Sunday Sermon: No Fear of God (Romans 3:13-18)

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You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.

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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an

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Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series.

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Here is Pastor Gabe. With that last song that we sang, I was reminded of a quote from Thomas Doolittle, the

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Puritan who said the following, death is dreadful to the ungodly because it opens the door into everlasting misery, but it is blessed to all who have been imbued with saving grace because it transports them into everlasting happiness.

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Though we are reading of the bad news here of sin and misery that has come upon man because of our rebellion against God, and we know that the wages of sin is death, yet we still want to keep at the forefront the understanding of the salvation that we have in Christ Jesus, and that though the wages of sin is death, the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our

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Lord. We're in Romans chapter three. I'm reading once again this week verses 10 through 18 in honor of the word of the king.

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Would you please stand? Romans chapter three, beginning in verse 10, the apostle

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Paul writing to the church in Rome, hear the word of the Lord. As it is written, none is righteous, no, not one.

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No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside.

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Together, they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one.

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Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips.

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Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood.

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

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There is no fear of God before their eyes. You may be seated as we pray.

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Heavenly Father, we come to you today desiring to be taught by your spirit through your word, and it is necessary for us to understand the seriousness and the gravity of our sin and what we have committed against a holy

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God, the high king of the universe. For all who have come to faith in Jesus Christ, it was necessary for us to hear this, that all had sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

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We had to know that we needed a savior so that we would look upon Christ as savior, so that we would know what he has saved us from, not just our sin and not just the wages of sin, that is death, but even the wrath of God himself against sin.

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We have been saved from the judgment that we deserve because God himself put on flesh and dwelt among us, because he died on the cross for our sins, taking the wrath of God upon himself and rising again from the dead for our justification so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

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It will be for many unbearable to hear what we must hear, even out of Romans chapter 3, about the totality of the sin that infects us.

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But I pray once again that it just causes us to see all the more the grace of God through our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It's in his name we pray and all God's people said, amen.

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Genesis 6 -5 tells us the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

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And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart.

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And so as you know, as this story goes, God decided to wipe out all of mankind and everything else in a worldwide flood, save for a man named

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Noah and his family because Noah found favor in the eyes of God. After an ark, a bunch of animals, a whole lot of rain and 370 days aboard the smelliest, largest floating barn in the history of man,

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Noah and his three sons and their wives, eight people in all, left the ark and offered sacrifices to God.

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The Lord was pleased with Noah's sacrifice and he put a rainbow in the sky as a covenant sign between God and the earth that he would never again destroy the world in a flood.

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Do you think about that every time you see the rainbow? God's just judgment against sin, but even the goodness of his promise to never destroy the world in this way again.

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But lest anyone think that the flood took care of the problem of man's sinfulness as if man was more wicked before the flood, but since the flood, you know, he's just sort of bad now.

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God said in Genesis 821, I will never again curse the ground because of man for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.

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So before the flood in Genesis six, five, the thoughts of man are only evil continually. And after the flood in Genesis 821, the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.

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What changed about man? Nothing. Though Noah was a righteous man, he was still born in the same sin of his father,

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Adam, and the sinfulness of man continued from birth until death, even unto this day.

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In Psalm 51, five, David said in sin, did my mother conceive me?

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And 58, three, he says, the wicked are estranged from the womb.

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They wander in error from birth. Isaiah 53, six says, all we like sheep have gone astray.

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We have turned everyone to his own way. And Isaiah 64, six says, we have all become like one who is unclean and our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment.

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Ecclesiastes 7, 10 says, surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.

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And Ecclesiastes 9, 3 says, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil and madness is in the hearts while they live.

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And after that, they go to the dead. Paul has spent these first chapters from Romans 118 down to 320, showing that all men are condemned before almighty

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God. Here in these verses, he really brings the point home, showing from the scriptures, from what

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God has said previously, hundreds of years ago, over a thousand years ago, how all are under sin, both

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Jews and Greeks. And I remind you, as I did last week, that he does this in this section for these five reasons.

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Number one, so that we will see the universality of our sin condition, that it affects every single person, that there is no one who doesn't need a savior.

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All need a savior. Number two, so that we will see that this problem is ancient.

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It goes all the way back to the very beginning of man. Paul drawing upon the scriptures that were written before to show us he's not raising any new doctrinal issue.

