This is five for the future how to succeed by making ongoing contributions to WordPress. My name is Courtney and I am joining you today from the island of Oahu in Hawaii in the US. And I am mainly a contributor to the training team these days. And so I'm focused on bringing the community content like this and a lots of educational content for the WordPress community. And joining me is now go and I'll let her introduce herself as well. Hello, and I'm now go Takano from Japan and I've been working with WordPress, like Courtney, since the beginning as a user and a web designer, and then I started translating WordPress into Japanese. And since 2019, I have been a full time sponsored contributor working with mostly community team, political team, and now more or less back to community team with this contributor experience in the future program. So, yes, I'm happy to hear what you want to know and how you want to, you know, have your contributor journey in this WordPress project. Great. Thanks now. So let's get started with our content and we'll just dive right in. So we're going to start with this, this comic from XKCD. If you're not familiar with the comic called XKCD is a web comic with a variety of topics, but it's largely about programming math and science. And so this particular comic is one that we as open source contributors can relate a lot to the idea behind this comic is that the infrastructure of the web is sustained by open source contributors that are volunteering their time. So this comic is of course, a joke, but it makes our volunteer contributors laugh because it feels like our reality. So you can see here like this complicated, you know, all modern digital infrastructure that's just supported by, oh just some random person in Nebraska that has been thanklessly maintaining the project since 2003. This is a pretty funny little comic that we wanted to start with. So let's go through this. Oh, this is this was in December 2021. So this was a critical vulnerability that was unveiled in a widely used open source, Java based logging utility that was called log 4j. This incident highlighted challenges in open source funding and security oversight. Post incident calls for enhanced collaboration among open source foundations emerged bolster security measures and tackle vulnerabilities collectively. And the global impact underscored the industry's heavy reliance on open source software, showcasing the urgent need for a concert effort in securing open source projects against against potential cybersecurity threats. The maintainer of core JS, which is a JavaScript library that's vital to many websites, including like Netflix. This maintainer voiced his frustration about the lack of financial support for open source developers, threatening to abandon the project or switch to a closed source license due to insufficient funding. Despite core JS being integral to web development and having been downloaded billions of times. His call for financial support went largely unanswered. So that reflected a broader issue in the open source community, regarding the sustainability and funding of crucial projects. This is a problem that volunteer contributors are not unfamiliar with. So what do we do to fix this problem. This is a open source security and risk analysis report that was published in 2022 by an independent company and this states that 88% of code bases contained components that had no no new development in the past two years, and they were behind on user updates. So this presents serious security issues. Why would that be, think about the many contributors that volunteer their time working on these things. Do they have the bandwidth to keep maintaining these components. This could be one of the reasons why this is happening. Let's talk a little bit about the tragedy of the commons. One of the main comments is what's happening here and all over the open source community. It's a social and political problem in which each individual is programmed to act in a way that will ultimately be harmful to all individuals. This comic demonstrates the concept of the tragedy of the commons. There are a lot of people over using a shared resource, which results in a tragedy for all when the resource gets completely depleted. And so you can see other examples like someone's just taking all the water they want they're not given back to it and yeah and that results in just scarcity and less resources for all. In order for the commons to be sustained. It needs work and support from its community. So that brings us back to WordPress. So we've been so far generally talking about open source projects, but let's bring this back to WordPress and I'll hand it off to to now go to continue with this. Thank you. And as you can see in the court in 2014, the founder of WordPress wrote a blog post to introduce the concept of the future to the WordPress community. This was proposed as a potential solution to avoid a tragedy of the commons in WordPress. He proposed organizations that has built their companies and products around WordPress to dedicate 5% of the people to contribute back to WordPress. So this was the concept at the time, but it has been developed into a program now and we'll talk about that more later. And next. And more recently in at the World Camp US that happened this year in August keynote speech, Joseph mentioned that there was a significant interest in WordPress sustainability at the community summit. So WordPress sustainability is, you know, how to, this is how she described it is that, you know, how can we make sure that WordPress just last any of us, you know, for long term success of the WordPress project, we need to bring in more new members into the community consistently. Okay. And here comes the future. So a little bit of history. So after the match blog post in 2017 at the community summit again in Paris. The contributors Tracy and Robert and Ian done propose the idea of formalizing the future as a program for the WordPress community with the help of the community. The program was defined and formalized in 2018. This is the first trial run of the program with dedicated teams sponsored by companies happening in 2019, which is, you know, right before the pandemic started. And you can access the website by going to WordPress.org slash five. It's a short hand or five for the future. And you can see, this is the program website. The program is an attempt to avoid the tragedy of the comments in WordPress. This is where people where the companies and individuals say that they will contribute the WordPress we call it pledge. And the, it's a little bit different from how you contribute in other ways with which is more casual and one off way but it's a pledge and commitment to contribute for a period of time. And we'll also share some ideas on how companies can contribute to the future and some benefits that they can get from contributing. And finally, we will share some ideas where this program needs to go in the future.  Oh, no way. Is this my part? Oh, sorry. This is, I think we continue. Okay. Okay. So we've been talking about five with future. What is this five for the future contribution and what is it so different from anything else. Next. So what's defined in max bone post any direct contribution to the work of make WordPress team is five for the future contribution. And next page. Make WordPress teams, or you can go to make that WordPress or something is teams of WordPress contributors who work together for the products project itself. So it's unlike, you know, you can contribute to WordPress in other ways, but the specifics of the five for the future contribution is tied to these teams working in these teams or working for these teams. So currently, there are 22 different contribution teams for the WordPress open source project. And you can have contribution in core design. As I said, transition performances, so many other ones, but you can go to next page. And you can still casually contribute to these teams and the difference between casual versus pledged for the future commit contribution is that as a casual contributor, you do it whenever you feel like it, which is, you know, perfectly fine. There's pros and cons. For example, it's flexible. And there's low barrier to entry.  