32 - The Initiation of Sin - Depravity, Part 3

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology, where anything can happen.

You know, before they do show business, they say lights, camera, action. We had lights, camera, dead internet.

Yeah, about, say, four or five minutes before going live. That's kind of when we gather to pray for this show.

Maybe we should have been praying more. Come back and there's no internet. We thought everything was good to go.

I just needed to get wired up with the mic and it didn't work. So, I know there were some that were watching live and they were going, hey, what happened?

Well, thanks Cablevision. So, we quickly had to jump around and move some stuff around.

So, anyway, here we are. Well, we're glad that you are with us.

So, if you're new to our School of Systematic Theology, I should go this way?

This way, okay. I'll get that right eventually. Which way did I turn my head so that the book… Actually, I think if I go like that, it looks much better.

Don't you? See, that's the best I ever looked. So, if you have your syllabus, you can grab that and follow along.

That's what you get when you enroll at the website down there. And you can get one of those syllabuses and follow along with all the notes.

See what it is that we're going to be going over ahead of time and what kind of things we have.

You also have all the fill in the blanks that you'll hear me say. This is the blank to fill in. Those are to help you to remember the stuff.

I mean, the reality is that the more senses that you use in something, the more you're going to retain it.

So, you hear it, you say it, you write it, you see it. You're using more your senses, it's a better chance you're going to retain it.

And that's why we do that, so that you have a better chance of remembering what it is we're trying to teach.

So, okay, that's for those who are paying attention in class. That's true. Someone this week told me that I needed to get glasses.

They weren't paying attention two weeks ago when I said that someone bought me glasses so that I can see.

It's really not that I can't see, because I actually don't need the glasses. It's just that I guess I read too quickly, some say on Facebook.

But, and I post just to see if I can get a totally different distraction on the post.

I mean, who wants to talk about the Hollywood Noah movie? Seriously, there's better things we could talk about.

Anyway, but we are in, if you have your syllabus, we are in book number two of the syllabus.

That's the second book of our four book series of systematic theology.

So, book number two, we are in section number two, section two with the doctrine of sin, the doctrine of sin.

And we are looking specifically this week at lesson number four, still in the initiation of sin, which is how did sin get into the world?

Now, when we looked at this, we mentioned that, oh, that was nice, just as a way of review, we looked at sin's initiation into the universe.

And when we looked at the sin's initiation into the universe, we first mentioned that, oh, cool, that was a neat one.

God is not the initiator. In other words, that God is not the initiator of sin.

And we had several reasons why God would not be the initiator. One was, okay, someone's playing with the slides and having fun.

There's no unrighteousness with God. There's no unrighteousness with God. Another reason was that God cannot do wickedness.

God cannot do any wickedness. We also saw that it can't be God because God hates workers of iniquity.

So, God, He doesn't, that bothers some people, I guess, that God hates workers of iniquity because they think

God loves everyone and, therefore, He must love everybody. But how could

He hate people who do evil? We talked about that when we were looking at it as Satan was the initiator of sin into the universe.

That was the broadest scope. So, we looked at the fact that God made man upright and perfect.

And then we saw that God is holy. Okay, so God was holy.

So, therefore, we saw that Satan was the initiator of sin. Satan was the initiator of sin.

And then after that, we looked last week at the fact that sin's initiation into humanity was through Adam.

He declared good. That's a new one. Okay, we're going to see that one again.

Okay, let's do that one again. Okay, so Adam was declared good. We saw that Adam's temptation was external.

We also saw... Oh, that was neat. We'll do that one again. That Adam's sin was deliberate.

Was deliberate and... Oh, that's cool. I just got Xeroxed. Oh, we lost connection?

Is that... Really? Okay, well, we're still recording now? Okay, well, we're going to keep going then.

I'm told that we're still recording, but we lost connection. We have no idea if this is going on live or not.

But one of the things with this, I do want to spend a little bit of time here on this idea of the deliberate sin.

The reason I want to focus on this is because there are people that get hung up on this notion that somehow they can sin without it being a conscious decision.

