbs and other places talks a ton about words.

Well, the first thing I want you to see is it says that what we do with our words is we deceive, okay? So let's talk about lying for a second, okay? And that's interesting because when you follow secular people who emphasize childhood development, they'll talk about lying as a strategic moment in growth in the life of your child. It's actually a sign of intellect. Because think about what has to happen for someone to lie, right? You get up in the morning, you're like, there were Oreos out last night and now the Oreos are gone, you know? And my six-year-old, you know, has Oreo dust on her sheets. You know, it's like, okay. And what's interesting though is, and then your six-year-old will tell you that they didn't do it, that, you know, the dog, and here's what they say. Here's what's so amazing about that. When you lie, we all have to do this. And the bigger the lie, the more we have to do this. We have to create a second reality that didn't happen, that we hope is more believable than what really happened. And that's why, like, when your three-year-old lies to you, you're like, you little center. And then you're also like kind of impressed. I'm not gonna let you know that, but wow. But this is why, by the way, a lot of you have young kids. You wanna teach your kids the difference

between secrets and surprises. So you shouldn't lie, tell them that. And then also, we shouldn't keep secrets. Secrets is something that we're never gonna tell anybody. And by the way, that's the reason you judge. That's what pedophiles do. This will be our secret. You'll never tell anybody, it'll just be our secrets. Like, we don't keep secrets. So let's talk about lying because lying is how, let me say it this way, lying is the sin that lets every other sin live. So if you were going to be free from sin, free from your besetting sins, you're going to have to do two things. You're going to have to stop lying to yourself. You're going to have to stop telling yourself your marriage is okay when it's not. You're going to have to stop telling yourself that your teenage daughter is doing well when she isn't. You're going to have to stop telling yourself you're not addicted when you are. You're going to have to start admitting to yourself that you've got to stop saying that you're okay when you're not okay. So that's the first thing. Then you have to tell somebody else. But we don't want to do that because then we'll see that Romans 3 is right and we'll see our unsinfulness. Okay, we need to learn as a church the difference between sharing and truly being vulnerable. So let me share the difference. Here's sharing works really hard right now. It's like what is that? Thanks for your soul vulnerable to share. It's not vulnerable. Here would be the same person being honest. I am so jealous of two of my coworkers. That they keep getting promoted and I don't. And I'm now hoping that they get fired or something. I want to find them doing something wrong so I can tell them. Oh, okay, that's real. Here's here sharing the wife and I are going through a hard time. Well, everybody goes through a hard time. I don't know what that means. Here's here's vulnerable. For the last week, my wife and I have been sleeping in two different bedrooms. And I hate to tell you this, but one of us used the D word last week. And I'm scared. It's like, okay, all of a sudden we got to the place where we're not lying. We're not covering. You don't do that with everybody, but you do that with a few people.

Now, we lie for four reasons. Okay, you may be like, maybe we lie for more, but let me give you the four main reasons. Okay, the first one's kind of silly, but it's true. We lie to be polite. You know, does this dress make me look fat? No, right. I mean, it's just like, you know, do you like my haircut? You know, it's my breath stink. It's like, we lie to be polite. Let's put that aside for a second. Here's the other three reasons we lie. We lie to protect ourselves, right? We lie so that we don't look as bad as we really are. And then they say, I read some stuff on this. There's actually an interesting National Geographic article on this a while ago. And they say about 40% of the time we lie to protect ourselves. It's hard to pull them apart. And about 40% of the time we lie to promote ourselves. You have to understand that some people's entire Instagram account is a lie. It's just like, it's who they wish they were. It's who they want you to think they are. I read something and I'm like, I think this is true. It said the more that a married couple takes pictures of themselves and puts them on social media, the worse their marriages. And I've seen that before. I'm like, someone's life will fall apart on church. I'm like, no, not them. They take selfies together all the time and smile in the pictures. Someone tells us about what's going on with their kids and stuff like that. Not your family. You guys are always on vacation. And everyone always looks so happy in all of your pictures. One of the main ways we promote ourselves is online. We protect ourselves, right? We don't tell the full story. We don't tell our part. We blame somebody who, you know, and the other one is we punish people. Right? This is like the darker part of us with lying. This is why you know, there was a, you know, there was a movement. I don't even know if it lasted really really long. You know, it was a movement. It said, believe all women. I'm going to remember this. It was connected to the MeToo movement. And it's like, well, I wouldn't say believe all women and I wouldn't say believe all men. I mean, we know this from the Duke La Crosse story. Read about that if you've never read about that. Years later, after destroying three Duke La Crosse players reputation, the accuser finally said I lied about the whole thing. But some people are naive. Well, no one would ever lie to get someone else in trouble. It's like, you don't know people.

