Our scripture reading for this evening comes from Paul's letter to the Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 through 10, such a great, wonderful passage here from the Apostle Paul. So friends, as we hear God's word, let us pay careful attention to what God has to say to us here from his holy, inspired, and perfect word. Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 through 10. The Apostle Paul writes, As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the Spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith. This is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God. Not by works so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do them. Well, this evening we will consider, we will look at the second question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism. And as we look at this wonderful question and answer from the Catechism, we must understand what came directly before it. And many of us here are very familiar with the Catechism, especially these two questions and answers. And what we saw and what we see, as we know from the first question and answer, we see that in question and answer one, the Catechism explains to us, it tells us where we can find comfort. It tells us that we can find rest and comfort for our souls by belonging to Jesus Christ. By belonging to Jesus Christ. That this idea of belonging means that Jesus Christ owns us. He possesses us. And the implication there being, for what we read in the Catechism, is that nothing, the words from Romans 8, that nothing can separate us from God's love. Because we are owned, we are possessed by Jesus Christ. But from what we see in the Catechism, we see that comfort, God does not give this comfort to all people, so He doesn't just bestow it on all people in creation. It is God's special grace that He gives this comfort. He imparts this comfort to His people. This is part of God's special grace to His people, to give them this comfort in life and in death. What we see in question and answer too, is that it asks the question, what is necessary to have this comfort? What must I know in order to have this comfort both in life and in death? So as we begin, let's read question and answer two from the Heidelberg Catechism. You can find this in the back of your blue psalter on page eight. Question and answer two of the Heidelberg Catechism. The Catechism asks, what must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort? Answer, three things. First, how great my sin and misery are. Second, how I am set free from all my sins and misery. And third, how I am to thank God for such deliverance. And so what we see here in these three things that we must know, the catechism is telling us, and the central point that the catechism is making here is that spiritual knowledge, knowledge of the spiritual realm, is necessary to live and die in everlasting comfort. Spiritual knowledge is necessary to live and die with everlasting comfort. The comfort so wonderfully described for us in question and answer one. And specifically what we see here in question and answer two is three things that we're required to know. Three things we must know in order to have this comfort. Firstly, the Catechism tells us that you must know your guilt. You must know your guilt, how you stand before God guilty as a sinner. But secondly, the Catechism tells us that you must know also God's grace. We must know the wonderful grace that we receive in Jesus Christ, our Lord. And thirdly, finally, the Catechism tells us here in question and answer two that you must know God's requirement of gratitude. You must know that God requires us as those who receive this wonderful grace in Jesus Christ. And we must live thankful lives of obedience for the wonderful redemption we've received in Jesus Christ. And the reason we read Ephesians 2 is because we see all three of these things that we must know are clearly taught for us here in Ephesians 2, verses 1 and 10. And as we go through and look at these three points, how we know our guilt, we must know God's grace, We must know gratitude. We'll look through here in Ephesians 2 and see how each one of these points directly comes out of God's holy word. But what we see here in question and answer 2 is also what Zacharias Ersinus, the man who wrote the catechism, he tells us that this question and answer really gives us the structure for the entire catechism. Ersinus says this, this question contains the statement and division of the whole catechism. So the whole catechism is structured around this guilt, grace, gratitude structure that many of us are so familiar with. But question and answer two not only gives us the structure of the whole catechism by telling us of our guilt, of God's grace and the gratitude that we are to give to God and to our neighbor as a response for what we've received in Christ, But Ursinus, the author, also tells us this about question and answer too. He says, this question and answer accords with the division of the scripture into the law and the gospel. And so what Ursinus here is telling us is that what we see here in the second question and answer of the catechism is that God's word is divided into these two words. Words of law, which reveal our guilt, but also words of gospel. Words that reveal God's grace, His love, His mercy, the gospel revealed in Jesus Christ. And so what we see here, the Catechism sets us with this