Okay, in other words, they sin, but it's not willful. What we have there is that we have a case where there are people...

Typically, you see us in a group of people that are called sinless perfection. And there is a group that we have...

A cult recently that has sprung up that we've been dealing with where people who have...

They've gone off a deep end in some areas. And because of that, they're starting to go further and further along.

And so they're getting into a point of saying that, well, salvation is something that we should be able to recognize.

We should be able to see it in other people based on fruit, which is kind of true.

We can't know for sure if someone's saved, but here's where they end up going. How do you know that you're saved? Well, now they're saying it's based on your fruit.

And what they end up getting to is once you get that your salvation is maintained by your works, where you end up is in the thinking that you can somehow control whether you remain saved.

In other words, they end up teaching that you get saved by grace, but then you maintain it through works.

And often where they have to go, because all of us sin all the time and we're not even aware of it most of the time, how do you reconcile that with people that you can sin?

Because they would say you lost your salvation. What do you do then? You've lost your salvation. Well, what they end up doing is they say, well,

I didn't willingly sin. I didn't willfully sin. This is where what we talked about last week, and I didn't get into it, didn't have the time maybe, but when we talk about sin, we have to understand that all sin is deliberate.

All sin is willful. There's no sin that you didn't will to do. We looked at that a few lessons ago when we talked about what sin is.

Sin is both an attitude and an action. It's not just some action that you did apart from your willingness.

No, you willed to sin every time that you sinned. There is no class of sin that's called a willingness sin, some sin you didn't will to do.

Really, this is a Gnostic thinking. If you don't know what Gnosticism is, in the first century there was this separation that was made in Greek thought between the material world and the immaterial world.

The material world was that which is bad.

That's evil. That's wrong. The material world was that which is good.

Anything spiritual, cool, that's good. Anything not spiritual, anything material, that's bad.

So, that's where Gnosticism got into. Now, where did they go with that? Where they went with that is that people started to argue that they could, and I'm sorry, this is just what was argued in the first century with Christians, some

Christians that got involved in Gnostic thought. The thought was that guys could go into the temple and be with a prostitute.

And their argument was, well, I didn't willingly do it.

My flesh went, but my spirit didn't. So, therefore, it's not sin. That is what the book of 1

John is written about. 1 John is written to answer this dilemma. 1

John is written because it's a case where they're like, well, gee, what do we do with these people?

I mean, it seems like you're saying that we can never sin. I mean, we can't sin.

That's what John seems to be saying. Yeah, he's saying that to people that said, yeah, you can sin, but you can go be with a prostitute, and it's not really sin because your flesh is giving over to it, not your spirit.

As we looked at the makeup of man, we looked at that. If you remember some lessons ago, you can go back and review those lessons.

But if you look at those lessons, you saw that man is not made up of a sinful part being his material part and an unsinful part being his soul.

But he's made of body and soul, but he has a sin nature. Actually, the sin nature would be more tied to the soul or spirit of the person and not necessarily to the body of the person, but the body does do the act.

Think about it. The attitude is probably more of the spirit, and the action is probably more of the body, so both are involved.

But I'm spending the time to say this. There is no sin that is not willful.

All sin is an act of your will. There's not some part of you that's taking over your body and causing you to do things without your will involved.

Every act of sin is willful. So, we said there that all of mankind sinned in Adam.

All of mankind sinned in Adam. That was something else that we looked at last week. And now, for this week, we want to get to...

Drum roll, please. Sin's initiation into the individual.

Into the individual. Well, this is now. So, we started...

Think big picture. We start with the universe. We got a little bit more specific into humanity.

So, Satan brought sin into the universe. Adam brought sin into humanity.

Ooh, there's an individual involved. That's right. You and I. And this we're going to look at as depravity.

Sin's initiation into the individual, and it's known as depravity.

I'm going to grab my notes here and put them here since I was running around crazy before show. I had my notes up here.

Now they're here. Yes, I read the notes, too. You know why? So, I know where the blanks are.

