For more media content from Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas, go to GCCSATX dot com.Media used by permission of Heartcry Missionary Society. Visit us online at Heartcry Missionary dot com.Let’s open up our Bibles to Romans chapter three verse 23.Before we read our text, let’s go to the Lord in prayer.Father, I pray that in this night you would get glory for yourself. Get great glory for your Son. I pray that the Holy Spirit might fill in ever increasing measure, that you would revive us in Christ about Christ that as it is in heaven so it would be on earth, everything in him, about him, for him. Lord, in our weakness, in our smallness, so finite and incapable. Oh, God, oh God, Lord, bring revival and please in Jesus’ name. Amen.Romans 3:23.For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since indeed God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith is one. Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law.We have before us this morning what many scholars and preachers throughout the ages of the Church said to be the acropolis of the Christian faith, the fortified city of Christianity, the great shining star in Scripture. I have heard some very godly men say that if they had to lose the entire Bible and could pick only one passage this is the passage they would hold, because in this passage is found the very salvation of man. There are words here that are possibly the greatest words in all of Scripture. And we cannot understand the gospel of Jesus Christ apart from understanding some of these words, some of these things that are said in this small text.And if you do not understand the glory of God in the gospel, how then will you live? How will you live?So many today we call them gospel hardened. They are not gospel hardened. They are gospel ignorant. So many today that are truly born again who are looking for motivation and reason and zeal and a source of Christian life and they do not understand that it is found only in the truths of the gospel. And yet they think they know the gospel. But the gospel in America today has been reduced down to, as I have said many times, four spiritual laws and five things God wants you to know. The gospel is treated as a small truth, Christianity 101, something that you learn in five minutes and afterwards you pray a prayer and then you go on to the greater stuff.But there is nothing greater than the gospel of Jesus Christ and as it is laid out in this glorious text. And so we are going to take this text line by line and seek to discover by the grace of God some of what is buried here.First of all he says, “For all have sinned...”Now isn’t it quite amazing? Doesn’t this show the lack of discernment on our part and the dullness of our own hearts? Those of you who are born again, those of us who are born again, upon hearing “all have sinned” we ought to be falling out of chairs at this very moment worshipping God and giving thanks to God that he has saved us from such a terrible thing. And those of you who are not born again, who treat the gospel as something common, or maybe have gathered unto yourself a sort of gospel that doesn’t change life. You ought to fall on your face in fear knowing that if God doesn’t move on your behalf, you will stand before him in your sin and that is a most terrible estate.“All have sinned.”Why don’t we tremble? Why don’t we know how terrible this is? We don’t know how much we have sinned in the same way a fish doesn’t know how wet it is. We were born in sin. We were conceived in sin. We were born in a fallen world of sin. The only thing we have ever known is sin. Our society, as Scripture says, drinks down iniquity like it was water.We also live in a land that is rampant of the ignorance of God. They have no knowledge of God. We don’t know who God is. We treat him as though he were some sort of Santa Claus or a buffoon of a grandfather and we do not understand that he is the Lord of lords and King of kings.Do you know that hell is of infinite duration? The primary reason is because every sin you commit is committed against an infinitely worthy and good God. Sin is sin today.Listen to the way we speak about sin. We talk about sin against man. We talk about sin even against nature and animals and trees. But no one realizes this. All sin is ultimately sin against God.David sinned against his people. David committed adultery with a woman. David murdered a man, but in the end he said this.“Against thee, thee only, have I sinned.”Why is sin so terrible? Because it is committed against God.Why don’t we tremble? Because we don’t know what that means.And why don’t we know what that means? Because we do not know who God is.Such a glorious and blessed being.Imagine this for a moment. God stands there on the day of creation and he tells planets to put themselves in certain orbits in space and they all bow down and say amen and obey him. He tells stars to find their place in the sky and to follow his decree to the letter and they all bow down and obey him. He tells mountains to be lifted up and valleys to be cast down and they bow down in worship. He tells the brave sea, “You will come to this point and you will come no further,” and the sea adores. And yet God tells you to come and you go, “No.”How wicked is our sin. And if it were only an act it would be terrible enough, but sin goes much deeper in the heart of a man. A man does not simply commit sin. A man is born in sin, vile and corrupt from the beginning.Let’s just go for just a moment. Go over to Genesis just quickly with me. Chapter six verse five.“Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”I simply read this text one time preaching at a university and a young reporter came up to me and he said, “I don’t agree with your interpretation.”And I said, “Young man, I didn’t interpret the text. I read it.”And he said, “Well, I don’t agree.”And I said, “Young man, let me tell you something. If I could pull out your heart right now, if I could take every thought you have ever had from your first waking moment until this very hour, if I could take every thought you have ever had, not just your deeds, but your thoughts, only your thoughts and I could put them on a video and I could show that video here in this auditorium tonight you would run off of this campus and you would never show your face here again because you have thought things so wicked and so perverted you cannot even share them with your closest friend. As a matter of fact, if your closest friends new some of the thoughts you have had against him, he would no longer be your friend. And, young man, I do not know that because I am a prophet. I know that because it is what the Scriptures say and I know that like you I, too, am a man.”I can say the same thing about every one of you here tonight. You would spend every ounce of energy to hide from every one in this room what has gone through your mind just in the last hour. Don’t tell me Scripture is not right when it talks about all men having sinned because all men are sinners.Go to Genesis eight for a moment verse 21.“The LORD smelled the soothing aroma; and the LORD said to Himself, ‘I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth.’”This could mean evil from childhood, evil from a babe.Let me share with you something that a correction officer said a long time ago. He said this. Discover that human nature is such, that imagine for a moment an 18 month old baby that you are holding in your arms. And that 18 month old baby sees that shiny watch on your wrist and he grabs for your watch and you pull his hand away and say no. He begins to cry and move about in your arms.He reaches for the watch again. You grab his hand and say no. He begins to scream and cry.He reaches for the watch again. You say no. He begins to flail his arms even in the direction of your face.I submit to you that if that 18 month old baby had the strength of an 18 year old man he would slaughter you there where you stand, father, rip the watch off your arm and walk across your bloody body out the door without feeling an ounce of remorse.You see, here is something you need to understand. Hitler was not an anomaly. Hitler was not a phenomenon. Hitler was what everyone in this room has the potential of being. And not only that, you need to understand. Even in all the wickedness of Hitler, Hitler was still restrained by the common grace of God. And you need to know this, that if it were not for the common grace of God restraining you in your unconverted state, you would make Hitler look like a choirboy.What we do not understand is what Scripture teaches about men. Men are evil.You say, “Well, I don’t agree.”That is because you have grabbed enough of Christianity to stand, but you don’t believe the Bible. The Scripture’s testimony against you and all men is that we are born with evil. And we are evil. | read more..