And if you're, you know, you can't have certain amount of time every week. This is a perfect way to make it flexible and still contribute. But the cons of contribution is think about, you know, what if everybody is this casual contributors. There's no consistency or reliability that someone will do something at certain time, you know, it's not like work. If you're just volunteering, there's no pressure, which means maybe things don't get done at a certain, you know, time period. And they, they might not be familiar with the overall objectives or guidelines because they might not have time to go through or work with the larger part of the contributor team. So this pros and cons. And on the other hand, the place to contribute is more consistent because they may be either sponsored like ourselves and myself, or they might have, you know, certain set of time with a habit to dedicate, let's say even 30 minutes per week, that gets things done. Make sure, you know, you get five things done, some, you know, checklist, and it's consistent and accountable. And it leads to skill development, maybe it's more likely because you do it at a certain pace. You can have a stronger relationship with the team, and that all leads to project sustainability as we talked about. And there's also some things that might be more difficult, which is definitely you need more time to commit, even if it's 30 minutes, even if it's one hour. That is, you know, maybe reason why people don't pledge or commit, or sometimes people love to contribute so much that they see burnout. So this is, you know, needs to be balanced. There's no good about like having too much or too little. So it needs to be a balance. But one more time on the screen. Yeah, so the part I want to emphasize the project sustainability, we need pledged contributors who are reliable and say, I'm going to do this, you know, certain amount of hour per week consistently, continuously to make this project sustainable, because that's, you know, work needs to get done, and we need people to spend time on it. And that's where our future project is important. And next slide. So, so every contribution to WordPress supports its sustainability, and together what five of the future contributions make a significant, significant impact to sustain the WordPress project. So when you're, you know, debating if you should pledge or not or just get started. We want to remind that it is, you know, really important for your future, maybe to think about this pleasure to contribution, because that's that's what makes WordPress sustainable. And next page. And here's just a chart of different types of contribution in terms of impact. So, as I mentioned, casual WordPress contribution is still variable, and we need a lot of people to do things like, you know, just to maintaining small things or long term involvement. But five future contributions towards make WordPress contribution is the highest impact. And that's why we like to invite everybody to join this new course. Okay, so Courtney will explain how to pledge for the five future program. Thank you. So yeah, let's quickly take a look at how you can pledge your time for five to the future. So there are two ways to do it. The first way is to pledge as an individual. If you're an individual contributor, you can add your pledge by editing your WordPress.org profile. I'm curious how many folks here have a WordPress.org profile. Feel free to like use the little hand emoji. If not, that's okay. This will just, we can show you how to do that too. Yeah, if you do not have a WordPress.org profile, you can go to login.wordpress.org slash register. Here, I'm going to share that link in the chat. Oh, I do see your question, Erin, we'll get to that soon. And so you can go to this link and create a WordPress.org profile. Once you have a profile, there's a contribution tab as seen here in this screenshot. And then you can pledge your time as well as the team or teams, multiple teams, if you'd like, that you'd like to contribute to. And once you save your changes here, it shows up in your profile. And then the second way to pledge is as an organization. So if you run a company or if you're an entrepreneur, you can pledge to WordPress as a company. And it's the same link that now goes shared earlier, WordPress.org slash five. And on this site, there's a link for organizations. So you'll see that circled here in red. And so if you visit this link, you'll be able to pledge to WordPress as a company. And to remember, the 5% is purely aspirational. You do not need to contribute exactly 5%. It's just a guideline. So for smaller agencies, 5% might be tricky, but anything you can is appreciated anything any contributions you can make. So if you go to this link, you'll be able to see that you can actually list your company and you can list the number of folks from your company that you pledge to contribute. And you can add their WordPress.org profiles. And they can specify the amount of time that they want to contribute and the teams that they want to contribute to. So let's show you an example of that. So this is an example of a company pledge. You can add a brief description of your company and it shows the number of contributors that you have pledged from the company. And it also shows the profile photos or images of the individual contributors. So this example shows a pledge page which currently shows that each company has a certain number of people who have pledged to support WordPress. So it's pretty simple. That's how pledging works. I believe that we have over 140 companies from all over the world. It's always changing. So all of these companies have pledged to support WordPress. And I'll hand this off to now go to continue. So you may wonder why should I pledge for my Twitter and next please. Because contribution to WordPress can help you succeed. So not only it helps WordPress, but there's a benefit of contribution. That's why people do it. So I will explain some of the benefits and how it helps you as an individual contributors. We are going to talk about how we can help individuals and then organizations. And we'll start with with individual contributors. All right, so this is a great article that was published by Justin Tadlock on WP Tavern in 2021. And it's titled contributing to open source is better than any college degree. Those are pretty strong words, right? So it might not be the truth for anyone, but both now go and I are living examples of this. You can learn so much by putting your contributions out there, learning by doing, making mistakes, learning to fix them, building things. And you're doing this all alongside people all over the world at no monetary cost to you. One of the greatest benefits, in my opinion, is working alongside talented contributors from all over the world. The experience you gain, the ideas you exchange and the opportunities that you get by interacting with all of these contributors. It's all priceless. What you see pictured here on the right is a list of contributors for WordPress 6.4 and you could also be a part of the list like this. By the way, this is not all the folks that are contributing to WordPress 6.4. That's all we could fit on this page. When you contribute to WordPress, your WordPress.org profile or GitHub profile becomes your resume. So currently the meta team, the contribution team called meta, they are working hard to bring as many contributions as possible to the WordPress.org profiles. They've done a lot of great work and as a result, any translations a contributor does will show up in your profile. So there's a lot of information there which really helps anyone viewing your profile identify the work that you're doing. You could definitely write along resume if you want, but demonstrating that you have open source contributions shows tangible proof of your work. And it really stands out. So when you apply for a job and especially for WordPress-based company, when you have open source contributions to show, they really speak for you. The connections you build in the WordPress contributor community are similar to a trusting relationship at work, but many say that there is something uniquely special about collaborating as fellow contributors. Building a professional network of diverse individuals from different experience, age, location, background is not only valuable to your career, but it's also for your personal growth. This here is a very brief contributor journey in the WordPress project. Most if not all people start as a user and some move on to becoming casual contributors. Some people pledge themselves to fight for the future. When you pledge or contribute consistently, you have a greater chance of becoming a leader or expert in the project. And being that leader really brings you some professional advantages. Contributing can also be especially helpful in this time of economic slowdown because it gives you an opportunity as an individual to become a leader or expert in your field. And finally, on a lighter note, contributing to an