I got in trouble because I forgot to give some of the blanks one class, and it was because I just was going with the class from memory.

So, if you actually see me looking down a lot, it's because I'm usually trying to look at the notes that I have here. See, this is my syllabus.

See, I got a syllabus, too. It's filled in. See, that's what yours should look like. Can we...

Does that come up? Oh, I just gave you the blanks. I shouldn't have done that. Now you can cheat.

It's like having the answers to a quiz before the test. I know. None of you guys ever did things like that in school.

I know. You were good students. You just don't bring your Bibles to class. But, sin's initiation into the individual.

This is a doctrine known as depravity, and I know some of you have suddenly went, Calvinism! Heretic!

Heretic! I understand that. There's probably others of you that went, I didn't say anything about Calvinism, did

I? No. Depravity is a reality. Whether you want to think it's

Calvinism or not, and you want to get into those debates, the reality is that we'll get to those things when we get into the doctrine of salvation.

But remember, I said, these early lessons are important. People jump into this Calvinism or Minionism debate, and you know why they debate it?

They debate it because, quite frankly, they didn't start their theology at the beginning of the class.

They start at salvation. They start debating these things, and it's like, what are you debating?

What are you arguing over when you don't even understand the basics of these things? So much of that whole debate, as we'll see, can be answered if you understand the attributes of God.

I mean, you understand that He's outside of time and He's omniscient. It solves most of the debate. It really does,

I think. And I mean, how could I be wrong? Just saying. All right. So, what we end up with is, we end up looking at this and seeing that there is a notion here of the depravity of human beings.

And I want to spend a little bit of time to discuss this in the area of sin before we get into discussing the doctrine of how we get saved.

Okay? So, let's take a look in the syllabus there.

Let's start with the entrance into depravity.

The entrance into depravity. So, when we look here, we see that since all of mankind sinned in Adam, each individual is born in a state of sinfulness.

That's your blank there, sinfulness. So, we're born in Adam. And because we're born in Adam, we have this sin nature.

And that is something that we have. And as an individual, we're born into a state of sinfulness.

And this brings up the debate that many have. Did we sin because we have a sin nature?

In other words, are we sinners because we have a sin nature? Or do we have a sin nature because we sin?

Or are we sinners because we have a sin nature? Or is it because we sin that we're sinners?

Like, what causes what? Now, there's two different things there. The sin nature, right?

Versus being a sinner. And then the actual sin. So, if it was a chart, it would be two different graphs, right?

So, do we sin because we have a sin nature? Or do we have a sin nature because we sin?

Let's answer that one first. I think that one's a little bit easier. I think that that one's easy because the first one, we sin because we have a sin nature, means that the sin nature is someone we're born with.

We have that from Adam. And because of that, we do these sins. Okay? So, that sin nature makes us the sinner.

Alright? So, the sins that we do are because we have that sin nature.

The latter one, we sin that therefore we have a sin nature, means that we would have gotten a sin nature.

In other words, this one is the doctrine where people argue that we are born spiritually neutral, and we're actually kind of good until we sin, and then we get a sin nature.

Those are people that have an issue with original sin. And so, they argue that it's because we sin that we get a sinful nature.

In other words, when it talks in the Bible, in Romans 3, we have that. Okay. So, let's go to Romans 3. That's a little bit of a lengthy one, but you'll see here that we have sin within us.

It says, Romans 3, 10 -23. As it is written, none is righteous, no, not one.

No one understands. No one seeks after God or for God.

All have turned aside. Together, all have become worthless.

No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive.

The venom of ashes under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood.

In their path, the paths are ruin and misery. And the way of peace they have not known.

There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law.

So that every mouth may be stopped. And that the whole world may be accountable to God.

For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in His sight.

Since through the law comes the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifest apart from the law.

Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

For there is no distraction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Hold that up for a second. I want to go through this and give the argument here. No one is righteous, no, not one.

Now if you look here, it says in verse 12, all have turned aside. Some argue that we're born neutral.

