The Road Most Traveled

Sin has ruined men. Sin has ruined women.

It's even ruined angels. Sin has occasioned every tear of sorrow, every sigh of grief, every pang of agony. Sin has withered everything that is fair, blasted everything that is good, made bitter everything that is sweet. Sin has dug every grave, built every coffin, woven every shroud, and enlarged every cemetery that the world has ever seen. Sin is a universal and terrible reality. Nobody listening to my voice today is immune from the effects of sin, and everyone listening to my voice is a sinner.

If you are traveling through an unfamiliar place, the wisest thing might be to stick to the main roads and the most well-traveled paths. But when it comes to living for Jesus Christ, that's not the best advice. Living for Jesus doesn't mean that you follow the path that most people are on, because that's likely the path of sin. Instead, we follow Jesus in obedience.

Here's Stephen Davey with a message called The Road Most Traveled. We have been studying Paul's description of mankind in Romans chapter 3, and we come to the end of it today. We have learned what it means when we talk about the depravity of mankind. Depravity is a word that simply means wretched, ruined, sinful, degenerate.

Webster years ago summed up very well the meaning of the word, at least in the English language, as he defined it, as wicked perversion. The evil condition of the heart of fallen, sinful mankind has been exposed, as Paul has written in chapter 3, verse 10, there is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands that is spiritual things. There is none who seeks after God. It is God who seeks after fallen man.

All have turned aside together. Mankind has become useless, the word for spoiled milk. This is the evil condition of mankind. Then he goes on and he has described the evil communication of man. Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving.

The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. And now finally Paul concludes he's inspired the unflattering, truthful description of mankind by focusing on the evil chaos. We have the evil condition, the evil communication, and now the evil chaos brought about by sinful humanity. The purpose of this description, this awful description of the wretchedness and sinfulness of mankind is to reveal the absolute inability of mankind to save himself, the inability of anybody to ever think they could ever stand before God and say, I have equalized the balance, the scale between good and evil. Let me in.

I deserve to be there. It isn't so much that we have done sinful things. It is that we are sinful creatures. It isn't so much that we have had evil thoughts. It is that we are evil in our hearts. This description was given to us from God to show why a savior would in fact need to pay the incredible penalty of the immensity of our sinfulness. There's no way we could ever pay for the immensity of our sin and depravity. We could never add a few good things on this side and hope that somehow we would balance it all out.

We could never pay. According to a press report I read some time ago, Matthew Boya from Benai, West Africa was innocently practicing his golf swing adjacent to the Benai Air Force base with one errant shot. He destroyed the country's small but entire air force.

Here's how it happened. He was hitting golf balls in an adjacent field when one of his shots sliced toward the runway. The ball hit a bird in midair and killed it. The bird dropped onto the windshield of a small plane which was speeding down the runway preparing to lift off.

The pilot was so shocked by the bird hitting his windshield that he momentarily lost control of his little plane and plowed into the four shiny Mirage jets and destroyed the entire air force of this small country in West Africa. Officials caught Matthew and jailed him for hooliganism. They refused to give him a trial. In fact, they're demanding that Matthew Boya reimburse his country since they don't have the money in their treasury. The cost is $40 million. And since Matthew makes $275 a year, the report estimates it will take him 145,000 years to pay it all back.

No way. He could try. And the country could keep him locked up. There's no way to pay the immensity of that.

$40 million. My friend, what a great illustration of humanity who would ever think they could pay the penalty of all their sin before just and holy God. Paul is driving toward that point. He'll say it clearly in Romans 3, 19, the middle part, that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God. He's driving us toward that point, that every mouth will be closed. No one will one day stand before God the judge and say, you forgot something.

There are two or three things you've overlooked. Every mouth will be closed and all the world accountable to a holy God. Like a prosecuting attorney, the Apostle Paul in verses 10 to 12 has described who we are. Then in verses 13 to 14, he has described what we say. Now in this latter part of this description, he will deliver the final evidence of mankind's sinfulness as he describes what we do.

Four very short yet powerful inspired phrases that will pull off whatever remains of a mask and reveal the human heart for what it truly is. Totally corrupted. Totally depraved. And when we say we are totally depraved, again remember that doesn't mean that all of us are acting as badly as we could all act. It simply means that we are all capable of acting as evil and wickedly as we would want because we are all corrupted in every part of us and in need of a redeemer. An unbelieving psychologist even wrote, all the old primitive sins are not dead.

They are just crouching in the dark corners of our modern hearts, still there as ghastly as ever. What Paul is about to describe as he describes the human race is that some are of course openly corrupted but all, that is his point, is inwardly corrupted with sin that is crouching in the corners of our hearts and simply waiting for the moment, for the excuse to act. If you'll take your Bibles and turn, if you're not already there, to Romans chapter 3, let's look at the completed portion of this final paragraph. First of all, the inspired description of the evil chaos of mankind. Paul will declare that mankind is callously unconcerned about life.

