Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Romans.  Tonight is study #21 in Romans 3,  and we will read Romans 3:11-18:

There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is 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.

I will stop reading there.  We have spent the last couple of studies looking at the first part of verse 11 which says, “There is none that understandeth.”  We could probably look at that for quite a while longer, but we are going to move on to the next part of the verse in Romans 3:11:

… there is none that seeketh after God.

Our first reaction might be that this cannot be true and accurate.  Does God not understand that there are masses of people all across the earth who seek after God?  There are numerous religions, like 1.35 billion Hindus; 1.8 billion Muslims; 2.0 billion Christians; and 535 million Buddhists.  If you add those up, it represents the majority of people in the world, and it does not even take into account many other religions.  So does not almost everyone seek after God?  But God is saying the opposite, claiming that there are none that seek after Him.

So individuals of the world might think, “How can this be so inaccurate?”  They look at the religions of the world and the people caught up in those religions, and they would not understand what God is saying here.  Yes, it is true that there are billions of people in the world that seek after God, but they do so according to their own terms.  They do so in an improper manner.

What God is saying in this verse (and other similar verses in the Bible) is that is not a single human being in the world’s religions that seeks after Him in a proper manner.  What is the proper manner?  We will look at that later, but that is exactly what God is saying.  And all the professed Christians that are now in the churches  and congregations of the world are not seeking Him properly.  And, certainly, the Muslims are not seeking Him properly.  The Buddhists are not seeking Him properly, as well as the Hindus, the Shintoists, and so forth.  Not a single one out of the billions are seeking Him properly, and that is the reason that God says that none seek Him. 

This phrase is a quote from Psalm 14 and Psalm 53.  It says in Psalm 14:1-2:

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. JEHOVAH looked down from heaven upon the children of men…

So that is the vantage point of God.  Heaven is above, and God looked down upon the children of men.  Was He just looking at a single nation?  No. He looked down upon the whole earth, and He is referring to all mankind as the “children of men,” and when He takes this all-encompassing view of mankind, He is not looking at man’s outward circumstances; He is not looking at the outward trappings of man, like his height, his color, his gender, and so forth.  He looks upon the hearts of men.  He looks deep within their souls.  The Scriptures tell us that all things are open and naked unto the eyes of God, concerning the hearts of men.

So, again, it says in Psalm 14:2-3:

JEHOVAH looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy…

“Well, yes,” someone might say, “ but this was a Psalm of David that was written three thousand years ago, and the world has changed.  Those same people that God looked down upon there are no longer with us, and there are so many more people now, and so many good people.”  No.  No.  This assessment by God is accurate of all people at all times throughout the history of the world since the fall of man.  If there were none good then, and if none understood then, and if none sought after God then, you can be certain it is even more true today.  We are living at the worst of times.   We are living at a time when God has given man up to the desperate wickedness of his own heart.  Just look around, and that is exactly what we see daily in this world all over the earth.  We see the wicked deeds of sinful people, and this is an assessment of the heart of man.  Yes, the Lord moved David to write this Scripture three thousand years ago, but it was the same assessment that was made in the days of Noah, in Genesis 6:5:

And JEHOVAH saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

That is, this is another all-encompassing view after looking at the heart, and only God is capable of doing that.  In Jeremiah 17, after God declares that the heart of man is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things, He says, “I JEHOVAH search the heart, I try the reins…”   God knows.  He is aware, and He saw only evil continually in all the world prior to the flood, and this was thousands of years before David.  Why is it that whenever God looks to assess this, that is what is in man?  Man is dead in trespasses and sins.  He is a sinner, and that is the common lot of all human beings unless God does the work of salvation, as He did with Noah.  Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, but apart from those exceptions, this is the condition of man.

By the way, it is not possible for an individual that God has saved, like Noah or David, or Samuel, to pass on their salvation to their children through natural birth.  That is a physical process, and the part of a person who God has saved is spiritual, the soul.  So the child born to a saved person will be born like every child – in their sins.    This is an error that many religions make because they assume, “If I go to church (the mosque, or the synagogue), and I have children, and I have them baptized, and I bring them up in the church, they are saved.”  That is an assumption that is often made, but it has never been true.  “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” 

It is true that if children came up under the hearing of the Word during the church age when the Spirit of Christ was operating in the churches and congregations, it is possible that God could have used His Word to save one or two of a man’s children, but it is also possible that none became saved because it is all according to God’s grace and program of predestination regarding who He chose or did not choose.

So, here, we read God’s assessment of mankind in Psalm 14, and if we go back to Psalm 10, we find that God is addressing the wicked in Psalm 10:2-4:

The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor: let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined. For the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom JEHOVAH abhorreth. The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts.

This is a supporting Scripture for these other verses in Romans and in Psalm 14.  The wicked will not seek after God, and then we have a follow-up statement: “…God is not in all his thoughts.”  And this would be one of the characteristics of “improper seeking” of God.  A person can identify with religion, and he can be a Muslim, a Jew, or a Christian, and he can go to the mosque, the synagogue, or church, and he can pull out his holy book and become involved (by becoming an elder or a deacon) in the operation of his church, and yet God is not in all his thoughts.  That is an important truth.

But how is it possible for God to be in all of anyone’s thoughts?  What did Genesis 6 tell us?  It really reveals something about man’s thoughts.  Again, it says in Genesis 6:5:

And JEHOVAH saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

It is not saying “the thoughts of his mind” where the grey matter is located and where he has conscious thinking.  Often what goes on in a wicked individual’s mind is wickedness, but he could have had some nice thoughts intellectually, from time to time.  But in his soul he is dead in trespasses and sins, and that is what God is referring to.  In the Bible, “heart,” “mind,” and “soul” are synonyms, so the thoughts of his “soul” were only evil continually.  This is the same thinking that goes on in the life of a child that is conceived in his mother’s womb, as the Bible says.  There are people of the world, such as secularists, that would mock this idea because they do not understand.  They are ignorant of what God is saying.  We read in Psalm 58:2:

Yea, in heart ye work wickedness…

Note the location of the wickedness.  Again, it says in Psalm 58:2-3:

Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth. The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.

The reason this verse is mocked is because everyone knows that a child is unable to speak when he is born into the world.  His ability to form words has not developed.  In the womb, babies can certainly hear their parents speaking, but they cannot speak for some time, maybe a year or so after they are born.  But God says that as soon as they be born, they are speaking lies.  God is not referring to what is coming out of their mouths, but what is coming out of their hearts, as we saw in Psalm 14:1:

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God…

That is a lie, and when does the fool speak that in his heart?  It is a soon as he is born because he is dead in his soul due to sin.  And this is why he will not seek after God, as it says in Psalm 10:4:

The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts.

So when God is not in all the thoughts of the heart of the wicked, they may give an outward appearance of being diligent seekers of the Lord, or of being very holy and religious, as so many in the religions of the world do.  Yes, they are known for their prayers and their appearance of seeking God as they follow their religious vows and systems.  They are so careful to do it all, and they uphold the holy days of their religion, and yet, deep down in their hearts there is only evil continually.  They are speaking lies in their hearts.  God is not in all the thoughts of their hearts because there has been no “change of heart.”  As a result, their way of seeking after God is improper.  In actuality, they are not truly seeking after God.