Peter Barnes | Romans 3:9-20
SERMON NOTES
EVERYONE A SINNER
(Romans 3:9-20)
– Francis Schaeffer said that if he had an hour with an unbeliever, he would spend 45-50 minutes demonstrating that the unbeliever was morally dead.
1. All of us are sinners.
– 3:9; contrast to the John F. Kennedy: ‘All man’s problems were created by man; so all man’s problems can be solved by man.’
2. Every part of every person is fallen.
– 3:10-18; citing Psalms 14, 5, 140, 10; Isaiah 59, and Psalm 36
– People naturally flee from God; they do not seek Him
– there is no fear of God (3:18; Gen.20:10-11)
3. We have no defence before God.
– 3:19-20; Job 40:4
– the problem is not the law but us (Rom.8:3; Prov.28:26a; Ps.143:2; Rom.7:7)
– the Puritan, David Dickson, just before he died in 1663 said: ‘I have taken all my good deeds, and all my bad, and cast them in a heap before the Lord, and fled from both and betaken myself to the Lord Jesus Christ, and in him I have sweet peace.’