open source project like WordPress makes you a part of the team shaping the future of the open web. You will make an impact you can't imagine by yourself or even through your work, all through building the software that runs over 40% of the web. We've talked about the benefits of fight for the future for individuals. So let's take a look at how it can help companies and organizations. As I mentioned earlier for individuals, open source contributions are a great way to gauge someone's talents and that they do good work. So for recruiters or people that are hiring, it makes their job easier. And when you're in the business of creating WordPress-based products, contributing will help you keep up to date on what is happening in WordPress. By contributing to WordPress, companies get a good idea on where the WordPress project is headed, which will allow making better business decisions and support the overall growth of the company. For those of you that run agencies, you know what your clients want. You can actually speak for your clients to the WordPress project and you can make changes in the project with your expertise. Companies contributing to fight for the future have a recognition in the WordPress project and can use their opportunities to represent their needs and their clients needs in the decision making processes. Companies can also use this opportunity to find growth opportunities along with WordPress. And finally, when your company contributes to WordPress, it establishes your credibility. Oftentimes we've seen many agencies that contribute to WordPress gain more work in clients because they were core contributors or that they've been involved in the WordPress community. So it's definitely a credential, especially for a small agency or company because when you're involved in the project, it shows the expertise that you have and the results for your business is immense. And so next I'll hand it back off to Naoko to talk about some tips for contributing. Thank you. So yeah, it's easy to commit or pledge because you can just edit your profile. But the hard part is how to continue contributing and you know, motivation and the good practice. So I will talk about that for individuals first. Next slide. Okay, so where you want to get started just in case this is your first time contributing is to find your team. Even you know that you have some experience in coding, there are many teams that you can help. So finding and knowing what teams are out there and what's the best match would be great help to find your interest and skill match. So there's a new contributor tool to make the WordPress that contribute and you can start your journey from here by setting your skill, interest and at the end of this widget you get the list of teams that are potentially a good match for you. So you can explore first. Next. So after you find your team, what you can do is go through the project and teams documentation. Each team has their own documentation. This is the second in the point. And I mean the third one, the team handbooks are always located at make that WordPress.org slash team. It's either core design something like that and slash handbook. And this is where you want to get started with the team. And in case you are brand new to WordPress contribution or open source contribution, you can also visit contributor handbook and learn WordPress also has a great resource in the shape of courses called contributing to contributing to WordPress. So this is a self-guided study that you can go through and yeah, make sure that you check out this documentation first. It talks about the community code of conduct diversity and statement and privacy policy so if you're the type of person you want to know everything at first you can go through it at first or you get familiar as you go. That helps you to be a part of this community. And next please. Okay, and we also recommend connecting with the community, not just contributing by yourself. It's best to do it with others. There's always meetings for the team that you can find the schedule here and some teams, especially core team has new contributor chats. So if you're just joining, it's best to, you know, to say hi and meet other new contributors so you can feel the community and then also get motivated as they go through the same journey as you are. And you can also, I think you meet up or mention they are made of sword camps, new generation events that are happening all over the world. So I can't say for sure there will be other contributors, but definitely the meet up organizers are contributors so you can chat with them how you know they got involved or if they know any advice and just get connected. And as Courtney mentioned, it's a good networking topic to talk about contribution because people who are already doing do it for a reason that they like it. They have the skill. So it's a great connector to find people that are interested in the same thing. And we also recommend creating your contribution habit, set aside consistent time for contribution, even 15 minutes 30 minutes, but do it at the same time and don't miss it. I have a friend in Japan contributor who's dedicating one hour on Friday to always translate something. And it's a great habit to build your, you know, contribution consistency. And he brings along other people to join on a slack to just do it. It's just a self contribution hour. And it kept them going and it's, you know, slowly growing the contributor base so you can encourage others and motivate others by saying that I'm doing it and actually doing it every week. So those are the tips. And next please. So what we definitely recommend is starting slow, figure out what's a good skill match and what's your interest and do it long term, even at a small pace. It doesn't have to be 5% in the beginning or even ever because just doing 5% for one week isn't as good as doing it 30 minutes for a long long term. So the build up leads to me for contribution. So we definitely recommend so start and long term commitment. And next, and this from here I will have some recommendations for the companies that are sponsoring contributors in their company. We recommend setting a strategy for the company. Next one. So, you can always say, okay, here's a certain hour per week, you can contribute to anything you want. That's also appreciated definitely, but sometimes that these two burnout or not seeing the return of investment and they quit doing that because that needs to be some positive impact for the company for these contributors to be spending that time because otherwise, you know, why do it? Maybe because of the reason that you want them to do it, but we want the companies to also be benefited from the contribution. Otherwise, there's no sustainability for them either. So our recommendation or tips are identifying goals for the contribution. What can you achieve through your members contribution? You know, it's not like pushing agenda or anything like that. But more like, you know, maybe you want to grow certain skill for your employees, or you want to be recognized as a contributing company, which, you know, those are great goals and identify those and know that among the business and the contributors so that they are all aligned with the company values and teams. And much employee skills, even you want them to develop new skill, you know, make sure there's a good match for the make team needs. You know, identify high impact contribution areas within the make team, which is, for example, you have a certain product that can, you know, create great feedback for certain part of the WordPress. So that's the high impact area. Instead of spending more time on, you know, something else that's not aligned with your business. So think about what can be a high impact for the WordPress and also for your company. What if you're a hosting company who is suffering from users asking lots of WordPress questions, maybe you want to, you know, dedicate some time towards clear documentation so that you can just always point people to there. So just think about, you know, what's a good match. And again, allocated dedicated weekly time for balance and sustained contributions. We know some companies spend one Friday whole Friday of every month or I think it's every month. They have certain number of employees work on five of the future contribution. That is a great way. It can be weekly time, it can be, you know, whole day in a month, make it dedicated and regular allocated time. Some companies host Contributor Day within the company. I think it just happened for your plugin company. They do it and invite community people outside of the company employees. This is one way to do it. Maybe it's one way, one day. So it's, you know, maybe there's a little bit of planning but you don't have to make it the weekly thing. Maybe this is some way to start it. So think about a way that you can just get started.  