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He's making the point that has already been made before. Number three, so that we will see that theologically, this argument is nothing new, even theologically.

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Remember that two weeks ago, we read how Paul defended himself against the charge of teaching new heresies, and Paul is saying, no, the scripture has always been quite clear about our problem and who it affects.

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Number four, so that we will see that sin affects every single part of us. That sin is not only universal, it's total, and it's not something that's out there, it's in here.

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There is not any part of us, of you or me, unaffected by sin.

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Finally, though, number five, it's so that ultimately we will see that the only solution to our sin problem and the wages of sin, which is death, is

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Jesus. And though we don't see the gospel here, as I said again, we're building up to that.

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Paul laying out our sinful conditions so that we will see that Christ is the

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Savior and the solution to our problem. This is setting us up. We're hearing the bad news setting us up to hear the goodness of the good news.

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Last week, reading from Romans 3, 10 through 18, this whole section, we considered the universality of our sin as stated in verses 10 through 12.

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Everyone is wicked. There is none who does righteous. No, not one. Today, we will consider how sin affects the whole person, every part of us, understanding how individually we are all totally depraved, according to what we read here in verses 13 to 18.

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And quite literally, Paul refers to the different parts of us that have been corrupted by sin.

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Verse 13, their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive.

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The venom of asps is under their lips. Verse 14, their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.

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Verse 15, their feet are swift to shed blood. And verse 18, there is no fear of God before their eyes.

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So let's begin, first of all, with verse 13, their throat is an open grave.

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And this is a reference to Psalm 5, 9, which says,

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For there is no truth in their mouth. Their inmost self is destruction. Their throat is an open grave.

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They flatter with their tongue. Perhaps you'll remember that Jesus in Matthew chapter 23 referred to the

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Pharisees as whitewashed sepulchers. They were graves, tombs full of dead men's bones.

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They look nice and whitewashed on the outside, but on the inside they were full of death.

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And that's not unique to the Pharisees. We are all dead inside before we come to Christ.

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As also said in Ephesians 2, 1, that everyone before we come to Christ is dead in their trespasses and sins.

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And so our words that we speak bring forth the death that is inside us.

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I quoted from this same Psalm last week, but I quoted verse 5.

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The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all evildoers.

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Now, and I had heard from some of you, I know that it is unsettling to hear that God hates anyone, but my friends,

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I'm just the messenger here. All I am doing is reading to you what the text says, that the holy

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God has revealed to us what he has revealed to us about his disposition.

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Toward unholy people. God hates all evildoers. And again, as we read in Genesis 8, 21, the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.

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It should bother us to hear that God hates sinners. I don't say that to make you go, ah, good,

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God hates sinners. And he doesn't just hate sin itself, but the evil people who sin.

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And that's everyone. And if it disturbs you to hear that, good. If there is any good thing about you today, it's that you were troubled to hear that God hates evildoers.

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The question now is, what are you going to do with that visceral reaction? Are you going to respond to it with denial?

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No, God doesn't hate anyone. Then you disagree with God. And denial does not make you a better person.

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It just makes you an unteachable fool. By the way, that's also in the Word of God. Proverbs 12, 1, whoever rejects correction is stupid.

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Are you going to respond to this by getting angry? Well, then you're angry with God, and that's not a good place to be in.

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Would you point the finger at God and say, how dare you hate me and the people that I love? One of the most popular sermons ever preached on American soil was entitled,

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Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards. You can pull up the sermon on YouTube and listen to it as read by Max McLean, who has actually a much better voice than mine.

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It's not that long of a sermon. It's actually shorter than most of my sermons. So if you want another sermon today that's shorter than this one, you can listen to Sinners in the

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Hands of an Angry God. I know a false teacher in St. Joseph, Missouri, who hated the mere title of this sermon so much that he wrote an entire book criticizing it.

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And I did a review of just his first chapter of the book, which was made available for free online, showing all the places where he twisted

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Scripture to come to the conclusion that people are basically good. Well, he got so mad at me, he did not address any of my arguments.

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He just publicly called me a bunch of bad names. And there was somebody who commented to him, you're really not helping your case, fella.