structure. That we read God's word as law and as gospel. And so we'll note here in Ephesians where we see both the law and the gospel as God reveals it to us here in the words of Paul. So firstly then, let's look at that first point we mentioned a few moments earlier, that we must know our guilt. The first thing the Catechism tells us here is you must know your guilt. What the Catechism does in this first point, it forces us to recognize, it forces us to look at ourselves and see who we truly are, To recognize who we really are as we stand before a holy and righteous God. Look at what Paul writes here in Ephesians 2, verses 1 and 3. As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the rulers of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work and those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time. gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. Notice the language here in verse 1. You're dead in transgressions and sins. You're not good enough. You're not smart enough. As much as the society might tell us how good and how wonderful we are, what we read here in God's Word is apart from Jesus Christ, on our own, outside of God's grace, we are dead. We are like a rotten, dead corpse. Unable to respond. Unable to do anything at all. Unable to will the good or do any good apart from God. We're dead, friends. This is our guilt before a holy and righteous God. We are those who have trespassed God's law. Those who have behaved out of accordance with what God has revealed in His Holy Word. We are all by nature rebels and those, as the catechism will go on to say, hate God and hate our neighbors. This is our fundamental problem then, friends. Our fundamental problem is our sin and our rebellion, which incurs the just punishment, the just wrath of a holy God that we sang about in those first three songs we sang. the holy God who is perfect in all His ways, we as those who are transgressors, those who are dead, we stand under God's righteous and holy judgment. And so the reason the Catechism tells us that we must recognize our guilt, we must recognize our guilt in case we believe the lie that we're good enough on our own, that we can do good apart from Jesus Christ, That we have no need for Christ. We have no need for His work and His salvation. And this is precisely why we need to know, you must know your guilt. Because when we recognize our guilt, when we recognize who we really are, when we recognize that we're dead, that we're transgressors, that we're sinners, we can finally, for the first time, see our need for a Savior and a need for a Redeemer. Or Sinus again says wonderful things here. He says, Where there is no knowledge of our misery, where there is no knowledge of our guilt, there is no deliverance, there is no redemption, there is no salvation sought. Just as the man who is ignorant of his disease never inquires after the physician. And so what the law does, that law of God which reveals our sin, it reveals who we really are. It reveals our rebellion. It shows us as we really are, dead in transgressions and sins. It's only after we see our sin, it's only after we see our guilt before God, that we are dead, that we can see our need for life. It's only when we realize that we're dead that we can see the need for the life-giving work of God to revive us and give us new life. It's only when we realize our guilt that we can see our need for redemption. And as our scientist said in that quote, just as the man who is ignorant of his disease never inquires after the physician. When will you go to the doctor? You go to the doctor when you're feeling sick, when something hurts, when you're in pain, when something's not right. This is precisely how God's word, the law, functions in our lives. It shows us our need for grace. It shows us our need of redemption. It's only when we're hurt, when we're broken, when we see who we really are, we can finally see our need for a Savior. And so this then leads us to the second thing that we have to know, as the catechism tells us. It tells us you must also know God's grace. You must also know God's grace. Without God's grace, without redemption, if we only knew our guilt apart from redemption, from God's wonderful work of salvation, it would only leave us and lead us to despair and hopelessness, to fear and doubt. Without redemption, only staying in a state of guilt, we would have no comfort at all. The comfort that the Catechism is explaining, where we find that. Knowledge of our redemption, then, friends. Knowledge of how we're saved, of how we're redeemed in Jesus Christ is essential to have that comfort. To have that comfort which can withstand all of life and even death itself. Knowledge of our redemption is essential to have this comfort that lasts both in life and in death. And we hear of this wonderful work of God's redemption even here in Ephesians chapter 2. In verses 1 through 3 as we just read, Paul tells us who we really are, that we're dead in transgressions and sins, that we're all by nature children of God's wrath and deserving of God's wrath. In verse 4, though, we hear some of the most wonderful words that a sinner could ever hear. Verse 4, But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. Not when you were good enough. Not when you were trying your hardest. But when you were absolutely and utterly dead is when God loved us. It is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. In