Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2545
“There is none who understands, there is none who seeks after God.” Romans 3:11.
We are told that God looked out of Heaven to see if there were any who had understanding, that did seek after Him. If there had been any, God would have seen them, for He sees all things and all persons. If there had been any good people, God would have discovered them. A good man is quick to see other good folks and the good God would soon have spied out good men. But God’s description of the character of men, though we may be certain it is not uncharitable or unjust, is not in the least like that which I have heard ascribed to them by flattering preachers. It has become the fashion of the day to talk about the nobility of manhood and the dignity of manhood. I remember that Mr. Whitefield used to say that man, by nature, before the Grace of God comes to him, is half beast and half devil. I shall leave you to judge who is nearer the truth—a good and faithful preacher of the Lord in the days gone by—or the refined flatterers who are taking out of the Bible everything that is objectionable to the superior minds of this 19th Century and who vainly imagine that, in so doing, they shall be accepted of God.
Let me read you what God thinks of men in their natural state. Here is a Divinely-inspired description of their true character. “As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one: there is none who understands, there is none who seeks after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that does good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: whose mouths are full of cursing and bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace have they not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes.” That is God’s portrait of man by nature, and He knows the truth about them better than we do! And, as I have already said, He is free from unchari-tableness or injustice. There is no motive in God to paint the picture blacker than it is. He gives our photographs in lines of absolute Truth. The light of God is the light of His Truth and what He depicts before us is undoubtedly just as He makes it appear.
What I want you to observe, dear Friends, is that all this is spoken of all mankind—of all unregenerate men—of all who are still in the kingdom of darkness and under the power of sin, whether they are polished, learned, polite, wealthy, or whether they are illiterate and cast down in the very depths of degradation. “As in water, face answers to face, so the heart of man to man.” Differences in station may make a difference in outward conduct, but not a difference in heart. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” For, after all, be it never forgotten that the human race is one! The most degraded tribes of men still belong to the one great tribe of mankind—they are our brothers. “God has made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.” What that savage is who has gone furthest aside from the paths of civilization—you and I would have become had it not been for certain influences which have kept us, in some measure, under restraint. The heart of all leopards, of all lions and of all tigers is the same as the heart of all the rest of their savage race. And in heart, all men are alike—they are all evil and if they were let alone, they would all go in one direction or another towards a yet greater evil. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, everyone, to his own way.” And we have all wandered away from God—
“Each wandering in a different way, But all the downward road.”
The race is one, there is a solidarity about it, and when God speaks concerning men, He describes the whole race without exception and uses those great all-encompassing, “alls.” “They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable.” And, in order that none should escape, He uses the negatives as well as the positives—“There is none that does good, no, not one.”
“Now, why is it,” some will ask, “that all men do not run to the same excess of riot? Surely, they cannot all be alike.” Yes, there are many persons who go through life with an almost pure morality, yet their heart was always as evil as that of those who have defiled themselves with outward vice, the reason lying in the fact that they were not so much tempted as were those others—they were not brought under the same conditions. You and I may fancy that we are a great deal better than other people whom we have known, but if we had been exposed as they have been—if we had been left of God as they have been—we would have become as vile as they. And if we have not fallen into one form of sin which men agree in despising, yet we may have gone further in some other form of sin which is so common that men overlook it, but which is just as black and vile in the sight of God! It is our common habit to judge that sin to be the worst which injures men the most.