Here are some tips for scaling up, share learnings internally, so not just contributing. Maybe write a post about what you learned about WordPress or project or, you know, learning opportunities. And not done contributions. Keep track. There's a way to keep track on WordPress.org side from the user profile, but it doesn't always, you know, stay on there. So maybe you might want to keep notes on what you've done and not for contribution to release, for example, should be, you know, kept record. You should keep that record. And celebrate wins. If your employees do a great job, it's great to, you know, even announce it, mention it to that person and publicly because it will encourage other companies to be inspired. Also, share the knowledge within the company and outside because there's so little information about company contribution at the moment. So any experience that you think is variable for other companies, it's a great way to, you know, contribute to encourage other companies to do it. Many experienced contribution companies start building a contribution team. So for example, automatic, there are 100 people working for time to do WordPress or contribution. And there are teams for companies team is for focused on learning. And my team is focused on contributors. So it's good idea to break things down and have teams of people working on certain focused goals. Yeah, some and other tips, rotations is an idea. Maybe bring in everybody to spend this month contributing and switch to another person. So rotation, it doesn't have to be necessarily the same people, you can always edit the profile to switch who is the file for the future employees. And if you're so good with this experience, maybe it's time to hire for time contributors. They're contributors who are looking for support of companies who want to be hired to do for time contribution. Maybe you should definitely talk to us and figure out who they are and or maybe you have new people hiring and then you can hire someone who is already contributing. And yeah, that's way to scale up. So there's always opportunity for companies to do more and be benefited from it. So exercise. I think this can be shared later but there are some companies that have dedicated pages for contributing for WordPress. So we call it like showcase. They talk about which areas they dedicate their employees to or what are the wins what are the their experience are and it gets updated. So I would recommend taking a look and who's doing interesting work and it's a good way to learn from others. And yeah, I think it maybe it's a good example of what you can do to share what you're doing. So yeah, we'll share the slides later. And yeah, we've been hearing some feedback. The 5% sounds really scary. It's a lot of work, a lot of time, but I want to make sure that we know the 5% is aspirational and any contribution is viable for WordPress's future. Next slide. So instead of focusing on 5%, let's focus on the future. That's what we're here for. And it doesn't have to be exactly 5%. It sounds nice, 5% for the future, but 5% is just the representation of small percentage of what you do. And that should be dedicated to WordPress's future if you're interested in sustaining this project. And 5% for the future has some future ideas and plans and have a list of things here. So even though we're getting better and better at recording some types of contribution and showing them to each user's profile page, it's not all recorded yet. So we need to do more of that to make sure that small contributions or unrecorded contributions always show up. We also need to do a little bit of a better job of onboarding new pledges. So if you are just signing up now, unfortunately, not much happened right after it. So we need to do more like email or documentation, that kind of things, which is also the next one that resources for companies is needed. And we've been hearing a lot about not knowing what to work on, which is what's the priority for each team, what's the areas that contribution is needed. It takes time for contributors to find out unless you're very deep into the project. So that's the area that we need to improve to make sure anybody can find what is needed to be worked on. And that's the area we want to make an improvement to make the pledges have interested work to have an impact on the work. So in the future, we hope sponsor contributors are supporting one two contributors, helping out and doing the sometimes it's sponsored the word contributors doing small work that's not super fancy or recognized but keep the project going. So I hope we will encourage more individual contributors by having a good base of sponsor contributors doing their work. Okay. And Courtney will wrap it up. Yeah, so I know we've thrown a lot of information and links at you so we have all these resources listed out in these slides. So we will share a link to these slides in the meetup events comments. So make sure you check back for that. And I will include these links and the resources all the links that were shared previously. And there's a lot for you to check out. And that's it for the content that we had to share with you today on about five feature in contributing. Thank you for being here with us today. And also feel free to ask any questions in the chat. I did see one or two go by so I would like to scroll down a scroll back up to find those. But we have our contact information here if you have any questions, or just want to reach out. We'd love to help you along your contribution journey. I do remember earlier that Aaron asked a question about the average hours that someone spends making a pledge to contribution. That's a good question, because it varies right now go. So based on this was before work camp us. The number is about 5.9 hours is the average company sponsored contributors hours. And I have more actually so yeah this is interesting. Average number of employees is 4.49. So the minimum is one companies that contribute to one person. And there are I think 100 is automatic is the largest body of contributors so it varies it's you know but by average it's about 4.5. So yeah. Good to know. I'm just scrolling back to see if there's any other questions. It's all the links that we shared with you. Are there any other questions or you want to share in the experience contribution experience with us. Nathan says I think my biggest hesitation comes from a friend who tried to contribute, but his code was consistently rejected and it was a frustrating experience for him. So things may have changed. Yeah. Yeah, this is one area we are also trying to tackle which I didn't mention, but for the next release. I mean, not the next release, but next release cycle because we're already into 5.4, a 6.4 release cycle, but 6.5 we are going to run a cohort of mentorship program for new contributors and core team is planning to have more workshops or you know, onboarding with the real, you know, code experience. So I think it would be a good idea to look into that. And yeah, for example, Courtney team. 2018 also has a guide program. Right. So that's right. Yeah, we started the guide program. Tina is one of our new contributors that went through the guide program recently. It's a brand new thing. So if you're interested in contributing to the training team. There's a lot of no code contributions, but there are opportunities for code contributions to the training team, which mainly focuses on learn dot word press dot org. So, yeah, every team has different kinds of focus focuses that that folks can contribute to. Like I said, there are plenty of no code contributions and there are lots of ways for you to contribute back to WordPress. Yeah, something I've heard is that this isn't code specifically, but it's a good idea to also look for areas contribution where you can help start small. For example, there's needs for block content creators block it themes block patterns and blocks. So those are like smaller component compared to core, which is required to have like very high standard and as a complexity related to everything else. So we need to definitely help new contributors find those areas that they can succeed from the beginning. So, yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for sharing Tina. Like we were glad to hear that. It's been a good experience for you. So, especially since the guide program is new. Any other thoughts, questions? I share the link to the contributor mentorship program that I mentioned so we don't have the next to cohort call for, you know, contributors, but we will announce something here if anything is updated. And that will be for. That'll be next year, right? Yeah, really next year. Yeah. Great. Good to know. So if we don't have any more questions or comments, we'll wrap up a couple of minutes early, a few minutes early. If you think of anything that you want to ask us in the future are here's our contact info. Pretty easy to find on the making WordPress slack as well. So, yeah, reach out if anything comes up for you and thanks for joining us again today. Tina.


