Preached at Cornerstone Church in Cascade, IA on August 9, 2015

Open your Bibles to Psalm 5. Today we are continuing our journey through the Book of Psalms. Before we begin unpacking our text, let me say something that I have said before, but it is good to remind ourselves of these things. The Bible is God's Word. It was written by God through the instrument of the hands of man. Because the Bible is God's Word, and God does not lie, the Bible is inerrant and infallible, or to say it another way, the Bible is true, and incapable of being untrue.

Many Christians would say Amen to the statement that the Bible is inerrant and infallible, at least until they read certain passages; for there are many text that may run afoul of humanities pre-formed, and wrong ideas of who God is and what are His purposes.

With this in mind we must recognize what the Bible is. It is the infallible and inerrant Word of God that has been given to us, so that we understand who God is what His purpose are. The reason God has given us this book of is to reveal truth about Him and His purposes. So when we read passages in the Bible that we don't like, the problem is not with the Bible, it is with our sinful hearts. We are the ones who must submit to what the Bible says, and not make God submit to us. This is the reason for infallible scripture, to correct our fallible minds.

With this in mind, let us read God's Word with the foundation that it is true, and then ask God to humble our hearts to receive his revelation, and then, and only then will we be able to benefit from the sanctifying Word of our Father.

• Psalm 5 - “To the choirmaster: for the flutes. A Psalm of David.1Give ear to my words, O LORD; consider my groaning. 2Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you do I pray. 3O LORD, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch. 4For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you. 5The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. 6You destroy those who speak lies; the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. 7But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you. 8Lead me, O LORD, in your righteousness because of my enemies; make your way straight before me. 9For there is no truth in their mouth; their inmost self is destruction; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue. 10Make them bear their guilt, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against you. 11But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you. 12For you bless the righteous, O LORD; you cover him with favor as with a shield.”
  
  

A Prayerful Heart

As we can see, Psalm 5 is another Psalm written by King David. Up to this point we have focused on David being God's anointed King of Israel and we have also discussed the sinfulness of David, and its consequences. One thing we haven't talked about is the one thing that is commonly mentioned about David and it is found in 1 Samuel 13:14 and Acts 13:22.

• Acts 13:22 – “And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.’”
  
  

David was a wretched sinner, but he was also a man after God’s heart. How can those two things be simultaneously true? I think some of the answers to this question are found in the book of Psalms, for it is through these Psalms that we have a glimpse into the heart of David as he lays it bear on the table. So what do we see? One thing we see is that David was a man of prayer. We have seen this over the last three Psalms.

• Psalm 3:4 – “I cried aloud to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy hill.”
  
  
• Psalm 4:1 – “Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!”
  
  

In today’s passage we see David praying in the morning. Verse 3 says, “O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.” This sacrifice of David is a sacrifice of prayer. In fact, the Hebrew root word behind “I prepare a sacrifice for you” is the word “arak” which is most commonly used to describe laying out wood for a sacrifice. In fact this same root word is used in Genesis 22:9 when Abraham was called to sacrifice Isaac, “When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order (arak) and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.”

So in the case of David, we see a ritual of morning worship, whereby David lays out His prayers before the Lord in anticipation of communion with him. This picture of morning communion with the Lord through prayer is not one exclusive to David. I love this quote by Martin Luther, “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” And it doesn’t stop with Luther, listen to how Jesus began his day, one that was filled with more stress that we could ever imagine.

• Mark 1:35 – “And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.”
  
  

So if you are stressed, if you are busy, if you are overwhelmed, do not start your day making a “to-do” list. Instead lay out, “arak”, your life before the Lord in prayer. Direct your petitions to Him, and find rest for your weary soul in the Sovereign god.

And when you do pray, do not make it only about the routine, so that it is robotic, whereby you go through the motions. Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:7, “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” Your prayers must come from your heart. They must be authentic, just like David’s. He described his prayer life as one of groanings and cryings.