And then because we turn aside, all these other things are now true of us. But that's not the case.

Because what we end up seeing is that we see in David speaking in his mother's womb.

He was conceived in sin. In conception.

Now, some argue that one away by saying, well, David's mother had an adulterous relationship.

Or must have done something that was sinful in conceiving him. Sex before marriage or something.

There's no record of that. Historically, there's no record of that.

There's no record anywhere of anyone believing that, other than people that are trying to get away from this concept that we're born with a sin nature.

That's the only way you get around that. Because that's the key verse to say that at conception we have this sin nature.

And the rest of those things, all those evil things you saw people were doing, is because they have that sin nature.

The issue being is I think that we sin because we have a sin nature.

It's not that we're born neutral. And then we sin and that's what gives us this flesh, this sin nature.

That thing that we have to deal with. Let's put that up again for a second. And look at the end of that.

He talks about the law. He's talking about the law of God.

And in that law, and you see that in verse 21 there, really 22 and 21, but you see there that he talks about the law.

What's he talking about with the law? What he's saying with the law is that the law, where's the law written? The law's written in our heart.

The law's the moral law of God. So we all know, we have a conscience, we know right from wrong. Therefore, what's he saying?

In that verse he says every human being is accountable unto God. Why? Because they knew right from wrong.

They're not excused. I like how my buddy

Si says it. If it was that somehow people don't know about Jesus, that they go to heaven, then we shouldn't send missionaries, we should send wall builders.

Build a wall and protect those people from ever hearing about Jesus. Because once they hear about Jesus, now they're accountable.

That verse there in Romans chapter 3 says that they're accountable because they know about the law.

They know about the law because it was written in their heart. And so it's because of that that they're going to be judged.

Every man is accountable. He's without excuse. So what we see in that verse is really that it's not as some will try to argue that we have a sin nature because we sin.

Now the question is, do we sin because we have a sin nature?

So kind of which came first, the chicken or the egg, right? The cart or the horse? Which is it?

Is it that because we have a sin nature, that's what causes us to sin and make us a sinner?

Or is it that we're sinners, therefore we sin? So are we sinners because we have that sin nature?

That sin nature makes us a sinner? Or we sin and that's what makes us a sinner?

Like what is it? Well, does it really matter? I mean, some people argue over those things, but the reality is all of us sin.

I had this discussion with someone this week and I said, they were like, but what about those children that never sinned?

What child never sinned? I mean, at birth, what is the very first act a child does?

Cries selfishly for milk. Was he doing some willful sin in the womb, he or she?

Probably. Probably those kicks to mom were, hey, I'm uncomfortable here, right?

I mean, could we have been sinning in the womb and we just don't remember what it was like in there?

I don't know. But I would argue that we could have. Why? Because we had a sin nature. And that's what causes us to sin.

So the argument is really what people are trying to do is say, is it our fault? Like did

God make us a sin, give us a sin nature and therefore it's because of God that we sin?

We already addressed that, I hope, when we looked at the reasons why it can't be God as the initiator of sin.

Okay? We sin because we have a sin nature. But we do sin. That sin is not, we can't blame it on the sin nature.

We can't blame it on God and say it's because you cursed us that we sin. No, we are accountable for the sin that we do.

But we do sin. And we are sinners because we sin. But we also have a sin nature.

Okay? I hope that's clear as mud. Let's look at our syllabus now. The passing of Adam's sin into humanity is called the imputation.

Imputation, that's that word there. I'm going to get into that in a moment. The imputation of sin. Okay? Imputation is a bookkeeping term that connotates

God's calculating of one's sin to his or her account. This is the same term that's used when we talk about the doctrine of imputation in 2

Corinthians 5, verse 21. He that knew no sin became sin for us that we might have or be the righteousness of God.

That's the doctrine of imputation. On the other side, the salvation side. So this is the side that Adam's sin,

Adam's act is imputed unto us, accounted unto us as a bookkeeping term.

He's accounted unto us just the same way that Christ's righteousness, and you see this in Romans chapter 5.

