Let's pray for the Lord's Day 2, verse 7-25. Tonight, for our Scripture reading, if you would turn with me to Romans 7, where we read together verses 7-25. Romans 7, verses 7-25. And also, if you would turn in the back of the Psalter hymnal to Lord's Day 2, page 9. Page 9 in the back of the Psalter hymnal, Lord's Day 2. which is the first of three Lord's Days that deal with the first part of the catechism, man's sin and misery. In many respects, this is a difficult part of the catechism to preach because it's a difficult part of the catechism to hear. This is the believer's confession. And therefore, as this section talks about sin and misery, it's talking about us. It's not talking about those who are outside of the faith. But it's talking about each and every one of us. And therefore, it can get difficult to hear that there's something wrong with us. And exactly what that is. So keeping your finger there on page 9 in the back of the Psalter hymnal, first of all, we read together verses 7-25 of Romans 7 as we give our attention to the Word of God. 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. But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me and through the commandment put me to death. So then the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good. Did that which is good then become death to me? By no means. But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment, sin might become utterly sinful. We know that the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me that is in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do, no, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work. When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being, I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. So then I myself, in my mind, am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature, a slave to the law of sin. In turning to Lord's Day 2, the three questions and answers that we find there, we confess the answers together. Question 3 asks, How do you come to know your misery? The law of God tells me. What does God's law require of us? Christ teaches us this in summary in Matthew 22. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. Can you live up to all this perfectly? No. I have a natural tendency to hate God and my neighbor. Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, I don't know very much about fixing cars. I'm not very good when it comes to auto mechanic work. When my car's not running right or if it's not running at all, I have to take it to the mechanic. I need to take it to one who is able to diagnose the problem and to fix the problem. Because you see, you can't fix something until you know what the true problem is. And you can't know that something is broke if you don't know what it's supposed to do in the first place. You recall that with regard to Christian comfort, the catechism reflecting the teaching of Scripture teaches us that we need to know three things to live and die happily in this comfort. And the first thing we need to know is what's wrong with us. That's right. What's wrong with you and me? You see, again, it's not a question of if something is wrong. Because that's a fact. But before we will even desire to know how to fix it, to have it fixed, we need to know what's wrong. We need to understand it. And Lord's Day too, beloved, considers this Word of God the necessary knowledge of misery. Believers must know how great our sin and misery are before we can understand and desire deliverance from that sin and misery. Now, we say believers. Because only true believers can know their misery by the grace of God. Unbelievers, unregenerate people, those who are not born again, will not acknowledge the misery that we're talking about. Yet one thing that is true is all people are filled with this misery. Just because one doesn't know it, or just because one is not weighed down under the burden of it, or just because one ignores it doesn't mean that it's not there. Just as in the sun is in the sky, whether you see it or not, or even if you cover your eyes, in the same way all of mankind has sin and misery. But again, the catechism deals with believers. This is the believer's confession. God's people. And it asks us then that question that we all must consider, how do you come to know your misery? Where do we look to see the proper diagnosis of our misery? So in connection with the necessary knowledge of misery, we want to consider these points. First of all, the soul source. Secondly, the required content. Then finally, the humbling application. Now we must first consider what true misery is. Many associate misery with suffering and indeed, individual experience in everyday life proves that there is much suffering. In fact, we receive unhealthy doses of the fact of suffering in the newspapers, on the TV, from the radio, every day. And of course, in recent days in even greater measure. There is the misery, for example, of war, of prisons, of hospitals. The misery of rape and murder and kidnappings. The misery of the abuse of drugs and alcohol. And the list goes on and on. And on a less visible scale, there is the misery of the suffering of boys and girls not feeling accepted in school or being picked on or feeling inadequate with different things. There is the misery of private pain that some or all of us