order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith. This is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God. Not by works, so that no one can boast. And when we look back at these wonderful words from Paul, it's by grace you have been saved. It's God's grace that's being revealed here. First we saw our guilt, and now we're seeing here God's grace. The undeserved favor of God. And what the essence is of God's grace is that redemption. Being redeemed by Jesus Christ. And we read of that redemption, if we were to read question and answer one. We hear of that redemption. It says here in question and answer one, that He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood, And has set me free. He has redeemed me from the tyranny of the devil. So we hear of this redemption. But what precisely is this idea of redemption? Well, if any of us watch the news or we watch SportsCenter or we listen to some of the radio programs, we hear people saying, well, such and such athlete or so and so politician, they needed to redeem themselves from something. And what they mean by that in our society is that somebody's done something bad. They've done something wrong. Maybe they, in the sports world, they made a bad play, a play that cost the team the game. And they ask the athlete, well, how are you going to redeem yourself? The idea is that you do something good. You make the game-winning play the next day. Or you do something good in society to make up for the bad thing you've done. So the way our society uses redemption is it's precisely something that we do. We do for ourselves. We redeem ourselves. But in Scripture, in the New Testament, when the New Testament uses the language of redemption, it means something very different. In the New Testament, redemption is the idea of someone would come and to pay the price. If you were a slave, someone would come and pay the price to release you from slavery. They would pay the price and you would now be released from slavery. And if someone had paid that price, the one who paid the price was your redeemer. The one who paid to release you from slavery. And your release would be your redemption. And so in this scheme, in the Bible's understanding of redemption, it's not something we do to redeem ourselves. But it's something someone else does. Something God does to pay the price to redeem us from sin and death and the slavery of sin. But what have we been redeemed from? What does the catechism tell us we've been redeemed from? Look at the second part here of question and answer two. Second, how I am redeemed or set free from all my sins and misery. We're set free, we're redeemed from our sins and misery. This means then, friends, this means that God no longer looks upon you. God no longer looks upon you as a rebel, as one who's dead. He no longer looks upon you as a sinner, as one who's been disobedient to His holy and righteous law. Instead, because Jesus paid that price, because Jesus paid the price by dying on the cross, by suffering the eternal wrath of God in our place, we have been released. We have been released from the slavery of sin. We've been released from the slavery of death and the curse. We are no longer under that curse. We are no longer slaves. We've been redeemed. We've been set free. This then, friends, this wonderful knowledge of God's grace, of His redemption for us in Jesus Christ. This is the Gospel. The good news. While we heard in our first point of the law how it shows us our sin and our need for Christ, here we see God's grace. We see the Gospel. The good news. So this means then, friends, that comfort, comfort in life and in death, comfort that can sustain us at all times and in all places, can only be found in the Gospel. Comfort can only be found in what Jesus Christ has done for you. It can't be found in yourself. It can't be found in the good things that you do. That's not where we find comfort and rest for our souls. Comfort for our souls can only be found by looking and trusting, by having faith in the work of Jesus Christ. What He has done for us to redeem us. That is where we hear the gospel and the good news, where we can find comfort. And notice here in Ephesians, verses 8 and 9, we see the essence of this gospel. It's not based on our works, it's not based on our merits or anything that we do, but it's based on God's grace and what Jesus Christ has done. Verse 8, For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith. and this is not from yourselves. It doesn't come from your work or what you do, but it's the gift of God. Something God gives us as a gift. Something we haven't earned or deserve in any way. Not by works, so that no one can boast. This then, friends, understanding the Gospel then is essential for having that comfort, that question and answer one speaks so beautifully about. Without the gospel, without the good news, without turning in faith to Jesus Christ, we could have no comfort. We could have no rest for our souls. We would still be left in sin and in misery. So when we desire, when we look for that place to find comfort, when you look for comfort for your souls, when you're going through the most rigorous and difficult times of this sin-cursed world, it's by looking to the Gospel. It's by looking to that good news of what Jesus Christ has done for us that we can find the rest and comfort we need for our souls. But the Catechism doesn't