We looked at this last class, I believe. Romans 5, 12 and following. Where the righteousness of Adam, sorry, the sinfulness of Adam is imputed unto us, passed on to us, accounted unto us the same way that when we become believers, the righteousness of Christ is accounted unto us.

Same way. We have the righteousness of Christ, but it's not through our acts, it's through Christ's acts, but it's accounted unto us.

If we have time, okay, let me share a little story of where this is used. A famous story, although I don't remember all the actors, because I should have prepared to give you this story, but I didn't think

I would. But I think one of the Caesars, I think it was Augustus, but he was coming to inspect his troops, inspect the army and what was going on, and there was,

I guess, a general who was misappropriating the funds, misusing the funds.

And he was, I think, gambling and buying things, using the government funds, and it was a huge debt, something that was beyond his ability to pay it.

And he was sitting there with the ledgers open, the books are open and here's all the debt that he owes, and he was preparing to take his life.

And I believe, as the story goes, that he actually had a letter where he was explaining why he was going to take his life.

And he was just sobbing, and he was saying goodbye to his wife and family, and basically throwing himself at the

Caesar, because he knew the Caesar was coming to inspect the troops and the books. And rumor has it he got himself drunk, basically so he could take his life, and he's writing this letter, and he passes out, head on the books, and the letter there, and in comes the

Caesar. And he walks in and he opens, he looks at the letter, looks at the books, and in the ledger he writes, debt is paid, accounted unto

Caesar, or something like that. I forget the exact wording, but basically what he was doing, he was imputing, accounting for that debt.

And so he took it upon himself, and now that's his. He's making accounting for it.

It's a bookkeeping term. That debt is now, he's got the account of it.

But that's the idea. It's that we inherited, imputed,

Adam's sin was imputed unto us, and that's what gives us this depravity.

Now, I want to take some time. I should have said this up front, because we probably lost some people once I mentioned the word depravity, and they went, oh no,

I can't have any of that. Let us spend a little bit of a time in an explanation of depravity, okay?

We need to explain this idea of depravity. And the reason we need to explain it is because there is a lot of issues that people have when they talk about depravity.

They suddenly get some ideas in their head, and some wrong ideas that people have, and we need to clarify some of these issues, okay?

So that we know what depravity is, and what it's not. So let's start with what it is not.

Depravity does not mean that an unsaved individual has no disposition nor tendency to do good.

That's your blank there, to do good. Let's look at Romans 2 in verse 14.

When Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law unto themselves, even though they do not have the law.

This means the written law, the books of Moses, the law of Moses. Even though they don't have that law, they do know because they have the law of God written in their heart.

In other words, what this says is that a person who is unsaved can still do morally good things.

He can choose between two moral things, one evil and one good, and choose to do the good.

That is something he can choose to do. Now, the argument then is, but can he do that morally good thing in a way that's pleasing to God?

No, he may do that moral thing and it's still an act of selfishness.

He's still acting selfishly in his goodness, so it's not goodness that will earn him merit with God.

Let's separate those two. We're talking about moral choices, making moral choices, not making salvific choices, being that they save.

So another one is that, not only the first one is that it doesn't mean that he has no disposition to do good.

Second is that it does not mean that he never does anything religious.

That he never does anything religious. Matthew 23 and 23 says, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tied the mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness.

These things you ought to have done without neglecting the others. In other words, what he's saying there is that they do religious things.

I mean, people that are depraved do religious things. They can do good things, they can do religious things.

Next is that it does not mean that they, depravity does not mean that the unsaved individual is as wicked, that's your blank there, as wicked as he possibly could be.

When people talk about total depravity, they think it means that you can't do any good. You do as wicked as you can.

No, not all of us are Hitler, okay? We're not as wicked as we could be.

Second Timothy 13, While evil people and aposters will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

In other words, they go from bad to worse, what was that? They go from bad to worse, being that they have to have been, they're not as wicked as they possibly could be if they go from bad to worse.