Romans chapter three. We're gonna begin reading at verse nine. I'm gonna be reading to verse 18 Hopefully we're gonna go further than that. I actually prepared all the way to the end of the chapter, but let's see how it goes right So Romans chapter three beginning at verse nine. What then? Are we better than they not at all? For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin as it is written There is none righteous. No not one There's none who understands. There's none who seeks after God They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable There's none who does good No, not one Their throat is an open tomb with their tongues.  There's no fear of God before their eyes. And so Paul begins by describing my board. No actually Paul begins by describing humans in general humanity in general I want to develop this with you for a moment because Paul is building a case for man's guilt all of man all Humanities guilt before God because all have sin and fall short of the glory of God So up to this point. He has primarily argued from creation in conscience He's also argued from logic and the law and now from scripture He is saying that both Jew and Gentile alike are guilty before God now when he begins And he says what then are we better than they? Are we better than what are we better than good yet sinful Gentiles? You know when when when I use the term better than good Better than the good yet sinful Gentile. There is something in In just the way we describe human nature and human behavior. There are those who are relatively good Meaning that we're not as evil not all people are as evil as they can be But we are all evil. That's the point. He's making all we need to do is consider a little bit To consider The evil that has been done in society throughout history Evil has been done and here's here's the thing a lot of people have a tendency human nature being what it is as a tendency of Saying well evil has been done, but I've never done that kind of evil But the question is can I can you can we do that kind of evil? And the answer is whatever a human being can do that it's good I can do but whatever an evil or whatever an human being can do that. It's evil I it's possible. I could do that too. Why because of my fallen nature prior to Christ. I have nothing restraining me All I have is what is inside of me and what I desire what I want And so if I want something I'm gonna go after that perhaps if I really wanted no and so evil is Something that a man or a woman can pursue because sometimes evil is what they want and so all humanity is Under the perfection that God would demand of human beings all humanity sins and falls short of that We'll look at that in some detail in just a moment And so are we better than they are we better than then good relatively good yet sinful Gentiles the answer is no Well, are we fundamentally better than the good yet sinful Jewish person and again the answer is is no So he would be saying then am I saying that Christians have a better nature than Gentiles Jews our believers say because they just better human beings the answer is no not at all in Terms of advantages Jews had various blessings and privileges obviously, but in terms of nature they have no advantage And so he says in verse 9 for we have previously charged both Jew and Greek that they are all under sin and So all are under sin He now presents the fact that all humanity is sinful and notice as he begins it I'm gonna I'm gonna share something briefly, but move into this. I want you to see how he begins notice verse 10 as It is written My wife Marie and I were having a conversation today, I'm gonna I'm gonna repeat some of it to you It hopefully will make a bit of sense, but perhaps it won't I don't know but I'll share Marie and I were having a conversation. I was sharing with her some things and And I'm trying to think of how to say it because I want to say it quickly. I hope it makes sense But I want you to notice it says as it is written. I'm using that as my foundation for just a second as it is written What is he doing? He's putting the word of God in the center of the conversation. That's what he's doing He's not using logic at this time He's speaking of scripture as it is written so Marie and I were having a visit today And I don't mean this to be offensive to some who may think it is But I said I said honey, I said do you do you remember we both were raised in the Catholic Church? So I asked her a question. I said do you remember? the structure the way the the architecture of the interior of of the church building So we were conversing about that and I said to her this I said what is in the center? What was in the center of the Catholic Church? And so it's been a long time since since we've been in Catholic Church together and So it took her a moment and she said the altar I Said that's right. I said the altar is in the center of the Catholic Church How many of you were raised in the Catholic Church? So I know you know what I'm saying then right when you walked into the church Where was what was the center when you walked in the altar? Where was the pulpit? Well in the churches I attended they were usually off to the side What's the center of the Catholic Church? I'm going to develop this for a second. What is it? It's the mass It's what they call the real term is the sacrifice of the mass That's what it is the center of the Catholic Church is the sacrifice of the mass and so in the recourse in the re-killing if you will that Jesus dying once again. He becomes a bread in the Catholic Church and and the wine becomes his blood and all of that it's a It's it's a it's more than simply symbolic in the Catholic Church. So the center is the sacrifice That's why it's called the sacrifice of the mass. That's what it's called the sacrifice of the mass not just going to mass Every Catholic knows it's really called the sacrifice of the mass Why is it called that because there's a re-enactment every Sunday Jesus is Recrucified in the communion service. Maybe you remember maybe you don't but that's what it is So we were conversing about that And I said what is the center of a Protestant Church? You guys tell me what is the center of the Protestant Church? Do you know? right here This is the center That's a major difference the center of the Protestant Church is the pulpit Why the pulpit? Because the pulpit is also referred to as the holy altar or the place where the word of God is God's word is a center of the church That's why I wanted to speak for a second here because he says as it is written What is the center of our faith? God's word Not any re-enactments of anything that took place in the past But a presentation of God's mind to his people. That's what Bible study is Now here's something that some of you may not be interested in at all and others might say oh Why do I stand here? Why don't I do this I can do this right I can walk over here. I know what I'm gonna say I Know what I plan on saying already looked at my notes. I can do this. I can walk around if I want to I can talk You're very comfortable doing that. Why don't I do that? Because if I walk around well, I'm teaching I'm drawing your attention to me I'm drawing your attention to me as I speak what I'm doing. You're watching that right now. You're watching me move Why do I stand here? so I don't distract and Today Many people want pastors who walk around prowl the stage entertain grab people's attention Use humor and whatever else they want that they want to have conversation with him But the pastor's responsibility is to say it is written That means I stand here Because I don't want to distract you by prowling a stage Because after a while what you're gonna do is you're gonna wait for me to do something It just happens that's human nature and when I begin to think oh, they're not really Listening I might say you know as and then you know Jonah and he went down down down and then I fall on the ground That's true That's true. I really believe that the center of all things should be the word of God. I really do and that's That's why I stand here.  