The Prodigal People

The Gospel is the good news of salvation offered by God. But it begins with people realizing they have need for salvation. Thus the Gospel is, first of all, news that man is lost, that man is on the wrong path, that man is on the broad path that leads to destruction, that mankind is in deep trouble. That God would seek them out and still man would turn, as it were, and run the other way even after hearing the truth of the Gospel. There is only one hope and that hope is Yahweh and the Son and the Spirit. There's no compelling reason to want a Savior unless you understand that you're in need of saving. That's why the starting point of the Gospel is the depravity of fallen mankind. We need a Savior.

But from the beginning of time, people have preferred to fashion gods in their likeness rather than allow God to fashion us into His likeness. We are a prodigal people and there's only one way back to the Shepherd. Welcome to Wisdom for the Heart. Stephen Davey has a message for you today called, The Prodigal People.

Stay with us. In Romans chapter 3, which is where we have been for some time, in verse 10 we learn that mankind is totally depraved, totally sinful, that is totally wretched and totally enslaved to sin. We also have learned that mankind, according to the record of Scripture, is spiritually dense. They cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God for they are spiritually appraised. A person apart from the Holy Spirit cannot discern or appraise true spiritual things. Even though our world talks about spiritual experiences, our world talks about spiritual existence, our world talks about spiritual things. According to the Word of God, apart from the regenerating, saving work of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of man is dead. Not semi-conscious, but dead.

Not in some spiritual coma or state of limbo, but spiritually dead. We also learn that mankind is not only totally depraved and spiritually dense, but naturally disconnected from God. Paul has written later in verse 11, there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God. The truth is, sinful man, like Adam, all the way back in the very beginning of human history, after sinning against God, did what? He ran and hid from God, and God came and said in effect in his first invitational, Adam, where are you? Did he not know where Adam was?

Yes he did, of course. But he wanted to pull man who had begun to run from him all the way back in the garden into the awareness of his sinfulness and his need for a God who is the true seeker. Jesus Christ said, I have come to seek and to save those who are lost, Luke chapter 19 verse 10. But somebody would say, well, let everybody believe in God though, just in different ways. Well, 50 years ago, at least in our culture, the belief was fairly strong and one God, monotheism. And for the most part, the God derived from the Scriptures, the God introduced, the God illustrated, the God described in the Word of God. You either believed in this God or you didn't believe in God at all. Today, the God of the Bible is simply now one of many gods.

In India alone, 300,000 gods, and each of them are equally valid in their claims. And thus, in our culture, in our generation, even by the mid-1990s, according to the Barna Research Group that took a survey of a number of different people on a religious level, they came to the conclusion, quote, nearly two out of every three adults now believe in this country that the choice of one religion over another is now irrelevant because all religions basically teach the same thing. America has moved from pluralism.

It has now fallen headlong into syncretism. The combination, the amalgamation of differing views, differing things, even though they are contradictory. Well, does the Bible teach that we can all come up with our own way? The Word of God says there is a way that seems right unto man, but the end thereof literally is the way of what? The way of death. Is everybody going to make it to heaven? The Bible says, broad is the path that leads to destruction and many there be that find it. But narrow is the path that leads to life everlasting and few there be that find it. Matthew 7, 13. Thus, the Gospel is, first of all, news that man is lost, that man is on the wrong path, that man is on the broad path that leads to destruction, that mankind is in deep trouble, that mankind is called and considered by God to be a depraved sinner, that God would seek them out and still man would turn, as it were, and run the other way even after hearing the truth of the Gospel.

There is only one hope and that hope is Yahweh and the Son and the Spirit. I stood this past year outside a Hindu temple in Chennai, India, an incredibly massive, beautiful temple. In fact, in India, everyone is impoverished, but they have spent an inordinate amount of money on tombs and temples.

Caught, as it were, by the religion of hundreds of thousands of gods, they're all wandering. And it was so sad to stand there and see this massive temple. And the pitch of its roof was extremely steep but tiered as it went up, probably six, seven, maybe as many as eight stories high. And on each tier surrounding that temple were figures and figurines of their gods and goddesses.

And they were all painted with incredibly beautiful colors and it was sort of a traffic stopper. You just would stop and gaze at all of their gods, their chief gods. There were two-headed gods and there were half human, half animal gods.

And there were female goddesses that represented certain things and male goddesses, some with pleasing looks on their faces and some with fearsome looks on their faces. And I stood below in this courtyard with teeming masses of people who were impoverished with beggars pulling on our sleeves, making motions to their mouths. Hungry, they would say in their language, hungry. I couldn't help but think of the prophet who said their gods are made of wood and stone. They cannot hear. They cannot speak.