And I hope you never meet someone level in person because you'll get PTSD real quick. He says that people deceive and then he says that their mouth is full of curses. "Don't worry, Cal. I don't really say those four-letter words, except for when I do, but I don't normally, you know, if I hit my hand, you know, with a hammer or something, but I don't normally, and I don't, and I actually have committed that I don't use the Lord's name in vain." It's like, well, that's exactly what, you know, that's, that's, that's don't curse one-on-one, but this is, so the same person who would say, you know what, I would never say that word. Yes, but you will belittle people, but you will constantly have the conversation after the conversation, but you will use the church prayer chain to gossip. Gossip, by the way, is, is the confession is, I tell people my sins. Gossip is, I tell everybody, everybody else is sins, and there's no easier way for me to look good than make somebody else look bad. This is the rise of cyberbullying. This is slander. This is cancel culture. It's all there. We don't have time to get into it. He moves now from the head and the heart and the mouth to the feet. Let's look here. He says this, "Their feet are swift to shed blood, and their past are in a misery, and the way of peace they have not known." So, all right, in the Bible, feet are the most earthly part of you, right? It's the most creaturely part of you. It's the part of you that touches the earth, but the state, the absolute obvious. Your feet are that which take you places, right? So, you're like, "Okay, I get that, Kyle. That makes sense, and you would know." Well, in that culture, everybody walked everywhere. No one had to work on getting their 10,000 steps. Everyone got their 10,000 steps all the time, because unless you were wealthy, you didn't have an animal to ride, and there is no car, and there is no plane. So, the only way that you get some place is walking. Well, if I said to you today, guys, how would this, this is what I do when I'm reading the Bible, I'm like, "Well, what does this mean for us, because we don't walk many places anymore. What does it mean in our feet? How do we do this?" And if I said, "Well, then how do we today, you know, travel places?" And you would be like, " Kyle, this is so easy. A car, a plane, maybe Uber." That's right, but if you want to know, how do you travel? What is the vehicle on which you travel all over? The answer is your fingers and your thumb online. And as soon as you realize, actually, I'm pretty quick, because what he says here is your feet are swift to do evil. Part of what you realize is, "Wait a second. What I'm doing on a device, it can be in real life, too, understanding it happens." Much more for people today. Most of us