just stop there by telling us about the Gospel, But it tells us there's a third thing that we must know to have this comfort. The third thing we must know is that we must know God's requirement of gratitude. We must know God's requirement of gratitude. And if we look at the history of the church, there have been many in the church, many even in Paul's day, who have said that this gospel, the gospel that we just spoke about, This gospel of trusting in faith only by grace through Jesus Christ. That this gospel, this good news, it leads to a life of disobedience. The logic is that if God redeems us by his grace alone, by faith alone, only according to the work of Christ alone, and I don't do anything, if I don't contribute anything to that salvation, then I might as well just go off and do whatever I please. To live however I might feel like. But the Apostle Paul was familiar with this objection as well. And if we were to turn to the beginning of Romans chapter 6, Paul asked a hypothetical question. He asked, well, may we continue in sin so that grace can abound. May we continue to sin more and more so that we can receive more grace. is the objection that Paul is facing. And if we know our Bibles, we know Paul's answer to that question. May we sin so that grace may abound. Paul's answer? By no means. Absolutely not. The gospel of Jesus Christ does not lead to a life of disobedience, a life of licentiousness. Instead, the gospel leads to a life of thankfulness, and a life of gratitude and a life of obedience to God. The Gospel should stir up within us a thankful heart, a heart of gratitude, a heart of thankfulness for the redemption we've received in Jesus Christ. Think about it for a second. When you receive a gift, either at Christmastime or on your birthday, what's your natural response to receiving that gift? It's Thanksgiving, isn't it? When someone gives you a gift, our natural response is to say thank you. To be overwhelmed with gratitude for what your friends or your family have done. To give you this wonderful gift. It would be so out of place if someone gave you a gift and then you cursed them or spoke words or you were mean to that person. This is not what we do. The natural response for when we receive gifts is to be thankful. It's to be thankful for what we've received from that person. And this is exactly how we as God's people, of those who've received the greatest gift of all, not some mere Christmas gift or birthday gift, but the greatest gift of all, eternal life in heaven with Jesus Christ. The greatest gift we could ever receive. And we are to respond in the exact same way, with lives of thanksgiving, Lives of gratitude for what we've received in Jesus Christ. And we hear of this life that we are called to live in the last verse here in Ephesians 2, chapter 10. I'm sorry, Ephesians 2, verse 10. Look at what Paul says here. After he's explained to us both our guilt and God's grace, now here in verse 10, he concludes with gratitude. For we are God's workmanship. We are God's workmanship. We are like a piece of furniture fashioned by a carpenter. We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Our life of obedience, our life of gratitude was prepared by God beforehand. It's something that God set before us that we are to live in. What Paul here is describing is a life of obedience to God's law. Those who've been redeemed now live according to God's perfect law. And Ursinus says that this life of obedience, this life of thankfulness, he says, is the principal end and design of our deliverance. The principal end and design of our deliverance, of our redemption, is to live lives of thankfulness. Live lives that honor God. This is our calling, friends, as those who've received this redemption. To glorify God by loving Him and loving our neighbors with a thankful heart. But lest we be mistaken, we must make one final distinction here. Our gratitude, our life of thankfulness, our life of obedience to God, what he's done for us in Jesus Christ, can never be and is not the foundation of your redemption. The reason you stand before God on that last day, the reason you can have comfort, is not because of your gratitude and the life of gratitude that you've lived. Instead, our life of gratitude is the rightful and correct response of one who has been redeemed. Again, Ursinus says this, that we may know that whatever duties we perform towards God and our neighbors are not meritorious, but are a declaration of our thankfulness. The works we do, our lives of obedience and thankfulness, our lives of gratitude, are not the foundation of our redemption. They do not earn God's favor, but they are the correct response of what we are to do as those who receive redemption. In Jesus Christ. So friends, what we've seen here this evening in these wonderful words of the Catechism is that we must know our guilt. We must know how we've broken God's law. But we must also know God's wonderful, glorious grace. That we've been seated with Christ in heavenly places. That we belong to Jesus Christ and there's no one, there's nothing that can separate us from that love. We must know God's grace. And as those who stand under that grace, as those who are under God's wonderful redemption and salvation, we are called to live in this world. We are called to live in this world as thankful pilgrims, loving God and loving our neighbors out of a thankful heart. Hallelujah. Amen.