For me, I find it helpful to picture my children when they come to me with problems. My little Ezra is so precious. She has a heart just like her mother, which I cherish. She will come to me in the midst of her pain and she will be an absolute mess. She buries her face into my chest and just sobs, and I can’t understand a word she says, but my heart breaks for her. Why? Because she is really in pain. And her authentic crying has the capacity to move me into action to care and nurture her, and to give her the love she longs for.

And we likewise, must approach our God in prayer with this type of child like faith. Authentic. Raw. Humble. Dependent. And then when we do, we must likewise by like David and watch for the hand of our Father to move across the tumultuous waves of our lives.

Who are You Praying To?

However, the question rises, do we see God in the same way David sees God? When we pray, do we have the same vision of God as David? My guess is that we do not. My guess is that many of us have created in our mind, not the true understanding of God, but instead a comfortable understanding of God. We have in effect turned the Potter into the clay and molded him to our likings, to our sinful hearts. When we pray we are in effect praying to an idol, not the God who is.

Why would we do this? The simple answer is that we are fallen creatures. Sin has blinded us to the ultimate reality of the Universe, that being, who is God. We cannot see him for who he truly is. However, because we are created in his image, we have a knowledge that he is there, but we suppress the ultimate truth of His glory. It is as if we are in a dark room and we can sense a presence, we know that Someone is there, but we just can't make out who it is.

So if this is true, and it is, how are we to have a true understanding of this God, who we know is there, but cannot see? The answer to this question is revelation. The only way by which we know who we cannot see is by Him revealing himself to us. Once again, imagine yourself in a dark room, and you sense that presence of Someone, so you call out, “Who is there?”. Then out of the darkness you here a response,”I AM, here.” You then say, “Who are you?” The Person then begins to reveal to you, who he is. The only reason you are able to know the person who has been with you in that dark room the entire time is because that Person has chosen to reveal himself to us.

So how does God do this for us? Simple. The revelation of God is the Word of God. This is why the Bible exists. The Word of God is light shining out into the darkness of your life revealing to us who God is. The more you spend in God's Word, the more you will see of God.

John Calvin in his famous work, The institutes of Christian Religion said this about the Word of God, “For as the aged, or those whose sight is defective, when any book, however fair, is set before them, though they perceive that there is something written, are scarcely able to make out two consecutive words, but, when aided by glasses, begin to read distinctly, so Scripture, gathering together the impressions of Deity, which, till then, lay confused in our minds, dissipates the darkness, and shows us the true God clearly.”

So to get back to our original question, how is it possible that we would have a wrong understanding of who God is, the answer is simple, we fail to put on our glasses so that we can see Him who stands before us.

The God in whom David cried out to is described in verse 4-6, “or you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you. 5The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. 6You destroy those who speak lies; the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.”

Is this the God you love? Is this the God you worship? Is this the God you pray to? A God who hates all evildoers? A God abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man? When you approach the Sovereign God of the Universe do you recognize that he does not delight in your wickedness, and cannot dwell with and form of evil? I fear for most of us this God never crosses our mind. Instead when we pray to God, we see God as a funny old grandpa that sees the sin of this earth of silly, funny, inconsequential, or no biggy. Let us be clear, this is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is zealous for righteousness.

The God of the Bible pays out the wage of death for sin, no matter how small that sin is. The God of the Bible is one who killed thousands if not millions of people during the flood for one reason, “

The God of the Bibles is the one who designed and created a little place that we know of as Hell. This place is described as eternal torment, utter darkness, a place that there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And this place exists for one reason only, to be the final destination for angles and people who have sinned against God and stand condemned before him. Let us be clear, Hell was not created to hold sin. It is a place created to hold sinners.