I want him to be alive. I want him at personality and blah blah blah But it's the word of God that's alive and so it of God that makes you live So I just wanted to speak about that because we're now we're talking about that today I said, you know, I said it there are people today see churches entertainment in and the pastor as the actor as The guy who draws the attention he he does all of that and I've seen that man I've been around for a long time God knows that and I've seen an awful lot of that We want to keep Jesus Christ in his word center and that's kind of how I wanted to begin this by just reminding you of that You know, just to remind you of that. Yeah, amen to that. So as it as it is written There's a none righteous No, not one so what's he do he appeals to scripture as it is written The Bible is the foundation for saying what he's about to say Psalm 33 verse 4 says the word of the Lord is right and true. He is faithful in all he does So the word of the Lord is right and true. So as it is written, what does it say in scripture? Well, there is none righteous. No, not one No one has ever outside of Christ. He's saying been morally perfectly righteous Mankind and he's about to say this is universally sinful. There is none who is naturally holy There is none who is naturally innocent all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God There's done righteous. No, not one now. I'm gonna use the theological term of brief briefly Our Adamic nature, that's the theological term Our Adamic nature is fallen. No one can do absolute good. So so many says well, what is the Adamic nature?  No The Adamic nature, what is that it's the propensity to sin that's been inherited from Adam Why does man have an Adamic nature? Well when Adam sinned and fell the whole human family that followed was automatically polluted with a sinful nature and Was born scripture says with a corrupted heart See Romans 512 says Just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin So death spread to all men because all sinned In first Corinthians 15 verse 22 as in Adam all die So also in Christ all will be made alive Galatians 3 22 scripture has concluded all under sin And so he speaks concerning the propensity of the human being to sin due to the fallen nature and the Bible declares That all have sin He says in verse 11. There's none who understands in other words No one has innate ability to comprehend what is spiritually true We don't have that capacity in first Corinthians 2 verse 14 Paul said the natural man receives not the things of the spirit of God They are foolishness unto him neither can he know them for they are spiritually discerned When he says the natural man That's the unspiritual man. That's a man who's not born again The natural man cannot receive that word received in the original language means to welcome So the unspiritual man does not welcome the things of the spirit of God So when it says the natural man will not receive he will not welcome in it's a picture of someone knocking at your door You're looking out the window and seeing who it is and you don't want to open it So you're not welcoming that person in well the natural man doesn't receive God will say pictured his word God his word is is knocking on a door will say but they will not welcome it in They don't want to receive it. Why is that? because These things are spiritually discerned What they are he says is their foolishness to him that word foolish is the root that in the Greek Where we can find the word moronic or imbecilic The natural man does not welcome in the things of the spirit of God because it's imbecilic. It makes no sense to him You know this to be true prior to coming to Christ So when we're sure about Jesus with you and you'd say that makes no sense That's we didn't welcome it in it takes the Holy Spirit to convict us So the natural man receive it not the things of the Spirit of God the foolishness to him neither can he know them He cannot understand or discern them Why because they're spiritually discerned? So why do people reject the scriptures? Why do they reject God? Because it makes no sense to them That's why Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would convict the world of sin righteousness and judgment Because it takes the Spirit of God to take you to take me and To redirect my attention to him when my children were very very small when they were babies and I would be wanting to talk to a monocation Their little attention span being what it was They'd kind of look around the room when daddy's talking to him And I used to redirect their attention I would gently touch their little faces And I would move it towards me. So I would look eye to eye with them And I would say daddy's talking to you No, I didn't do that daddy's talking to you You need to listen You redirect the attention The Holy Spirit redirects your attention You're thinking of different things, but the Holy Spirit grabs hold of you. He brings conviction And now you listen You may not hear everywhere that was said, but now you're listening to these words And as you hear those words he convictions of sin righteousness and judgment he awakens you That's how you got saved And so there's none who is any good. There's none who understands they don't spiritually comprehend Verse 11 he continues. There's none who seeks God When it says there's none who sees God it carries the connotation of there's none who's seeking after him to know him and know his will And Psalm 14 verse 2 The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men And that carries the connotation by the way of investigating To see if there were any that did understand if there's any that see God And the answer to that is no you might find this interesting every man made religion avoids God Instead of seeking him How's that? Oh, no, wait a minute. There's guys who do all kinds of crazy things Because they want to know God. How can you say that? Well, that's because man's religion Is normally based on human effort And in your human effort Whether it's in your fasting or your prayers or whether it's in your generous giving whether it's in your meditation Whether it's in your fasting whatever it may be It's all human effort You're attempting to Reach the gulf Between a holy god and a sinful person And you're trying to do it Through your own efforts So there's none who seeks God for God really because every man made religion avoids him Man's religion is normally based on human effort It's interesting, but someone once said this God is the number one seeker in the bible We like to speak about how we seek after him, but we forget that he is the one who first seeks after us When adam fell was that adam chasing after god in the garden? No, it was the voice of the lord adam heard Calling out adam. Where are you? It was not adam the bible doesn't say adam was saying. Oh, where are you god? No, the bible says adam hit himself And it was god the seeking god who went after adam You see that very clearly in the ministry of jesus. He is the one who seeks after the law sheep He's the one who seeks after the lost coin and He's the one who seeks after the lost son In the story of the protocol None of them are seeking after him He is seeking after them And so god is the one who sought after us now when isiah prophesied about messiah he said in isiah 53 6 All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone To his own way and the lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all So we have all gone astray verse 12 says they've all turned aside When it says they've turned aside that means they've gone out of the way. They've gone in the wrong direction humanity policy has left the true path of pursuing god in his will This is a it's from psalm 14 3. They have all turned aside. They have together become corrupt. There's none who does good No, not one They have all together become Excuse me. I've got this cough coming don't get near me. I'll give you covet just kidding I'm not going to It it's a picture in verse 12 Of turning aside going in the wrong direction and together he's speaking of humanity have become unprofitable Again, there's none who does good.  