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We get so mad at hearing that we are sinners deserving of the wrath of God that we try to take sinners out of the hands of an angry

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God and put God into the hands of angry sinners. What your reaction should be to hearing that God hates evildoers is to humble yourself before God.

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To acknowledge that you are such a person who is deserving of this judgment.

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I have sinned against a holy God, and I ask for your forgiveness, which he gives to us in Christ Jesus.

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And as I've quoted to you many times, friends, week after week, 1 John 1, 9, if we ask forgiveness for our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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He's just to forgive us because someone took the penalty for us, and that is

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Christ with his death on the cross. Your priest cannot absolve you. Mother Mary is not mediating for you.

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You must go straight to God, and he will forgive you. I will come back to talking about repentance again before we're finished today, but it should not take until the end of the sermon for you to realize your sin and need for a savior.

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If in hearing me say, God hates all evildoers, you are immediately cut to the heart and compelled to come before Christ.

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Praise God my sermon was especially short today. But I'm not done yet, so hang tight.

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In that last line of verse 13, we have another reference. The venom of asps is under their lips.

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This is from Psalm 140, verse 3. Let me read to you Psalm 140 from the beginning up through verse 3.

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Deliver me, O Lord, from evil men. Preserve me from violent men who plan evil things in their heart and stir up wars continually.

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Verse 3, they make their sharp tongue as a serpent's, and under their lips is the venom of asps.

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Selah. It's fascinating that as David mentions the weapons of these warmongers, he doesn't describe swords and spears and arrows and armed chariots.

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He speaks of their sharp tongues. The worst weapon of one who does evil is their own mouth.

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The hatefulness that is heard in his words. The venom of asps is under his lips, it says.

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The asp or the adder is one of the deadliest serpents in all of nature. Not only is the bite deadly, it is extremely painful.

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And God describes the human mouth as containing venom sacs, inflicting pain and death with our words.

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Perhaps you heard this past week that Val Kilmer, the actor who was known for his role as Doc Holliday in the film

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Tombstone, died of pneumonia from complications that were brought on by the throat cancer that he had battled for years.

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Now, you might think, well, what does this have to do with venom? Under the lips, he died of cancer, of something that we would consider to be natural causes.

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Well, Kilmer was a Christian scientist, a false religion founded by Mary Baker Eddy at the end of the 19th century.

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Eddy referred to God as father -mother and preferred to call him she. The Holy Ghost is

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Christian science, she said, and heaven and hell are just states of mind. Humanity is merely an idea that is perfect, eternal, unlimited, and reflects the divine.

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If you think of yourself as mortal, then you have a distorted view of humanity. Eddy taught that disease and injury and calamity are merely the result of errors in the mind.

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As I remember someone saying to me when I was very young who was explaining to me Christian science, if an adherent of Christian science got hit by a truck, he'd respond by saying, that didn't happen.

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My arm is not over there. My legs are not over there, and they are not sweeping me into this sack.

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Because disease is a state of mind, according to Christian science, it must be treated through spiritual means rather than modern medicine.

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So in keeping with the teaching of his religion, Kilmer refused any of the traditional treatments for cancer and trusted in the spiritual methods of a false religion.

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And when he finally had to admit that wasn't working, it was too late, and he had to get a tracheotomy and lost the use of his vocal cords.

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When he made a cameo appearance in the movie Maverick a few years ago, he merely mouthed his lines, and his son provided his voice.

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He died this past week at the age of 65. Worse yet is to think of what happened to his soul if he had not repented of Christian science.

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This reminded me of a quote from Sinclair Ferguson. Martyrdom will never kill you ultimately, but false teaching certainly will.

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In such a case as this, false teaching had deadly consequences in both the body and the soul. And as I've said to you before, there is doctrine that damns, and there is doctrine that saves.

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But beyond the subject of false teaching are the ways people wound one another with words every day, lies, gossip, slander, cursing, seducing, perversity, deception, manipulation, gaslighting, name -calling, put -downs, threats, making promises and not keeping them, speaking when you should be quiet, being quiet when you should speak.

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I had a husband once tell me about the names his wife would call him, and I didn't believe him until he recorded one of their fighting sessions and played it back for me.

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If someone were to have taken the words that she said to him and put them in a movie script, no one would have believed that to have been a realistic dialogue between two people.