And lastly there, it doesn't mean that they will indulge in every kind of sin, that's your blank there, kind.

So in other words, an unsafe person is depraved. It doesn't mean that they can't do good, they can do morally good things, they can do religious things.

It doesn't mean that they're going to be as wicked as they possibly could be and that they do and indulge in every kind of wickedness.

No, okay? So what does it mean?

Okay, here's what it does mean. Depravity does mean that man is completely corrupt and controlled by sin, okay?

Let's look at a whole bunch of verses. We'll just go one after another here. Titus 1 .15

To the pure all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure, but both their minds and their consciences were defiled.

So you see here, it's talking about their minds and consciousness were defiled, their will.

Let's go to 2 Corinthians 7 and 1. For since we have the promises,

Beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of the body and spirit, notice body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.

Let's move on and look at the body is affected by it. The body. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, notice where the sin is, the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness.

Not only that, but as we saw already, that the mind was affected.

In Titus 1 .15 we saw that. Our mind, you can look at Romans 8 .6,

but also the heart. We mentioned this one. No, we didn't mention this one, sorry.

But the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.

Who can understand it? This verse comes in when people say that they don't commit willful sins.

How do they know the sin is not willful? Their heart tells them so. Your heart is deceived.

You can't trust the heart. Most people will agree that our sin affected our body and even our mind maybe.

And our heart could be affected by it. But the last one is the will.

Some people argue our will was not affected by the curse of sin and therefore we can willingly choose

God. Okay, and that's the argument. We're going to get to that. But our will was influenced by sin.

In John 8 .34 it says, Jesus answered them, truly, truly I say unto you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

This is the issue. We're a slave to sin. Our will is given over.

It controls us. It influences more than just influences.

It owns us. That's why we're called slaves to Christ when we become Christians. Because now we're slaves unto

Him. He owns us, not sin any longer. So man is completely corrupted and controlled by sin.

That's what it means. It means every part of what we call man, of the human nature, is affected by sin.

Our body, our mind, our heart, our will, basically body and spirit, both.

Our conscious, everything. It's all affected by sin. It's controlled by it as an unbeliever.

Next point there in your syllabus. By God's standard, there is no spiritual good in the sinner.

The blank there is good. There's no spiritual good in the sinner.

I'm being very specific there. What do I mean? You can't do good works that will earn you, merit you righteousness with Christ.

Okay? In Isaiah, we have all become like one who is unclean and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment that's actually, sorry to describe it this way, in the

Hebrew it means a minstrel rag. We all fade like a leaf and our iniquities are like the wind that take us away.

So what we have there is the fact that all of those righteous things that people are trusting in, all those good works they think are going to earn them heaven, those are actually the most disrespectful things you could have.

I mean, think about it. God died for us as a payment and we say, thanks for doing that, but look at what

I did. That should count more. That's pretty disrespectful when you stand before God and He says, hey, this is what

I did and we say, no, no, no, look at what I did. That should count more than what you did. That's why those righteous works are like filthy rags.

They're not spiritual good. Okay? A sinner cannot do anything to change his preference.

John, I don't know if we're going to have time to read this. Well, okay, let's do it. John, 1

John 1, 8 to chapter 2, verse 2. Sometimes chapter breaks just aren't in good spots, but if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and the word is not in us.

My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the

Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation of our sins and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.

So what you see there in that passage, is that a sinner cannot do anything to change his preference.

A leopard can't change his spots. We in ourselves, no matter how much we will it, this is what it says, we don't have this one, but in John chapter 1, verses 12 and 13, where it says that, it basically gives an argument that salvation is a gift of God.

Okay? And he says that this, we are called the children of God.

You know what? I just want to look it up, because I don't want to misquote it. So, I know we don't have time. Here, I got my time thing here.

Look, we got, what is that? Eight minutes left. Thanks. I have to bring that, otherwise

I get in trouble. And I'm in Romans, not John. It'll take me longer if I can't look it up. You're distracting me.

Ah, I'll tell you. Alright, so he says here, sorry, verse 11.