Verse 15 he writes, their feet are swift to shed blood. Whether we want to admit it or not, we live in a world of violence. Our world is bathed with blood. By 1900, even in our country there was only one murder for every 100,000 people but by 1974 it had risen to one out of every 10,000 people. Violence has become a way of life. We are inundated by it.

We are even entertained by it. By the time the average child reaches 12 years of age he will have watched more than 13,000 hours of television which is twice the time he spends in school. In those hours of television he will have seen 14,000 violent deaths, 100,000 violent crimes, one every eight minutes.

There will be more than 70,000 assaults against teachers in our school system. Our culture of violence has led one college president to describe ours as a culture of death. He editorialized in World Magazine with the following illustration he wrote on June 6, 1997, Melissa Drexler killed her baby. The Aberdeen, New Jersey teenager was at her high school prom when the pains of her contractions became strong enough to force her into the bathroom where she gave birth to a son. She took her child, wrapped him in a garbage bag and tossed him.

Returning to the dance floor she picked up where she left off. Her case is not unique. The number of murders of children less than one week old has increased by 92% over the last 25 years.

Why not? This article, an author went on to say even the Washington Post seemed to prophesy that, quote, the acceptance of abortion would lead to a profound moral shift in our culture, a great devaluing of human life. If you don't know it by now, that profound shift in the value of life is in full swing.

It has in fact turned upside down. Today in our country it is illegal to crush the egg of an eagle, but it is legal to crush an unborn child in the womb of its mother. But even abortion is a symptom. It is not the cause of this devaluation of life. The devaluation of human life has been taught for several generations now to a generation or two of those who have heard something other than the biblical view of creationism as it has been replaced with the theory of evolution. The resulting loss of the value of human life was recently articulated by James Rachel, an unbelieving professor of philosophy at the University of Alabama. He claimed that because of the theory of Darwin, which he believed in, he said, quote, we can no longer think of ourselves as occupying a special place in the world.

Instead, we must realize that we are working blindly and without purpose. We are products of the same evolutionary forces that shaped the rest of the animal kingdom. In other words, we're just another mammal. We're just another animal.

And so that logic flows to its bitter and its violent end. Since animals can kill their offspring, so humans should. Since animals will mate indiscriminately with other animals, so should humans be able to do so.

Since animals kill one another for a variety of reasons, why can't humans? Several generations now have officially and resolutely ignored creation as God's handiwork that only the human race was breathed into with this nefesh, this eternal soul. Genesis 1 27, God created the animal kingdom with the waving of his hand and immediately herds and flocks appeared. But one man breathing into him, this eternal nefesh, his soul, he became an eternal soul. Genesis 1 27, the Bible also tells us that man is more valuable than an animal. Matthew 10 31, that the worth of a human soul is greater than all the physical world.

If he took all the physical world, nature and all of creation and measured against one soul, the gospel quotes Jesus Christ as saying that one soul is worth everything else outside the human race. Ultimately, because these truths have been abandoned, we now have a culture of violence. Life no longer has value. The aged are killed upon request and the unborn.

We are moving to the day of the deformed and the mentally handicapped. You can pick up an advertisement in our saturated culture of violence. Just pick up an ad from a video game like Mortal Kombat and read the ad. Have you ever killed anyone with a chainsaw? Do you want to? When high school students in Jonesboro, Arkansas were told of the shootings at a nearby school, many of them laughed.

You pick up the latest newspaper and watch what adults are doing. Our growing culture of violence and death continues to amaze us. A nurse's aide faces murder charges. A nurse's aide hit a homeless man named Gregory Biggs, age 37, with her car. She continued driving home. He was stuck headfirst in her broken windshield.

She ignored his cries for help as he bled to death in her garage. According to the report, Ms. Mallard said she'd been taking the drug ecstasy and drinking that night the victim was hit. The impact hurled him headfirst through the windshield, leaving his broken legs protruding onto the hood. With Biggs still lodged in the windshield, Mallard panicked and drove a few miles to her Fort Worth home. This article says, parked her car in the garage and lowered the door as Biggs pleaded for help. According to the arrest warrant, Mallard waited a couple of days for Biggs to die before two friends removed his body and dumped it. Ms. Mallard said she planned to burn the car and purchase a new one after she received her income tax refund.

Sherry Orr, who lived across the street from Mallard and occasionally a visitor, described her as a nice woman who kept her lawn neatly manicured and could often be seen dressed for church on Sundays. The prosecuting attorney said, I'm going to have to come up with a new word. Indifferent isn't enough. Cruel isn't enough. Heartless? Inhumane?

Maybe we've just redefined inhumanity. Several times Ms. Mallard actually went out into the garage and apologized to the man but did nothing to help. Why? Because she'd be found out to be a drug user? Because she would have faced charges of driving under the influence? Because she'd face criminal charges because it could tarnish her career?