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It was that wicked. Perhaps you've been on the receiving end of words that hurt you so bad you will never forget them.

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And they were so wounding and so memorable in that moment. You can remember the time of day. You remember the smell of the room at that time.

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It's amazing what kind of an impact negative and hurtful words can have upon us.

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I hope this would be something to teach us that we would never want to be on the giving end of such words, knowing just how wounding they can be.

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But unfortunately, I know I've said things to people in the past, people

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I've claimed to love, even, words that inflicted wounds that are still scars to this day.

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And I've attempted to apologize where I can. But regardless, I can only ask that God would have mercy on this sinner for words that I can never take back.

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As James 2 .6 says, the tongue is a fire. It is a world of unrighteousness.

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The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life and set on fire by hell.

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For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind.

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But no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

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With it, we bless our Lord and Father. And with it, we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.

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From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be.

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It is not our tongues that make us evil, though. Not our throat, not our lips.

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What we say is a reflection of what is in the heart. As Jesus said in Matthew 12 .34,

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you brood of vipers, how can you speak good when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

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And so Paul says next in verse 14, their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.

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And this being a reference to Psalm 10 .7. His mouth is full with cursing and deceit and oppression.

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Under his tongue are mischief and iniquity. This is talking about the proud and the arrogant who says in his heart that God will not punish.

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There will not be any consequences for whatever he says. But as Jesus also said in Matthew 12,

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I tell you that on the day of judgment, people will give an account for every careless word they speak.

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Matthew 12 .36. This culture is so perverse with its speech.

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And I hardly have to tell you that. Turn on any show or movie, even shows you like to watch.

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Turn on any talk show, video on YouTube. Scroll through videos on TikTok.

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Watch the way people talk on social media. I read an article. This article was actually several years ago now, but it said that the average

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American utters 80 to 90 curse words every day. I was kind of like, that's all?

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That's about five curse words per waking hour. Now, this article actually wasn't talking about that we are cursing too much.

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The point of the article was that cursing might actually be healthy for you. Maybe we should do it more.

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There is so much swearing out there now. You almost wonder how anyone was able to construct a sentence and say anything without cursing over 40 years ago.

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Brethren, this should not be the way of the believer. And yet I come across even so many preachers today who are trying to find ways that they can drop a swear word or some other crass speech or gesture in a sermon or a video just for shock value.

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If you are of Christ, then you are not of this world. You should not be speaking and gesturing the way the world speaks.

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James tells us if you can't control your tongue, your religion is worthless. Ephesians 4 .29

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is so exhortational here. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, so that it may give grace to those who hear.

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Of course, the cursing mouth reveals a cursed heart, which must be cleansed by Christ if anything good is to come out of such a person.

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Paul devotes the most amount of time here in this section of Romans 3 to the parts of us that generate speech, throat, tongues, lips, mouth, because if there is any part of us that is the most revealing of what is in our hearts, it's right there.

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But he doesn't just stop with our words. So going on to verse 15, their feet are swift to shed blood, in their paths are ruin and misery, the way of peace they have not known.

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Now, in this reference, we go from the Psalms to Isaiah, chapter 59, verses 7 through 8.

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Their feet run to evil, and they are swift to shed innocent blood, their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity, desolation and destruction are in their highways, the way of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in their paths, they have made their roads crooked, no one who treads on them knows peace.

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Every week, when I feel compelled to put into my sermons mentions of sin, for the purpose of you understanding sin and the need for repentance, that I may contrast the filthiness of this world with the beauty of the gospel,

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I wrestle with just how much I should talk about sin. I remember

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D .A. Carson one time talking about how the average Puritan sermon was a whole lot of sin and just a little bit of grace at the end, so that it fills you up with that need for grace, and then he mentions it a little and it shines a light on the whole problem.

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What instances should I talk about whenever I put these sermons together? What current events might help you relate to the point that's being made?

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And just how much detail should I go into? I think deep down we understand just how evil people can be.

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Deep down you probably have an inclination of just how evil you can be. The problem, though, is we like to stuff all of that down and not think about it.

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I mean, we are experts in suppressing this. We've already considered how easy it is to offend someone just by reading

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Psalm 5 -5, God hates all evildoers. We do not want to think about just how bad things really are and just how bad the world can really be.