It's what he's saying So all humanity has fallen to ruin And the point he's making is man without god doesn't produce righteous works. That's why verse 12 says there's none who does good No, not one There's none who is morally upright their throat verse 13 and i've got this cough is wanting to fight me You win um Their throat is an open tomb with their tongues. They've practiced deceit This is an interesting phrase here. Let me share this with you He says their throat is an open tomb. Their throat is an open sepulchre. Their throat Is an open grave Well, what does that mean? Their speech is not only corrupt But it corrupts others I remembered something and I looked it up and I quote i'm gonna just quote it The point he's making is death proceeds from them from the mouth their words do not bring life. That's his point But when it says their throat is an open grave, I remembered something and I'll just read it to you the romans Sometimes compelled a captive listen to this To be joined face to face with a dead body And to bear it about Until the horrible decaying body fluids destroyed the life Of the living victim the poet virgil describes this cruel punishment The living and the dead At his command were coupled face to face and hand to hand till choked with stench In loathe embraces tied The lingering wretches pined away and died and so Your words he's saying without god These Humanity without christ is like the stench of an open grave It's putrid So the one who is spiritually dead can't speak spiritual life They're like an unsealed sepulcher Stench and death are present. That's pretty strong language He says with their tongues They have practiced deceit when it says practice deceit They're smooth liars The first time you lied and everyone in this room has lied. I know someone may say well, I I haven't that's your first lie We've all lied But the first lie you you you lied you probably got caught Because it probably just wasn't convincing but you practiced And after practicing you can get pretty good at lying It's it's something you can craft you can learn to be a good liar When I gave my um cardboard testimony those of you who saw it I don't know but um The first thing I put and there was a reason for it was I was a thief Why did I say that you're not interested?  That's why I put thief and liar I wasn't lying before I stole I stole and learned to lie And if you practice long enough You can become very convincing And that's what he's saying. These are very convincing liars because they practice They smooth they're smooth liars And a person's character is revealed by the way they speak In verse 13 the poison of asps The word asp is a snake is a cobra The poison of cobras is under their lips the poison in a cobra is in a bag And um, it's under a tooth that discharges venom. So that's a picture he's giving But it's a point. Well, when the unsaved preach, there's danger because the words he's saying are spiritual poison Now you say well, that's an interesting thing. Well, jesus said this when some of the Pharisees were having a Having making accusations against him. You remember they called him beelzebub prince of the flies And jesus spoke and he said to them this in matthew 12 34. He said brood of vipers How can you be an evil speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks That's what paul is saying He's saying that the poison of cobras is under the lips you brood of vipers You cannot bring forth good things.  They have bitterness. What is bitterness? It's openly expressed emotional hostility. They use their speech to hurt people Proverbs 12 18 there is one who speaks like the piercings of a sword But the tongue of the wise promotes health There are people who have learned how to use their words to just lacerate people And it's coming out of out of an evil heart towards people That's where it's coming from and paul once again is saying this is the behavior He's not saying this is the behavior of believers.  It's become a commonplace in our day this anger this this Violence that has become normal in just the last few years It's amazing to me You know that that people are not only only Rude to one another, but sometimes they are physically abusive I was watching the news if you watch the news at all, perhaps you saw this recently a swimmer named riley something or other um For some reason her name escaped me, but anyway, she's a swimmer and she was lecturing on On the need to maintain women as women swimmers. I think there's a logic to that that makes sense to me Women should compete with women and just because a man says I feel like a woman Does it mean that he is a woman right? I mean I used to almost tease I teased about that I'll say this quickly.  I can say that And that was my point you're looking at somebody who's not that Is that still true today? No Because you're not allowed to doubt what somebody has said Their self-delusion is more important than reality We're living in that right now. Maybe you haven't noticed it But what we are there are laws being passed right now that are forbidding you From pointing that out right now right now Here in california and various other places and so that's taking place even as i'm speaking and so There are people who Get angry at you Because you don't agree with them and so this young woman was given a lecture up in san francisco in a university And people who refer to themselves as transgender began to attack her swear at her they hit her And there's nothing being said about that There's nothing being said about that other than I have to say it this way other than the spokeswoman for For the president said that they are solidly united behind those people who are of the persuasion To hit people for that she didn't say it that way, but that's what she's basically saying We're living in that time right now. We have to be aware of this and by the way, we can't roll over and be quiet about We have to be open about this is wrong This is not something right and the church of all Entities on the face of the earth. We're supposed to speak the truth in love but speak it nonetheless, right? So that's taking place right now, but that's a sign of the last days Second timothy 3 verse 1 paul said it like this. He said know this that in the last day's perilous or dangerous times will come And he began to describe those days and in verse 3 He said that they'd be unloving unforgiving slanderers without self-control brutal despisers of good We're living in those days in verse 17 the way of peace they have not known They have not sought the peace of god and they have not sought peace with god and as a result They have no peace and they're unfamiliar with what it truly is He's saying that they haven't opened to god's way for peace In isaac 57 21 says it like this. There's no peace say if by god for the wicked So being at war with god they have refused the peace that's been offered to them all humanity Because the peace that's being offered is found in what is called the gospel of reconciliation Now the gospel of reconciliation Is a is a message the gospel message is a message that calls for unconditional surrender. I don't know if you know that Second carinthians 5 you can research it study it. You'll see it very plainly presented We have been entrusted with what is called the gospel of reconciliation to what god was in christ reconciling the world to himself And so the gospel of reconciliation has also been referred to as terms of peace Now the terms of peace that are offered in the gospel of reconciliation Are not a conditional peace You know it is calling for unconditional surrender In other words, you can't negotiate peace with god and retain the sins that he's at war with You have to unconditionally surrender. That's what you did when you got saved you didn't say I hope you didn't say jesus i'm going to give you all of these things, but I want to keep this for myself Because it's just a small sin. It's not a it's not that bad Just a small one. I want to keep No, you unconditionally said I give up I surrender you're the victor I have been vanquished I want peace with you when the united states fought and Participated in the war in the second world war and macArthur, I believe was macArthur went on the Missouri if i'm not mistaken at the moment and received the Sword of hero hito It was an unconditional surrender We did not negotiate a partial peace It was full surrender. That's what happened to conclude world war two That's a picture of what god did through christ The gospel doesn't say stay doing these sins. It's okay.  