Because she could perhaps lose her job and her reputation perhaps? Some of that, maybe all of that, summed up in her heart and out of her panic and fear and her pride, it turned her from being just a nurse who went to church on Sunday into a physical murderer. Ladies and gentlemen, the apostle Paul pulls off the mask and says that the capability of murder resides in every human heart. From the first crime recorded in scripture, which was murder, one brother killing another, to the latest article in the newspaper, the capability is within us all. Just change the circumstances. Just apply enough pressure.

Just alter the conditions. Add enough selfish motive and pride and maybe fear and the world will only record one more episode in the murderous ability of the human heart. And what's the ultimate reason for man's violence? God has been abandoned, my friend, and he has ignored humanity as answerable to no one. And so Dostoevsky was right when he wrote, if God does not exist, everything is permissible. Everything is permissible without a holy, righteous God before whom men believe they are accountable.

Get rid of him and anything is permissible. The second thing Paul reveals about the evil chaos of mankind is that mankind is destructively unharmonious. Verse 16 records destruction and misery are in their paths. Destruction is what you do to others.

Misery is what you bring upon yourself. Paul is referring here to the wreckage of human relationships. The word destruction is actually a rare compound Greek word, centrima, which put together means to crush up, to grind up in the hands.

In other words, Paul is saying that the hands of mankind are destructive, that mankind crushes things. He breaks things with his life. He breaks his word. He breaks his vow. He destroys relationships. He climbs over and crushes people on his way. He fractures hearts. Man grows tired of his toys. He wearies of his responsibilities and his commitments. The thrill of sin needs new adventure, new experimentation.

His pride and selfishness needs new avenues to satiate his appetite for sin. The heart of man apart from God is this. In a Wall Street Journal article somebody gave me that published the news of the recent Valentine's Day in England, they had a record number of Valentines sent, which sounds good until you read further. It wasn't good for marriages. In fact, the survey conducted by the British found that 13 percent of married men and 11 percent of married women were sending Valentines to somebody other than their spouse. They have dubbed them unfaithful Valentines.

For people living in London alone, unfaithful Valentines jumped to nearly one card out of every seven cards mailed. I had an individual come to see me a few days ago, doesn't attend our church, did years ago. I listened to his story. He had been through a series of life changing tragedies including bankruptcy, divorce, now the inability to see his grown children. He suffered on two separate occasions a complete emotional breakdown.

At one point after having been to doctor after doctor, having been on every possible medication, he said at one point 30 different ones. His doctor said, what am I going to give you? And he said to him rather tongue in cheek, do you have a pill for a broken heart?

Do you need that pill today? If we could see your heart for what it is, have you caused it in the lives of others? If the record were told, what fractured lives we can live, what devastating sorrow brought about by sin.

An old preacher who is now with the Lord named R.G. Lee once wrote it this way, sin has ruined men. Sin has ruined women.

It's even ruined angels. Sin has occasioned every tear of sorrow, every sigh of grief, every pang of agony. Sin has withered everything that is fair, blasted everything that is good, made bitter everything that is sweet. Sin has dug every grave built, every coffin woven, every shroud and enlarged every cemetery that the world has ever seen.

It's true. Paul goes on to add in verse 16, not only is destruction on this path, but he says misery is on this path. Destruction and misery are on the broad path. Mankind goes after what he wants, he gets it, but then guess what? He's miserable. He pursues his sin and then guess what?

He pillows his head and he is miserable. They are not only miserable and they cast their misery upon one another, but they are personally rewarded with misery. I love the way James Dobson put it when he wrote, the grass on the other side of the fence is not really any greener.

In fact, it's often not even edible. Isn't that true? What destruction and misery lie along the path of sinful humanity? Is it any surprise that Paul would follow that descriptive phrase up with the very next one in verse 17? And the path of peace have they not known? Mankind is callously unconcerned. Mankind is destructively unharmonious.

Now here mankind is inevitably unfulfilled. This is the path that is taking people away from God. Jesus Christ called it the broad path and many there be that find it.

This is the road most traveled and it leads to final judgment. There are three kinds of peace that will never be found on this path of sin. Number one, peace with God. Number two, peace with others. And number three, peace with ourselves. Peace with God isn't on this path because you can only have peace with God through Jesus Christ. In fact, if you look a page or two over, you'll find in Romans chapter five verse one, therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, you do not have peace with God. You might think you have it, but you don't.

You are self-deceived. It comes through faith in Christ. Peace with others. Peace with ourselves comes again, not from ourselves, but comes outside of ourselves from God through his spirit. In fact, by submitting to the Holy Spirit, we discover the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, and what? Peace. It isn't something the human heart can manufacture. It is only that which God's spirit can produce in the heart that is submitted to him.