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We're escapists at heart. We just want to get away from it, give me my own corner that I can go to and ignore all of the madness that's going on out there.

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How unpleasant would everyone's day be if you were just thinking about this all the time? So we put our blinders on, and sometimes we need the blinders taken off every once in a while to remember how bad things really are out there and how bad things really are in here.

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You've probably heard the story in the news that took place this week at a high school track meet in Texas. One student stabbed another student in the chest in the middle of the track meet.

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The wounded student was held in his twin brother's arms as he bled out and died. I won't go into other stories that I've read this week, children being killed by their parents or honest law -abiding citizens being murdered in their own homes.

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But what doesn't paint the headlines every week, though this should be a headline every day, is the murder of 3 ,000 children that continues to happen in this country every single day.

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That's not a broad statistical number. That's one day. 3 ,000 children that are murdered by means of abortion.

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We don't hear in the news about the Christians in Syria, Nigeria, the Dominican Republic or the

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Democratic Republic of Congo and other places who are being rounded up and slaughtered just for being

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Christians. In Syria alone, that number is believed to be over 1 ,800 Christians killed by Islamic militants in just the past few weeks.

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It is seldom talked about just how much divorce brings violence.

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Malachi 2 .16 says, Whoever does not love his wife but divorces her, says the

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Lord, the God of Israel covers his garment with violence. And this is not only what divorce does to one another, the husband and the wife getting a divorce, but it's also what this does to their children and in turn what it does to a culture and to a society.

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We could go on to reflect upon many other atrocities such as sexual immorality, intoxication, addiction, greed, theft, corruption, abuse, any number of other paths wicked people tread upon to afflict others and shed blood for their own satisfaction.

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Some of us work in occupations where you see this kind of wickedness every day.

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We have a few people in here that work in the jail or work in law enforcement. When I was a police chaplain,

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I would do ride -alongs with police officers, and it was astonishing to me the level of wickedness that they have to deal with every single day.

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Some of you have probably lived in some of this, but most of us would like to ignore that any of it is going on.

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I remember an officer friend of mine whose name was Sean, and I worked several cases with him, and there was one case in particular that we worked very, very late at night, 2, 3 o 'clock in the morning, and I won't expound with the gruesome details of what it was.

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But after all of that was done, I even checked on the other officers that were involved in the case, made sure everybody was fine, and then when nobody was watching or paying attention,

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I just quietly snuck out and went to my car. And Sean must have caught that I had snuck out the door.

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This was 3 or 4 o 'clock in the morning or something. And he chased after me, and he caught me, and he said,

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Gabe, I really appreciate you going through my officers and making sure everybody's okay, but I want to make sure you're okay. And he said, have you ever worked a case like that before?

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And I said, not that gruesome, no. And he said, you handled it really well.

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And I said, Sean, I think both you and I are kind of on the same perspective of this.

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You see this stuff on a regular basis and have probably gotten used to it however much a person can get used to seeing such a thing on a regular basis.

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And I said, whereas me, though I don't see it all the time, I'm a student of the

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Word of God, and I read every single day about how wicked man is.

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And so when I see something like this, it's just confirmation of what the

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Word of God has told me about how depraved a man can truly be. And that's not to say that I stand there and look at those people and say, oh, how awful you are.

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But I know the inclinations of my own heart and what I myself would be disposed to do if it were not for God's restraining hand to keep me from worse evils than I've already tried to do.

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Details of all of these things aside, it is necessary for us, my friends, to know that the world is a wicked place.

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It is corrupted by man's sin and our rebellion against God. The way of peace they have not known.

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And finally, verse 18, there is no fear of God before their eyes.

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This is from Psalm 36 that Chris opened with for us today.

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Listen to what it says. Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart. There is no fear of God before his eyes.

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Verse 2, for he flatters himself in his own eyes that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated.

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The evil love that you don't think about how evil evil is.

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They thrive in an environment that ignores evil or wants to think the best of everybody.

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We do not want to think about how evil man is because we don't want to think about how just and holy

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God is. Because when it comes down to it, if you really understand the holiness of God and what that means and how glorious he is, how unstained and perfect he is, then you really understand just how deserving we are of the judgment of God.

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Remember back to verse 11, no one understands, no one seeks for God. No one understands the things of God, nor do they want to understand.