He came unto his own, to his own people, did not receive him, but all who did receive him, who believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, in other words, not of genealogy.

Just because you're Jewish, you weren't saved. Nor of the will of the flesh, means by the works, okay?

You know, sorry, the will of the flesh by the, yeah, the works, just those things that people are trusting, those righteous works.

Nor by the will of man, in other words, the great desire. Just because I desire it, just because I really want it, doesn't mean it's going to come that way.

What does it say? But of God. It's only by God that we get salvation. It's by God, what he does.

That's how we get that. It's not by our genealogy, it's not by our works, and it's not by our desire, okay?

There's nothing within us that can desire it. That's the whole thing. That means this is how far reaching this depravity, this sin into the individual is.

It affects every part of our makeup. Lastly is that there is no possible means of salvation.

That's your blank there, salvation. There's no possible means of salvation within the depraved sinner.

Let's start with Romans chapter 1 in verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and all ungodliness and all unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

And let's move on to Ephesians 2, 8, 9. Oh, Ephesians 2, 1 first.

And you are dead in your trespasses and sins. And then Ephesians 2, 8, 9. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of your own, it is a gift of God, not of works.

You can also look at Titus, I think it's 3, 5. It's not by our works.

There's no means, as you see in all those verses, there's no means in which you can save yourself, okay?

So the point of all this is to show that depravity is something that affects every part of us.

There's not a part of us that's not affected. We can't somehow work it off, desire it off, or have it by our parents, okay?

No, that's not the way it works, all right? I'm sorry, but it's not.

That's all going to be important when we get into the doctrine of salvation, which is what we're going to start next lesson.

We're going to start looking at the doctrine of salvation. And if you have a syllabus, which you should at this point,

I mean, quick, come on, go online, go there, order one. It's not so bad, you can get one, we'll send it out to you.

If you can't afford it, there's other people that give scholarships. If you can afford it, give a scholarship so others can have, all right?

We're going to look at the Father and salvation. So we're going to actually go through salvation, looking through the Trinity. I know we'll eventually get that whole

Calvinism or Meninism debates. Hold your horses, hang on, we'll explain that. And you guys can all think

I'm a heretic regardless. I mean, someone's going to think I'm a heretic whether they think I'm a Calvinist or they think I'm not a

Calvinist. Either way, I'm going to be a heretic, so it's okay. Because there's someone that's always going to argue that. But I hope you understand this because this is understanding the basis of what we're going to get to when we get into the debates that people are going to argue over.

People are going to make the argument and when we get there, they're going to be arguing because of these things.

And we want to start by understanding some of these things, okay? The issue becomes something where we need to understand how far -reaching sin is.

And it's far -reaching, okay? It influences every part of us.

It controls every part of us, okay? That total part of our makeup, right?

And so if you have any questions, you can email us. Email us at academy at strivingforeternity .org academy at strivingforeternity .org

Real quick, before we go, I do want to mention the Ohio Fire. The Ohio Fire.

It is going to be May this year, 2014. It'll be May 30 and 31st.

Really want to make sure you get there. I will say this. One of the people that we're going to have as a brother of encouragement will be there, okay?

So give away the speakers and different people who will be there and we'll see if that's one of the people.

But Mark Spence will be there. Mark Spence is from Living Waters. He'll be coming and speaking.

The topic is going to be the family. Mark Spence, we're still working on his specific topics.

But Carl Kirby Jr. will be there talking about video games, the danger of video games and some other things related to the family.

You got to, got to, if you are anywhere within 500 miles, drive to the Ohio Fire in the

Columbus, Ohio area May 30 to 31st just for that one message, okay?

You got to hear what he's, the work that Carl has been working on. I will be speaking.

I will be on, dealing with the topic of marriage. The issue is what is marriage?

Who defines marriage? Same -sex marriage, heterosexual marriage, what's the difference?

In other words, we're going to deal with the issue of who has the right to define marriage and why is marriage so important to be defined by God, the religious institution, not the state institution, but the religious institution.