That's what the the bible teaches. We're at war with him but jesus dies on a cross And defeats the enemy Then offers through his message terms of peace with you But you don't negotiate with him by saying i'm going to keep these sins because they're small sins or pet sins I've had them all my life. They're really part of my just the way I am you know No, you said I I give them all to you I unconditionally surrender to you I ask for full forgiveness Because I fully surrender. That's that's what paul's talking about in the world hasn't done that He's saying the world rejects those things and therefore they have no peace because they don't have peace with god He says basically That the reason they have no peace is because they have no fear of god Now matthew henry said this he said the root of religion is the fear of god reigning in the heart And in proverbs 14 27 It says the fear of the lord is a fountain of life to turn one away from the snares of death In verse 19 Now we know that whatever the law says it says to those Who are under the law that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may Become guilty before god therefore by the deeds of the law No flesh will be justified in his sight for by the law is the knowledge of sin So he has just finished from verse 9 to verse 18 condemning all humanity under sin But in verse 19 he makes it clear Whatever the law speaking of the law of moses says it says to those who are under the law That every mouth may be stopped And so he's closing the door on all humanity by saying that all stand guilty before god And what he's saying is this you cannot be saved if you try to keep the law You stand condemned he's saying in the law of moses. That's why we need god's grace And that includes the person who has an internal moral code And that includes the jewish person who had a written code We break the the code whether it's internal or written And so those who've received the written code he's saying speaking of the jews Stand guilty before the lord And because all people violate standards all stand guilty before god Therefore verse 20 by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight Even if we try very hard to be good We fall short of god's glory The law of moses Reveals to us what sin is It also reveals our guilt before god Later on in chapter 7. Let's see we're in chapter 3. So in about a year when we get to chapter 7 Verse 7 What shall we say then is the law sin? Certainly not Indeed i would not have known what sin was except through the law For i would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said do not covet So the law actually Condemns It doesn't save The law reveals to us how far we have fallen short of god's standards The law actually defines for us reveals what sin is It reveals how we have broken the law And then it even sentences us And unless god had done this for us given christ we'd never realize our guilt before him So no matter how good we are compared to other people we still fall short Everybody has a friend that they have in their past or even now that's worse than them And so you can kind of point to him say at least i'm not like that, you know We all have that So no matter how good we are compared to somebody else we're still not perfect Isaiah 64 6 we are all as an unclean thing All our all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags We all do fade as a leaf Our iniquities like the wind Have taken us away We are an unclean thing our righteousnesses are as filthy rags The leper who had oozing sores Would wrap their arm With a cloth And the cloth would become polluted by the seepage And just in life as walking in in life the dust would settle it would become dirty and grimy And isaias simply saying our righteousness is like a filthy rag We may consider it ourselves to be clean, but in fact We're filthy we need the lord That's why we're thankful for the grace of god because grace changes everything In titus 3 verses 4 through 7 When the kindness and the love of god our savior toward man appeared Not by works of righteousness which we've done But according to his mercy He saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the holy spirit Whom he poured out on us abundantly through jesus christ our savior That having been justified by his grace We should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. I'm going to stop there By just magnifying the grace of god Thank god for his grace No matter how hard i tried no matter how hard you tried To be good The desire was within me the ability to perform that which i desired was not I didn't want to be a liar But I was just this last sunday on Easter service a little boy approached me Sweetest little guy I'd say he's nine or ten maybe And I was in the back and I think it was Jared came and knocked on the door and said pastor david There's a little boy out there wants to talk to you for a minute. Would you come out? I said no get the kid out of here. No No, I said of course So I came walking out and he was just standing there sweetest.  Oh, no, I enjoy this. I love this I enjoy talking to these little guys and so we're having a nice conversation. But then the mama says this to me She says, you know He kind of exaggerates.  She says he he lies and you know pastor, maybe you can pray for him and help him a little bit but He he makes up a lot of stuff Well, they'd already told me some of their story and I could understand why he does that So I looked at him and I told him this and I'll close with this little illustration But this is what I told this little boy. I said I understand why you lie I understand why you don't tell everything exactly.  No, I I'm the righteous rags. No, I said, um I said, I know I understand why you exaggerate the truth I said I used to do that I was a liar a polished liar I would actually sit down at the age of 17 and 18.  I said, you know, I used to lie And he goes you did pastor. I said, yeah, I I did I said I understand I said, but let me tell you something. I found out why I lied The reason I lied is because I just didn't know my value before God I didn't realize that that God loved me So I tried to make myself into something I wasn't I wanted to recreate myself I said, so I tell lies about what I did and how adventurous I was and all of those things I said and then one day the Lord just told me, you know, I love you And then you don't need to make up stories. Just be yourself And maybe that ministers to somebody even listening to this now You know who you are in christ is more than enough Is more than enough You don't have to be the hero of your own stories You don't have to be the one who never loses You don't have to be the person who is just oh so at just be yourself Just be who you are, you know, and one last closing thought something that may help somebody may not but On this whole thing about God's grace and goodness When I was a young man and I would date girls I would ask them and I didn't date very often I was too cheap to But when I did I would not where do you want to go and what do you want to do? What do you like to eat? What kind of music I had kind of sound them out What kind of food do you like? Oh, I like it Me too What kind of music do you like? I like country Me too That one hurt And then one day I met a girl named Marie And At that point I said I'm not going to try and do everything she likes I'm going to take her to see if she likes the things I like So when I asked her out, I'd say would you like to go with me? I'm going And guess what she wanted to go Would you like to go here? It's where I'm going. So no, I didn't cater I didn't pretend I was somebody else.  That's how it works And so as I was sharing with this little fellow, you don't have to say things to make yourself what you're not Just learn that God loves you and he can make you into what he wants Because of the grace of God Because God's grace changes everything So the law Our conscience creation Our morals all of those things fall short The only thing that matters is God's grace. That's what paul's pointing out All sin and fall short of the glory of God. That's why God sent jesus Because you cannot make it on your own. You needed his help. That's why we need a savior Because he did what I can't do And all I need to do is trust and believe that he can give me what he prepared for me I didn't do it. He did it. I just received it And guess what it changes your life. We'll see that more deeply next time


Did 16-year-olds be allowed to vote in the U.S.? After young people made their voices heard loud and clear in the midterms, some people demanded to speak to the election manager and cried for the voting age to be raised. But groups all over the country and world have been making strong cases for doing just the opposite, proposing they lower the voting age to 16, like all these countries already have. Many 16 and 17-year-olds have jobs and pay taxes, and not allowing them to vote means taxation without representation. Hmm, where have I heard that before? Policies and politicians that we're voting on today will affect young people the most. So shouldn't they get a say?