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No one seeks after God. They may want the benefits that God gives, but they do not want

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God himself. They want the gifts, but they don't want the giver. We look around and we see people who are looking for satisfaction and sex or pleasure or money or fame, and we think to ourselves, you know, what they're really looking for is

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God. They just don't know that they're looking for God. No, they are not looking for God.

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They're trying to get away from God. They want the things that God gives, but they don't want the

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God who gives them. They may want peace, but they don't want the prince of peace, the way of peace.

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They have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

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And this, by the way, my friends, is by default. This is our natural state.

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This is the condition of everyone. As we've been going through verses 10 through 18 these last two weeks, we have heard of how everyone is under sin, verses 10 through 12.

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There is none who is righteous, no, not one. And now we have heard how sin affects every single part of us, how we are totally corrupt, verses 13 through 18.

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These verses are at the foundation of the doctrine that we refer to as total depravity or total inability.

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We are so sinful and self -absorbed that if left to ourselves, none of us would come to God through Jesus Christ.

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No one seeks for God. It takes a supernatural, gracious, and merciful intervention of God to get us from our sinful state to himself.

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If, as Romans 1 .17 says, the just shall live by faith, it must be

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God who makes us just, and it must be God who brings us to faith.

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In John 3 .3, Jesus said, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

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You were born a sinner. You must be born again by the Savior. There are many out there who are attempting to justify their sin, and they will say, but I was born this way.

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Jesus said, you must be born again. If you have been born again, you will respond in repentance and faith.

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Repentance is a turning from, and faith is a turning to. So you will turn from your sin, and you will turn to Jesus Christ.

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When Jesus said, repent and believe, that's one action. You turn from, you turn to Jesus Christ.

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The 17th century Puritan Thomas Watson said, Repentance is a spiritual medicine that is made up of six special ingredients.

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Sight of sin, sorrow for sin, confession of sin, shame for sin, hatred of sin, and turning from sin.

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If any one of these is left out, Watson said, repentance loses its virtue.

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Let's go through all six of those once again. So first of all, sight of sin. And now that I have shown you, as we've gone through this text, how disposed we are to want to suppress the reality and the understanding of sin.

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Do you see how important it is for us to see our sin? We have to.

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I know that you would want to believe that you can just tell a person that God loves you, and by that statement, oh

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God loves me, maybe they would be so compelled to believe in God and follow him, but that's not even the way that Jesus and the apostles evangelized.

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In the book of Acts, the word love doesn't even come up one time. Do you realize that? The apostles did not go out with the message of the gospel telling unbelievers,

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God loves you. They went out saying, the judgment of God is upon you.

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Now turn from your sin to Christ. And when they do that, then they know the love of God.

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But you tell a wicked man that God loves him without any knowledge or understanding of his sin or the judgment of God that is upon him, and all he hears is that God approves of me and my sin.

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It is necessary for us to see our sin. We have to have sight of sin.

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That's why Paul starts Romans like this. It's why I've used the Romans road, as it's called, as a method of evangelism.

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You bring a person to an understanding of their sin so that they see I'm worthy of the judgment of God, and then you can say, hey, good news,

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God sent a savior so that you can be saved from the judgment that we all deserve. So number one is sight of sin.

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Number two is sorrow for sin. It's not just enough that we see our sin.

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I mean, you can find unbelievers that will say, everyone's a sinner, right? And when

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I do that evangelism method that's called way of the master, and I will ask somebody, have you ever told lies before, what do you think is the most common answer that I get to that?

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Yeah, doesn't everybody? Right? I mean, even they acknowledge, nobody's perfect.

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We all tell lies. So what's the big deal if I tell lies? So even in showing a person their sin, it doesn't really get them to Christ unless there is a sorrow for that sin.

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Now that is something that neither you nor I have the power to do. We might help a person see their sinful condition, but we can't bring them to a place of sorrow over their sin.

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That is a work that only the Holy Spirit can do. And we would pray and hope that the

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Holy Spirit would do that work in their heart, that they would be grieved over the fact that I have sinned against a holy

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God, like that tax collector that went into the temple and beat his chest and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

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That should be our response. And we should hope that such a sorrow would come upon the person that we pray for and desire that they would come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

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Number three, there must be a confession of sin. It's not just enough to see our sin, it's not just enough to have sorrow over it, but we must confess our sins.