Why is that so important? And why would we, as Christians, be so much against same -sex marriage?

Why is it such a big deal? Come and hear that, alright? That'll be my topic that I'll deal with.

Ryan, who is, Munich, who is from, a state representative for Ohio for Living Waters will be there.

So if you're in the Ohio area and you want to get teamed up with some of the work that they're doing, Living Waters in Ohio, he'll be there.

We're going to have probably the same three evangelism teams that were involved last year so that they'll be involved.

And so who will be the Brother of Encouragement that will be there? Well, we always want you to encourage you to encourage others and this week we want you to encourage

Brother Mark Spence. Now, I found a website that hasn't been updated for like two years that Mark actually owns and it's down there.

So you can go check it out. But you can add Mark on Facebook in the Striving for Eternity group.

It's a good place to become a member. Ask to join there and we have a discussion. We encourage the brothers publicly.

Brothers or Sisters of Encouragement publicly there. We also do it privately. So I encourage you to publicly encourage because that's an encouragement to all of us.

And then also privately encourage him every day this week. Find different ways you can encourage

Mark Spence. Who is Mark Spence? Mark Spence is really the guy who did a lot of the work for 180 and Genius and Noah and God vs.

Evolution vs. God. He does a lot of that video editing. Mark is a dear friend.

I love spending time with him. He's a riot. He's very funny and just loves people to death.

And he's one of the famous things I love. We were walking down the boardwalk in New Jersey.

Mark and I. He was exhausted. I mean so exhausted. He wasn't even speaking clearly.

I mean he was just that exhausted. And he literally was handing people gospel tracts and just going and they were taking the gospel tracts.

I was like, Mark, what did you say? He's like, I don't know. I'm just so tired.

Mark's the only guy I know that can mumble and people will take his gospel tracts. So, encourage

Mark this week. Mark's a great brother. Yeah, I know.

I'm being told that it's now red. Do you see this? This is what I have to deal with. Do you see this? I'm 12 seconds over time.

I'm over time. I know. Some people just can't get over it.

Do you guys mind if I'm over time? Look, it started up. Look, I'm 17 seconds over.

I'm 18 seconds over. I'm 19, 20, 21. Now, okay, I'm wasting time

I'm being told. Do you guys mind if we go over a couple of seconds? I mean, really?

If you do, go to the back of class. I mean, you're a bad student. You're not getting you know, if you really mind that, then

I guess I'm not getting an apple for the teacher from you. Okay. So, we do encourage you though to encourage

Mark this week. Join and be part of the Facebook group. And the you can enroll down here.

And you can join and enroll for the Academy and that way you get the syllabus.

And so, I'm being told. Is that really? Okay, that's Ryan. That's it. I'm being told that he does mind if I go late because he has a radio interview to go to.

Now, what does that mean? So, I'll make up for it by giving a shameless plug for his radio program.

Ryan has a a YouTube channel. No, sorry. A blog radio blog talk radio channel.

I think I forget the name of it though. Christian Witness. Ryan, if you're in the chat room, shoot that in real quick so that they can send it to me and I can announce it.

But if not, you can go find Ryan on Facebook and from there you can get to his his blog his radio blog talk radio.

And so, what's that? Oh, to tell me it was censored?

Okay. I was told that whatever you typed I guess they okay, tell me okay, links are allowed now.

Okay. So, Ryan, if you could post that in again. Okay. They censored it because it was a link.

If you can post that again they can get it. Those in the chat room and then I'll announce it real quick.

So, there's a delay. Okay, there's a delay. So, he probably doesn't know yet that links are allowed now.

Okay. This is what happens when we have technical problems. The technical crew doesn't get everything all lined up set perfectly.

WitnessTalkRadio .org WitnessTalkRadio .org And maybe we'll have

Ryan on to talk about that sometime. So, just encourage you to encourage

Mark Spence this week and next week we will get into that doctrine some of you have been waiting for. The doctrine of salvation.

Make sure you're there for it. And remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.