This type of talk makes us feel uncomfortable. We don't like to see God this way, but this is the way David saw God in the morning as he laid his troubles before Him. As he approached God in the morning, the focus of David was on the Holiness of God. It was as if David when walking into the presence of God was like Moses walking up Mount Sinai with its lightning, thunder, clouds, smoke and trumpet calls. It was as if David when approaching God was like Isaiah, in Isaiah 6 when he saw God high and lifted up with Seraphim worshiping him so powerfully that it shook the foundations of the Temple. Who when being in the presence of this awesome God cried out, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5). It was as if David was like Peter in Luke 5:8 that upon seeing the Glory of Christ, “ fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” It was as if David was like Paul who in Romans 7:24 who cries out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”




In my opinion, we, myself included, have a small and distorted view of God and his passion for his Holiness. God is totally serious about his glory. He will not be mocked. If you continue to chose to rebel against the righteous God he does not just hate the sin and love the sinner. He hates the evildoer, and He will not hesitate to send any of us to Hell.




Jonathan Edwards, a man who I will never hold a candle to, but I grow to love more and more as I read his works wrote a famous sermon that is credited to sparking the Great awakening. It is entitled Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. In that sermon he says this: “The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready to string and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.”

This is the God in whom David prayed to. But thankfully for David, and for us, that is only one side of the coin of who God is. For if it was, David, and I, and all of you would have a very painful eternity.

God of Steadfast Love

For God is not just a God who hates evildoers, he is also a God who has steadfast love.

• Psalm 5:7-8 - “But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you. 8Lead me, O LORD, in your righteousness because of my enemies; make your way straight before me.”
  
  

Despite David's adulterous and murderous heart, he was able to enter into the residence of God. He was able to dwell with him, and does so in this very moment as we speak. How is that possible? How can a wretched sinner, and evil doer, a bloodthirsty man ever stand in the presence of a Holy God? The abundance of God's steadfast love.

• John 3:16 - “For God so loved the world,i that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
  
  
• Romans 5:8 - “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
  
  
• Ephesians 2:4 - “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved”
  
  
• 1 John 4:9 - “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.”
  
  

The steadfast love of God is summed up in one name, the name of Jesus Christ. He is the way by which we can enter into the house of our Holy and Awesome Father. It is Christ who is our refuge. He is the one who takes upon himself the wrath that we deserve, it is his blood that drips off the arrow of God's wrath. He is the one in whom we receive the righteousness we need to enter into he Holy of Holies. As Paul says in Romans 7:24-25 - “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

This is how David starts his morning in prayer, dwelling upon the Holiness of God and the abundance of his steadfast love. To say it another way, David begins each morning praying the Gospel to the God of the Gospel. With this understanding, you can start to see how David was a man after God's own heart, not that he was perfect, but that understood that the only means by which he had any chance with a Holy God was to seek refuge behind the shield of God's love.

So what was the effect of this type of mourning prayer? Verse 11, “But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy,” How many times have we seen this? Over and over and over again, God continues to reveal to us that joy springs from the fountain of Jesus Christ. As we stated last week, we spend our days seeking joy in empty things, let us instead have hearts like David and start our morning in prayer dwelling upon the steadfast love of our Lord in the face of Jesus Christ.

This week I heard a quote form John Piper who said some thing to the effect of understanding our depravity is crucial for our joy because every day that we don't wake up in Hell is a good day. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Preached at Cornerstone Church in Cascade, IA on October 19, 2014

Turn in your Bibles to Ephesians 2:1-3. Today I will jump right into reading our text, we will pray, and then we will study the scriptures.

• Ephesians 2:1-3 - “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience-- 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. “
  
  

Today we begin working through the Doctrines of Grace, otherwise known as Calvinism. Up to this point, I have attempted to prepare you for these next five weeks. Two weeks ago I attempted to show through Ephesians 1, one of the most Doctrines of Grace oriented passages in the entire Bible, that God desires us to know these doctrines. God wants us to know His immeasurable greatness when it comes to our salvation. The reason God desires us to know his power in our salvation is because he wants our praise. We saw three times in Ephesians 1 that the product of fruit or knowing God's eternal and specific plan for our salvation is “for the praise of his glory.” God will not share his glory with man, and he wants to set the record straight. If God saves you, then he gets the praise, not you. Thanks be to God.