don't travel very far. Most people are like, "We're very sedentary. We work from home. Most you drive is like to pick your kids up." And, you know, how are you swift? By the way, notice part of the human condition is that we're eager to do evil. So what happens is every once in a while, I know all the Christian needs. I know all the Christian lingo. People love to say that they're struggling with sin, because it makes you feel compassionate. I'm just really struggling. Like you're struggling? What if I had a camera there? Let me record actually what happened. No, as soon as your parents left, you opened up the incognito browser. That doesn't sound or look like somebody who's struggling. By the way, it says that what you do with your feet is create paths. Did you see that? You create paths and you create ways. What are the paths and ways today? Your algorithm. Isn't it interesting that modern science, I love when science and psychology and, you know, all that stuff catches up to the Bible. And modern psychology, modern medicine, neurosurgeons, they're now talking about neural pathways in that industry. And what it says is when you do the same thing again and again and again, you create grooves and ruts in your brain and you create neural pathways, you create ways of walking, metaphorically speaking, in your brain that makes it easier for you to do the same thing again, whether it be good or whether it be bad. So Paul's like, guys, here's the thing. There's things we don't do, seek God. There's things that we say that reveal our heart, our words. There are places we go in ways that we are eager to sin that show our depravity. And then he sums it up with this verse at the end. Here's what we'll look at. Verse 18, "There is no fear of God before their eyes." No, that's interesting. At first we're told you don't seek God. Like, okay, you might admit that. I don't seek God. Then he's like, by the way, he begins and ends with God. He says, here's the other thing. We don't fear God. And it's so interesting because I was thinking about how in our culture, there's so much talk. Like there's certain topics every time I talk about it gets quiet in, I know I know I'm hitting a nerve. And anytime we talk about anxiety, anytime we talk about fear, And people were wondering particularly, "Why is that such a big issue among young people? Why is that such a big issue in our generation? Here's why?" Because we now fear everything but God. When you don't fear God, you start to fear everything else. And we live in this strange time where we're afraid of everything. People are afraid of flying. People are afraid of traveling. People are afraid of other people.

People are afraid of all the horrible things that could happen to them in the future. People are afraid of getting sick. And guess what? They don't fear. They don't fear God. You know, and it's a lack of reverence, lack of respect for who God is. You know, and it just shows up. We don't respect police. We don't respect politicians. We don't respect pastors. We don't respect professors. We don't respect parents. It's all that. Here's what's interesting. So I did some research this week. And I was looking into like, "What are signs because I was convinced that we were living in a society that doesn't fear God?" And I was doing some research on like, "What does it look like in a society or a culture not to fear God?" And as much as I don't always love all the therapeutic language, okay? They said there's actually a condition that happens among people when they don't believe in God. And it's called main person syndrome. They clinically diagnose, I don't know if it's clinical diagnosed. That's what they call it now. And it makes sense. When God is no, when there's no God above you, you are the main person in your life. You are the main character, main character syndrome, sorry, not in person syndrome, main character syndrome. Which means I am the most important person that I know. And this is why everyone's like, "I have to find the perfect spouse and I have to get the perfect home. And I have to have the perfect job. And I also have to have a ton of autonomy in my life." But the other interesting thing it said was, in a society that doesn't fear God, there's main character syndrome. That happens at a personal level. And then at a society level, the state takes on theological importance in people's lives. And that makes total sense. When you get rid of the theological, what happens is the political collapses into the theological. And things that were supposed to be somewhat important, politics become unbelievably important, which is why every totalitarian dictator government ever doesn't believe in God. So Paul says, listen, there's no fear of God. And here's the thing, guys, you and I were created to fear God. In fact, it's kind of strange, but sometimes we like to be afraid. You go, that doesn't make any sense. Why do people go see scary movies? It's hard. That's not easy to explain why people see scary movies. Why do you see romantic comedies because you want to fall in love? Why do you see funny movies because you want to laugh, right? Why do you see adventure movies because you're built for adventure and you want to adventure with your life and you don't have one so you watch other people have one? Why do you watch scary movies because you want to be scared but also know you're safe? Why do we ride roller coasters, right? I mean, some of you, it makes no sense.