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Because in order to receive that which 1 John 1 -9 promises, the forgiveness for our sins and to be cleansed from all unrighteousness, we have to pay attention to the first part of that verse that says, if you confess your sins, you must acknowledge your sinful state before God.

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To God. And say to Him, God, I am unworthy of your love and your affection, your

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Son, who you've given for me to die for my sin. I'm unworthy of this, and yet you gave it to me.

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Forgive me of my sin. Now, you will not be able in that moment to confess every sin that you've ever done.

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You'd be there for a long time. Here's the wonderful good news related to this.

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On the day that you walk through Heaven's gates to hear your

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Savior say, well done, good and faithful servant, now great is your reward, you will have not perfectly confessed every sin that you have ever done.

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You may not even be knowledgeable of every sin that you've ever done. You won't be. And your

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Savior is going to receive you in anyway. Because it's not about what you did, it's about what

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He did for you. But as we are so inclined in our sorrow and grief over the sin that we have done, let us come boldly before the throne of grace, as the book of Hebrews says, and confess our sin and receive the forgiveness that God only can give.

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Number four, Watson says, there must be a shame for sin. We must be ashamed of our sin.

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Very common, popular tattoo that a lot of guys walk around with inscribed on themselves, no regrets.

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No, my friends, there must be regrets. I regret and I am ashamed of what

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I have done against God and against those people who have been made in God's image.

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There must be a shame for our sin so that in our hearts we may rejoice in the glorious goodness that God gives us in His Son Christ, He who covers our shame.

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His righteousness is described for us in the Scriptures as a garment that clothes us.

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We are clothed in His righteousness. As Jesus said to the church in Laodicea in Revelation chapter 3,

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I charge you to buy from me white garments so that you may be clothed in the righteousness of Christ and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen.

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And if we are going to wear the righteousness of Christ then we must understand the shame that we need

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His righteousness to cover. Number five, Watson said, there must be a hatred of sin.

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We must hate our sin. Why must we hate our sin? So that you won't do it again.

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Paul is even going to get to this in Romans chapter 7. It's one of the verses in Romans that I most relate to.

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Wretched man that I am! Who will save me from this body of death?

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The answer to that question, I'll spoil it before we get there. Another body of death.

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Jesus Christ who died for us. That our sins might be atoned for.

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And knowing now that our sins have been forgiven, that we've been turned from this sinful way to the righteousness of Christ.

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My friends, if you've been clothed in His righteousness, walk not in these sins any longer. Colossians 3, 5, put to death what is earthly in you.

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And putting on the new self, as Paul goes on to say there in Colossians 3, we walk in newness of life in Christ.

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Let us hate our sin and not return to it any longer. Psalm 97, 10,

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O you who love the Lord, hate evil. He preserves the lives of His saints.

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He delivers them from the hand of the wicked. And then number six, Watson says, turning from sin.

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Once again, away from sin and into the righteousness of Christ. So we have sight of sin, there must be sorrow for sin, confession of sin, shame for sin, hatred of sin, turning from sin, and all of this is the quality of repentance for those who have faith in Jesus Christ.

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And it's not just something you did in the beginning, although you certainly did it there, but we continue to do this every day.

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Turning from that which would entice us away from God and walking in the way of Christ.

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In the very beginning of the message today, I started with Genesis and talking about that flood that had wiped out mankind save for Noah and his family upon an ark.

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The Bible tells us that there is a judgment that is coming. Though God had promised He would not destroy the world again in a flood, 2

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Peter chapter 3 says God is going to destroy the world, but this time by fire. And the only salvation from that judgment that the world deserves is faith in Jesus Christ.

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And so my friends, if you love your friends, your family, co -workers, strangers, those you know and don't know and desire to see them saved from the judgment of God, let us in love and in care for their souls show them their sin so that they may see the

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Savior. And I hope that you also have seen the Savior today.

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You've been listening to the preaching of Pastor Gabriel Hughes, a presentation of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.

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For more information about our church, visit our website at ProvidenceCasaGrande .com On behalf of our church family, my name is

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Becky, thanking you for listening. Join us again Monday for more Bible study, when we understand the text.