They cannot help. What an illustration it was for me of humanity that is now in the process and has been in the process of creating its own gods. But its gods cannot help them and dolomally deceive. Now the Apostle Paul delivers the fourth indictment on the human race that man is purposefully defiant.

Verse 12, the news gets worse as he describes the human evil condition as he does in verses 10 to 12 with these six particular statements. He says, all have turned aside, all. There it is again, the word all have turned aside.

What does he mean? The verb means all lean in the wrong direction. In classical Greek usage, this verb would speak of a soldier in the midst of battle that turns and runs in the other direction. He's running in the wrong way. He's running in the wrong direction. Alva J. MacLean writes, this phrase is intended to most readers in this day, in the first century, to picture a caravan that is crossing the desert that has chosen for some reason or another to go another way. And they they get lost in the desert and they die.

It's another way of basically saying the man is lost. All have turned aside. But it actually leaves the responsibility upon whom?

Us as human beings. We have turned to follow a different path. Isaiah said the same thing, just in a different way. All of us, like sheep, have gone what? Have gone astray.

Each of us have turned to his own way. Isaiah 53 6. One writer reminds the reader in his commentary that in the early church, the gospel was sometimes called the way. The true way, of course, Acts 9 2. Christians were often referred to as followers of the way.

There's a cult today that takes that term and uses it to further deceive people. But it was a phrase that came right out of the New Testament. Even the demon, he writes, who had given a certain slave girl the power of divination, acknowledged through her that Paul and his his companions were, quote, bond servants of the most high God who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation. Acts 16 17. Luke referred to some Jewish opponents of Paul's ministry in Ephesus as men who were, quote, speaking evil of the way. Acts 19 9.

And because of that opposition, later on in verse 23, you read there arose no small disturbance concerning the way. The writer of Hebrews spoke of Christ's atoning work as a new and living way. Peter spoke of false teachers who had infiltrated the church as those who had forsaken the right way of the gospel, which is the way of righteousness for Second Peter 2 15 and 21. Mankind has chosen then, according to this text, another way. That's why you can talk to people out on the street and wherever you go about the way through Christ.

And they will say, no, no, no, I've got another way. Paul said that all of humanity is searching, as it were, after their own pursuits, not after God. I love the text in John 14, where Thomas the disciple once asked Jesus Christ a very honest question. Jesus had been reassuring the disciples that he was going to go to heaven, but they could come after him. Then he adds in that phrase, he says, Where I am there you may be also and you know the way.

And he said that because he knew he would provoke out of his students the question that would naturally come after that statement. You know the way. And sure enough, Thomas was the one who said, well, wait a second, we don't know the way. What do you mean we know the way?

We don't know the way. What I find interesting is that Jesus's next statement is one of the most powerful, of course, in the New Testament, where he said to Thomas, I am the way. Three different statements. I am the truth.

I am the life. What an incredible answer. Let me illustrate it this way. Imagine you've moved to this city or this area from somewhere else. I just wonder how many people in here have moved to this area in the last five years. Raise your hand. Let's see. Look around.

That's amazing. At least half of this audience didn't help us in this building program. I mean, moved here in the last five years. And you asked somebody when you got to North Carolina for directions, you said something like, how can I get to the nearest grocery store? And they responded. And you probably didn't understand them when they told you, well, you go two intersections and you turn right. And you wonder where the rat was.

No right. Turn right. Go another block or two and turn left.

And you took their directions and you finally made it there. By the way, all of you that have moved here, imagine what kind of answer would you get if you asked somebody in Minnesota how to get somewhere? My grandpa's from Minnesota. I was born in Minnesota and have my family. How many of you moved here from Minnesota? Just one. Two. You traded in Jesse Ventura for Jesse Helms.

That's a good trade, by the way. But I'll say no more. You asked somebody from Minnesota how to get somewhere in there.

Like I remember my grandpa. Well, you go two blocks and you turn north. And then you go two more blocks and you turn northeast. I don't have a compass on my truck dashboard.

That's not a boat. I want to know, turn left at Wal-Mart and go right a block or two. Well, I love the story told by Billy Graham on himself. One day he was a young preacher and he arrived in a small town where he was holding a meeting. And he wanted to mail a letter. So he stopped a young boy on the street and asked him directions to the post office. And after the boy told him, Dr. Graham thanked him and said, now, listen, Sonny, if you come to church this evening, I'm going to be telling people how to get to heaven.