So where I put this massive vest on, take me 300 feet up the hill and let's go 90 miles an hour. Why? Because you want to be afraid, but you want to know you're safe. You know, fear in awe are cousins. And what happens when you fear something is it becomes big and you become smart. Now, here's what's interesting. A couple of years ago, my family and I, we went for the first time. I had never been to the Grand Canyon. And what's interesting is when you go to the, I can't, yeah, couldn't have showed you a picture. It wouldn't matter. You've got to go there. What's weird about the Grand Canyon or any of these things that you do when you stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon and you see it. It's involuntary. You feel awe. And here's what someone said, when you stand in front of the Grand Canyon, you feel small and that feels good. Paul lays out this courtroom case and look how he ends in verse 19. Here's what he says. Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who were under the law so that every mouth may be stopped in the whole world may be accountable to God. Here's what Paul says. Paul says, the reason that I'm doing all this and I'm telling you what God's word says is so that you will shut your mouth. Let's see saying, he's saying the purpose of the law of God is to shut every person's mouth. Now, why basically to silence you? Now, it's interesting. Microsoft built a silent room years ago. It's the most silent place on earth. They say, I don't know how they did it. Okay. But you go, you go inside of this room. They say, no one can stand to be in the room for more than 45 minutes. Cause you go in there alone and they say, after And then you're in there for a couple more minutes and you start to notice your own breathing and your lungs and your... And then they said, I don't know how all this works. And then they said, your ears start to ring and here was our observation. When you go into a silent room, you become the noise. And what happens is, you know, why are we silent, right? We're silent when we need to think.

We're silent when we're in awe. Sometimes I remember going to see the past of the Christ, the movie ends and the whole... I've never seen anything like this before. The whole movie theater, no one leaves. No one talks to each other. We just sat there in awe, but also you're silent when you're under conviction. I want to end with a holy hush. Let me read you from Revelation 8. Look at this, Revelation 8.1. When the lamb opened the seventh seal, so I won't get in all this, but there were six seals before this. They were war and famine and plague. And the seventh seal, seven is a number of completion. This is the final seal. This is a picture of what's going to happen in heaven at Judgment Day. The final seal was God's judgment. Here's what it says. When the lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about a half an hour. Here's what it says, when God judges the earth, even the angels are silent. Even the perfect, holy angels don't know what to say. How much more? See, Paul ends in verse 20. Let me show you this. Verse 20, Paul ends with this.

For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight since through the law comes the knowledge of sin. Next week we get to the good news, but Paul ends and he says, here's what happens. He says, the law points the finger, and you know what it does? It silences you. And then he says, grace in the gospel extends the hand. Let me say it another way. You have to be found out before you can be found by the Father. You have to be found out. You gotta go, it was me. You caught me God. And he goes, I caught you, and I'm also seeking you. This is the story of the prodigal son. This is the story of coming home to the Father. See, when you understand the gospel, you realize, wait a second, our brains are broken, but you know what? We now can have the mind of Christ. We can be transformed by the renewing of our mind. You can be honest about who you are. Yeah, I've got a sinful heart, and Jesus says, you know what, I wanna take that heart of stone, and I wanna give you a heart of flesh. And as soon as you can admit, my feet run to evil, Jesus says, well, how about I call your feet beautiful, and how about I now use them to share the good news? So here's what I wanna do.

In just a minute, we're gonna actually even just cut the keys, the piano even out of all of our campuses. And all of our campuses, I just want you to take 30 seconds, and I want you to be silent. Now here's what sociologists tell us, things get awkward after four seconds of silence. The average modern person can't handle four seconds of no one talking because it gets loud on the inside. I wanna give you 30 seconds, and I want you to understand three things. One, you're made in God's image. Two, you are sinful by nature and choice. But three, God is seeking you in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and because of what he has done, we don't just have to point the finger, God in Christ extends the hand. Let's be silent for about 30 seconds, and I'll pray for us. (gentle music) (gentle music) For some of us, that might have been the longest. We have been silent, and nobody else or nothing else was making noise around us, Lord. The Bible says, "Be still and know that I am God." Lord, we're about to go from silence to singing. Because we do need to be silent as we are shocked by our sin, as we repent.

But then we must sing the great truths of the gospel, and we must celebrate the changed lives and baptism. That's what we're gonna do. We're gonna do it for your glory and our good. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. You can stand. (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]