Last week, I spent 45 minutes basically reading the Bible to you. If my counting is right, I quoted from 16 different books in the Bible, ten Old Testament and six New Testament. In one sense, it was one of the easiest sermons I had written, because it was just cut and paste. However, in another sense it was painstaking because the whole Bible points to the reality that God is sovereign over everything. I had to leave a lot of text on the cutting room floor. The Bible makes it abundantly clear that God is in control of all things, from the dice in Vegas to the hearts the Kings. It is all under his command. The reason for this is that, once again, God has a purpose, His glory.

• Romans 11:36 – “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”
  
  

God creates all things and governs all things, so that he is glorified in all things.

With those two weeks under our belt, whether you are ready of not, we will step into the five points of the Doctrines of Grace: Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints. The easiest ways to remember these is the acronym TULIP. Today I am going to cover the doctrine of Total Depravity.

The Beginning of Sin

Total Depravity is about sin. So let us begin at the beginning of sin. Turn with me Genesis 3:1-6

• Genesis 3:1-6 – “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" 2 And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" 4 But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.“
  
  

Now to be accurate, this is not the beginning of sin, for sin existed in Heaven before it came to earth. Satan is the Father of sin and was the first creature to rebel against God and His Glory. However, that is perhaps another sermon, but once again, the fact that Satan rebelled in Heaven, in my opinion, is another piece of evidence that God is Sovereign and this is all according to His plan, including Satan’s fall. I can find no other way to explain how this is possible apart from God purposefully allowing it so as to display his Glory.

After Satan’s fall, which Jesus speaks about in Luke 10:18, “"I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” Satan shows up in the Soverign Creator’s Garden and tempts Adam and Eve to disobey the Soverign God. Up until this point everything was, according to God, “very good.” The freedom of their will was a freedom from the slavery of sin. In that freedom, Satan tempted Eve and she took the bait. She then offered it to Adam, and he took the bait, and at that moment their eyes were open to good and evil, and they lost their freedom in God and exchanged it for slavery to sin.

The Global Spread of Sin

From that point on, everything changed. No longer was everything “very good.” Everything was very bad. Through the sin of Adam, sin spread everywhere.

• Romans 5:12 – “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—“
  
  

And spread it did. All people born after the fall, which is everyone, are born sinners. We all inherit the disease of sin. David says it very well in Psalm 51:5.

• Psalm 51:5 – “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.”
  
  

The Hebrew word for “iniquity” is `avon. Avon means perversity or depravity. Every person is born depraved, morally corrupt. What does this depravity look like? It is not pretty. Listen to how Paul defines the universal condition of mankind in Romans 3.

• Romans 3:10-20 – “as it is written: "None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God. 12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one." 13 "Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive." "The venom of asps is under their lips." 14 "Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness."15 "Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 in their paths are ruin and misery, 17 and the way of peace they have not known." 18 "There is no fear of God before their eyes." 19 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 the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”
  
  

Did you hear those words? “None righteous” that means zero. No one understands, that means zero. No one seeks God, that means zero. No one does good, that means zero. This message of worldwide depravity is something that the world is completely ignorant of. How many people are posting messages like this on facebook? Hardly anyone. Instead you see videos with young people will cool clothes saying that you are awesome, God loves you because you are so awesome. That is Satan masquerading as an angle of light. The truth is that we are worthless. Jesus doesn't die for you because your awesome, he dies for you because he is awesome, and through his blood and by His Spirit He will make you awesome. There is not one single person that is good. Jesus speaks himself proclaims this.

• Mark 10:18 – “And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.”
  
  

The world is totally depraved. There is no hypothetical “sinless person in Africa”. Everyone is a sinner, and everyone deserves Hell. However, this is not the doctrine of total depravity. The total of total depravity is not speaking of the global spread of sin, but it is speaking to the truth of how completely, and utterly depraved we are as individuals.

The Totality of Sin

If we turn back to Genesis and listen to God’s warning to Adam and Eve about disobeying him, what does he say?

• Genesis 2:16 – “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
  
  

God tells Adam and Eve they will surely die. Did they die? Eventually, yes, they physically die. But God says, “For in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” The day they ate the fruit did they die? No, not physically, but spiritually. When Adam disobeyed God’s word and took of the fruit, something inside him died, His love for God. In this moment Adam sided with Satan. He chose disobedience, not obedience, and his heart became stone.