The boy thought him in and then said, well, no thanks, mister. You don't even know how to get to the post office. But has it has it ever occurred to you that God has not given directions to heaven? He has not said, now, you're going to travel north and you're going to pass a few planets and then you're going to swing a little left. You know, you're going to go west a while and you're going to go past Alpha Centauri and then bear right.

And you're going to make it there. He never did. Was Jesus Christ giving the disciples directions to heaven? No, that's the amazing thing about his answer. Suppose that person you asked directions from told you, look, you know what? There's so many lefts and rights and you're going to get lost.

I'll tell you what, I've got some time this afternoon. I'll take you there. That person then for you does not become someone who gives you directions like on a map. That person becomes your map. All you do is follow them.

You don't have to know which way to turn and which way to go. You just follow him. And when Jesus Christ said, I am the way. He's basically saying, all you have to do is follow me. I'm the map.

I'm the guide. And one day if we're still alive and his prophetic calendar comes to that culminating point, we call the rapture. We're just going to follow him.

We all know which way we've turned and exactly how to describe to somebody else how to get there. We just are going with the way who is the map on our behalf. Well, what is Paul saying mankind does? Mankind is choosing another map. Mankind is choosing another series of commands or implications or clear scripture that we have of who to follow. He says they have all what? They have all turned aside.

That is, they have chosen to take another path. Man is totally depraved. He is spiritually dense.

He's naturally disconnected. And here in verse 12, he is purposefully defiant. All have turned away. All have turned aside. You talk about God with people and you ask them for their opinion and they'll probably sit down with you and say, well, let me tell you what I think about it.

And sure, you listen to them. But when you begin to talk to them about a holy God who will one day, according to the scripture, judge all of mankind and the world will stand accountable as it were to him. According to scripture, they would say, oh, that's not the kind of God I have concocted. That's not the kind of God I believe is up there.

He's all loving. He's going to let everybody in, even though mankind has abandoned the way. He'll let us in. Jesus Christ said, I am the way.

No one comes to the Father except through me. He goes on to give another indictment against sinful humanity. He says this basically, mankind is also increasingly decadent.

It's a word that's used a lot in it in a positive way. It means that a person becomes increasingly sinful. Look at verse 12 again.

All have turned aside together. They have become useless. The Greek word useless is a translation of a Hebrew verb that literally refers to sour milk. He also intends to refer to the wasted nature of the milk.

That's the meaning of the word. The nature of the milk is intended to do something else, but it can't because it has soured. It's to be taken. It's to be drunk.

It's to refresh and strengthen. But this is souring milk. This is useless. It's wasted. You don't even want to be near it.

You hold it at arm's length if you happen to open that cup. That's the word here, like the prodigal son who left the father's home with his inheritance. He spent all of his money on sinful pleasure. He bought friends who came along for the party and he would have told you it's really living, but he is decaying. Ultimately, he will end up in that pig pen, in that putrid barnyard filled with pigs. He has chosen the path that led him away, as it were, from the father. And now his life is useless. It is wasted.

It is putrid, rancid, soured, bitter. Ladies and gentlemen, the further away our society or any generation or any person in here goes away from the truth, I have news for you. According to this verb, just this verb, you will not stay like you are. You will only grow worse and more self-centered and more unfulfilled and more wasted and more bitter. It's happening in our own society and we see illustrations of how our putrid society is wasting away even more. Having chosen, as it were, to ignore the path, it chooses sin instead.

It calls good evil and evil good. This past week's edition of the World Magazine that I get had an article entitled destructive diagnosis. Of course, this is written from an evangelical standpoint. It announced that the American Academy of Pediatrics, with its 55,000 members, you may have heard of this already. It's been on the news. They've endorsed homosexual adoption, claiming that children raised by homosexuals can be as well adjusted as those raised by their own moms and dads. The statement was published in Pediatrics and it claims that evidence suggests no vital difference exists between either set or pair of parents. The report even claimed, quote, Children seem to actually benefit. They actually benefit now from arrangements in which lesbian parents divide household tasks in an egalitarian manner.

Here in the magazine is a picture of two men sitting at the breakfast table with a little girl around the age of four whom they have adopted. Apart from God, ladies and gentlemen, according to the text of scripture, the prodigal human race runs further and further from that which would truly fulfill him. From that which would bring true guiltless living, true security, true hope, true joy, true peace.

The world can never sing. It is well with my soul. Man is depraved, dense, disconnected, defiant, decadent. Now, sixth, Paul basically says man is entirely disobedient. By the way, when he says in verse 12, there is none who does good. There is not even one.

He sort of summarizes everything he's just said. In fact, up at verse 10, he has already said there is none who is good. Now, in verse 12, he says there is none who does good. We are neither good nor can we do good things.