Try all you want. You pillow your head tonight and it will be without peace apart from Christ. It's interesting to me that God invites troubled mankind with the promise of rest and peace. Listen, as Isaiah quotes the word of our Lord, God says, I have seen man's ways, but I will heal him. I will lead him and restore comfort to him, creating praise, peace to him who is far and to him who is near. I will heal him. Does your heart need healing today? He goes on to say, but the wicked are like the raging tossing sea for it cannot be still or quiet.

Its waters toss up refuse and mud. There is no peace, says my God for the wicked. Isaiah 57, 18 to 21. Isaiah was also the same prophet who unmistakably introduced the Messiah with these wonderful words. For a child will be born to us, a son will be given and the government will rest upon his shoulders and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9, 6. You want peace today, my friend? You need the Prince of Peace to take the throne in the castle of your heart.

Well, what does the world do with this invitation? Can you imagine the world saying, no, I want my misery. I want to continue destroying relationships.

I want to keep breaking my word. I don't want to submit to the one who gives love and joy and peace. Can you imagine the world would ever say, no, thanks, I'd rather walk the path most traveled and have these as the benefits of my stubbornness.

It's exactly what the world does. For Paul says in verse 18, there is no fear of God before their eyes. There's no respect.

There's no trust. There's no loyalty, no deference, no awe, no worship of God from the unbeliever. The unbeliever is afraid of a lot of things, but not afraid of God. That's why an actor like Burt Reynolds, who was recently asked in an interview that I read about, he was asked what he would say to God in the afterlife. He responded in typical bravado.

He said, I would say to God, I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, but you've made more. Man fears other men, but not the sovereign ruler of all men. Man fears natural disaster, but he doesn't fear the creator of nature. Man fears the future, but not the designer of eternal life. Man is afraid of death, but he doesn't fear the one who conquered it. Man fears exposure of sin to others, but he doesn't fear the supreme judge before whom he will one day stand. Man is afraid of eternity, but not the architect of heaven and hell. There is no fear of God before their eyes. So they reject him. They have nothing to do with him. The heart of mankind will pursue his way and one day pay the awful price.

I remember reading some time ago an article published in Moody Monthly. It was about an event that occurred in Chicago, which is where it's published, something that happened in the life of a well-known surgeon named Dr. Leo Winters. His phone rang at one o'clock in the morning and he answered it. It was the hospital. He wasn't necessarily on call, but there had been a terrible accident and a young boy was there in the hospital and they believed that only Dr. Winters had the skill necessary to save the boy's life and put his body together and allow him to live. So Dr. Winters got out of bed and jumped into his clothes and grabbed his keys and ran out to his car and raced away on that drive to downtown Chicago from the suburbs. He decided to take a shortcut to a rather dangerous part of town. He felt like the time that he could save was precious and he was there sitting at a stoplight when a man suddenly rushed from the shadows and opened his door and yanked him out and jumped in behind the steering wheel. Even though the doctor shouted after him that he was a doctor and he had to make it to the hospital, the man sped away.

He was wearing an old flannel shirt and a dirty gray hat. It took Dr. Winters 45 minutes to find a phone and another 15 or 20 to be delivered to the hospital. By the time he walked into the corridor, rushed up there, it had been over in an hour and the head nurse looked at him when he got off the elevator and immediately shook her head and she said, Doctor, the boy died 30 minutes ago.

You're too late. He said, you're going to find the father down the hall in the chapel grieving. He's confused.

He can't understand why you never came. And without taking any time to explain to his staff, he rushed down the hallway and opened the door of that chapel and there at the front was the crumpled form of that weeping father wearing that same flannel shirt clutching that dirty gray hat. You want a picture of humanity? The awful tragedy of humanity.

That's it. They're coming, pursuing, seeking help and hope and pushing out of their lives the only one who can save them. There's no fear of God before their eyes. Well, this is the description of mankind's depravity. The Spirit of God through the Apostle Paul is intended to lead the Romans and everyone in this audience to an understanding of why we desperately need redemption and why we helplessly cling to the deliverance of God. This is Wisdom for the Heart and Stephen's current teaching series is entitled The Depravity of Man, The Deliverance of God. This lesson has clarified the connection between our depravity and God's deliverance and I hope it encouraged and challenged you.

This is Wisdom for the Heart. I invite you to learn more about our ministry and access more of Stephen's Bible teaching on our website, wisdomonline.org. You can listen to each day's broadcast if you miss it on the radio. You can also access our complete archive and interact with us online. I also encourage you to click the link that says Magazine and sign up to receive the next three issues of our monthly magazine as our gift to you. It's called Heart to Heart and it will encourage and challenge you in your walk with Christ. Thanks for joining us today. Stephen will conclude this series on tomorrow's broadcast. So join us here on Wisdom for the Heart.