• Ephesians 2:1-3 – “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience-- 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
  
  

Ephesians 2:1-3 is not talking about Adam. It is talking about everyone on the planet. Verse 3, “the rest of mankind.” What does dead mean? It means dead, no life, no pulse, no heartbeat, completely flat-lined. What can dead people do? Absolutely nothing. Dead people have absolutely no ability to live towards God, to love God. Paul says it again in Ephesians 4:18.

• Ephesians 4:18 – “They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.”
  
  

Dead, disobedient, dark, ignorant, hard hearts. This is the condition of man after the fall, completely dead to God. Let’s go back to Genesis and see how God explains it.

• Genesis 5:5 – “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. “
  
  

The depth of the sinfulness in each person is almost overwhelming in this verse, “every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” EVERY, ONLY, CONTINUALLY…evil. God is not hiding the ball. He is making it abundantly clear, that man is entirely depraved. And in case we don't believe God after one verse, which is just another peive of evidence of our sinfulness, God continues to speak this truth to us throughout the scripture.

• Titus 1:15 – “to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. 16 They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.”
  
  
• Romans 7:18 – “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.”
  
  
• Matthew 7:18 – “A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.“
  
  
• Romans 8:7-8 – “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.“
  
  
• Hebrews 11:6 – “And without faith it is impossible to please him,”
  
  
• Isaiah 64:6 – “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.”
  
  

Apart from Christ, there is only one thing we do, sin. Everything, even what we call “good” is not good. Is this hard to accept? What about all the good things we see unbelievers do? Like building orphanages, and feeding the poor? How can those be sin? This should be easy for us at Cornerstone to answer. We just spent eight months walking through the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus again and again said it is not about what you do on the outside, it is about your heart. What is your motive to what you are doing? Outwardly your actions may conform, but inside, you are not doing them for the reason God created you, His glory. I don't care if you are Mother Theresa, if you are not doing it for the Glory of God, then all of those “good works” will be consumed by fire in the day of judgment. And on top of this, we are so depraved that we are unable to see the beauty of Christ, and give our lives to him. We are like blind people grouping in the dark, never finding the light switch.

• 1 Corinthians 2:14 – “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”
  
  

Because of our sin, we are unable to come to Jesus. We need God to turn on the light so that we can see our sin and see our need for Christ and run to him.

• John 6:44 -  “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”
  
  

Once again, no one means no one. In our sin, we are not able to come to Jesus. This is just like we saw in Romans 3, “no one seeks God.” We need God to give us the ability. This is why Jesus says in John 3

• John 3:3 - “ unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." 
  
  
• John 3:6 - “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. “
  
  

So hopefully you have seen that it is not as if our heart is kind of bad, or needs just a little scrubbing, it is that our hearts are totally bad. Only, evil, continually. Worthless. Hostile. Only bad fruit. Dead. There is nothing that is good in us. We cannot love him, we cannot glory him. We deserve Hell.

The Desperation of Sin and the Praise of God's Glorious Grace

So where does this leave us? Exactly where God wants us, at a point of desperation. I believe that there is one word that sums up our total depravity, wretched. This is one of the most important revelations any person can have. And this is why Satan hates it. Satan does not want you to know that your heart is desperately sick. He wants to drug you with the world's morphine of self-worth. He wants to keep your from the Great Physician. Satan loves to whisper in your ear, you are awesome. Tickling your ears in his hospice for Hell. And I am here today saying, I will not side with Satan. I side with God's Word. I side with Paul who said:

• Romans 7:24-25 - “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! “
  
  

Who can pull us out of the darkness of our sin, God thought Christ. Who can bind up our broken hearts, God through Christ. Who can give us eyes to see and ears to hear, God through Christ. Who is the founder of our faith, God through Christ. I end with God's Words about total depravity and the answer to it.

• Ezekiel 36:26 – “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”
  
  

To the praise of God's glorious grace!