You say, no, wait a second. I know unbelievers who do good things. Well, remember, Paul is speaking here to the condition of mankind. He's talking about the internal nature of man compared to the holiness of God. And there are people who behave better than other people. And it's tragic when an unbeliever might even behave in a certain situation better than a believer. But he's referring to the nature of mankind. He is referring to that sinful inner core that even though it can move its hand in some good gesture or do something good, maybe kind, he is, when compared to the holy, righteous, living standard by the Spirit of God, unable to meet it. And so Paul can categorically say that all of mankind is unrighteous.

Now, when you look at somebody else that's worse than you can say, well, I'm better than them. Well, that's not the standard. The standard is not somebody else. The standard is God. And when held to that standard, there is none righteous, not even one. Left to himself, the prodigal human race will wrap himself among the hogs and say, even there, this is living.

This is the way I want it. I have testified of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the people who had reached what I would consider and you would consider the bottom, who have instead justified it and defended it and said, this is my choice for life. The one who is being rescued, the one in this auditorium who has already been rescued by the Savior is one who has recognized themselves as sinful, wretched, defiant, depraved, disobedient and decadent. The great evangelist of 100 years ago, Dwight Moody, once told of being asked by the warden of a large prison in New York City to preach to the inmates. Because there was no chapel there or any other place that would be safe or suitable to speak to the group. He had Moody stationed on a ramp, a balcony, so to speak. And of course, down that balcony were a series of cell doors.

And of course, across the abyss, another tiered level with cell doors. Moody couldn't see anybody, but he stood at the end of that ramp and he preached the gospel of Christ. At the end of his sermon, he asked the warden if he could walk down that ramp, that tiered balcony, and just look in through the windows. There were little barred openings in each door and just talked to some of the inmates face to face.

And the warden gave him permission. Moody said that he soon discovered that most of the men had not even been listening to his message. That, of course, disheartened him. He soon also discovered when he talked to them that most of the men were declaring the justification of their actions or their innocence.

They would insist that a false witness testified against him or that he was mistaken for the true criminal or that the judge or jury was prejudiced against them. Moody wrote, I began to become deeply discouraged. When I had gone almost through to the end, I found one man, one man with his elbows on his knees, and two streams of tears running down his cheeks.

I looked in at the little window and said, my friend, what is your trouble? He looked up with despair on his face and said, my sins are more than I can bear. And Moody said, thank God for that.

Thank God for that. And explained to him that the full realization of sinfulness is that initial work of the Spirit of God that is calling and drawing and bringing one to true repentance. My sins are more than I can bear. Have you come to see yourself that way, my friend? I believe there are people perhaps even in this auditorium who think they're saved, but think that God saved a pretty decent person and did himself a favor.

That we really weren't that bad after all, but yeah, okay, I'll add Jesus to my bag. Who didn't see their sin, who repented of nothing, who basically choose to live the same way. Have you found yourself in Romans chapter 3, where Paul writes in verse 10, as it is written, there is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside.

Together they have become useless. There is none who does good. There is not even one. My friend, the person who finds his or her name in this paragraph is the person who will discover their names written in the Lamb's Book of Life. For to admit your sinfulness, to admit your need of a Savior is to be forgiven, is to be redeemed, is to be rescued and freed. For you have come to know not only in the realization of your sinfulness, you've come to know the one who is the way, who is the truth, who is the life. And you have come or will come to know the one who said, those of you who know the truth, the truth will make you what? The truth will make you free.

Freedom from our guilt, our shame, and from the consequences of our sin is what we all desperately need. We're going to continue exploring this all this week here on Wisdom for the Heart. Stephen Davey is in a series called The Depravity of Man, The Deliverance of God. This is the fourth message in that series and Stephen's calling this message, The Prodigal People. If you missed the first three lessons and want to go back and hear them, they're posted to our website. If you go to wisdomonline.org, you can navigate to the page called Daily Broadcast.

There you can see all of our most recent messages. The archives are also posted to that site so you can listen to any of Stephen's sermons from his 35 years of pastoral ministry. By the way, you can also do all of that from the Wisdom International app for your phone or tablet.

Install that app from the App Store for your device. It's not too late to begin the habit of daily Bible reading in 2021. We've developed a reading plan that you can follow along with on our app. We also have a printed copy available. If you want to call us today, we can send you a complimentary copy. Our number is 866-48-BIBLE or 866-482-4253. Thanks for joining us. Please join us again tomorrow as we continue through this series here on Wisdom for the Heart. Thank you.