go through at different times. There is the misery of children and parents not getting along at times? Yes, these things and all suffering cause us to feel miserable. But the reason that we suffer, the reason we are miserable, is because something is not right. When you have a disease, it's because something is not right in your body. Something is abnormal. Misery is something abnormal. And in order to understand what is abnormal, it must be compared to what is normal. A norm or a standard must be applied. For example, boys and girls, to judge an x-ray of a broken leg with an x-ray of another broken leg, or a diseased lung with another diseased lung, that won't do you any good. You need to compare the broken leg with a perfectly normal, healthy leg to discover the severity of the break. or you need to examine a diseased lung with a perfectly normal, healthy lung to see the severity of the disease. You need to compare that which is imperfect against that which is perfect. And with regard to the misery of man in life and in death, what norm or standard, or we could say what measuring stick with which to measure ourselves, what measuring stick do we apply? Well, either man applies a norm that he finds in himself, a norm of his own making, or he must apply a norm from outside of himself. And by the grace of God, the believer is illumined by the Holy Spirit to understand that all the sufferings in this world are symptoms of a greater disease, and that disease is sin. I'm not saying like so many, that sin is not sin, but sin is a sickness. Instead, people don't sin, they're just sick. No, sin is the disease. Our misery and everything that causes us to be miserable is the result of sin. And our misery, that which is miserable to us, includes the pollution, the power, the guilt, and the consequences of sin. Now the Bible describes sin as unrighteousness, as disobedience, as missing the mark. So then how do we know the misery of this unrighteousness, disobedience, and failure to hit the mark? Well, by measuring this against the soul source. Beloved, we must look outside of ourselves to the soul source Himself. To find out how great our sin and misery are, we must use a standard which has not been affected by sin. And that, as answer 3 says, is the law of God. God's law is perfect. His law is the one and only standard. It is normal. And whatever is in agreement with the law of God is normal, but whatever is not in agreement with the law of God is abnormal and therefore miserable. Now, what is the law of God? Well, boys and girls might first of all say, well, the Ten Commandments. We read the law of God every Sunday morning, the Ten Commandments, and that's absolutely right. But more generally speaking, the law of God is God's will concerning the nature, position, and relationship the operation and movement and life of His creation. What I mean is it is the environment established by and created by God for His creation. The stars and planets all stay in their orbits by the laws that God has set for them. And boys and girls, you know what the law for the fish is, don't you? The law for the fish is that it was created to live and move in the environment of water. Life for the fish is determined by the boundaries of the water. Man also lives according to physical laws. Gravity, oxygen, other things. But God also established a spiritual environment for those whom He made after His own likeness and image. God made man in such a way that the issues of life which flow from the man's heart, his motives, desires, his intellect, his whole being, that these issues of life were in harmony with the living will of God. To be in harmony with God's will was normal, but sin made man very abnormal. The relationship of harmony between God and man was destroyed by sin, and therefore man suffers from the miserable effects of sin, of which first and foremost is separation from God. But again, the unregenerate. One who does not believe, one who is not born again, doesn't recognize this misery. Instead, as Paul says, he suppresses this truth in unrighteousness. Only the believer recognizes this misery by the grace of God and only when he is compared to the standard of God's law. Only when he stands up against the measuring sick, the ruler of God's law, does he recognize it. Only then, beloved, is sin recognized as sin, as Paul makes clear in the portion of Scripture we read. In Romans 7, Paul writes, Indeed, I would not have known what sin was except through the law, for apart from the law, sin is dead. Now, apart from the law, sin is dead. That doesn't mean that in one who does not know the law that he is not a sinner. that sin is not present. Sin is very much present, but it is dead in the sense that it is not active. Now, it is not active in the sense that it does not manifest itself or arise before the consciousness of that one as sin. He doesn't recognize it as sin. He doesn't notice it. If one doesn't know the law, he doesn't know what his sin is. The sin is still there. But apart from the law and knowledge of the law, sin is dead. Whereas Paul also says in Romans 3, verse 20, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. We know that when the sun is shining bright through a window, then we can clearly see dust floating in the air. And if you close the curtains and hide the sunlight, you will also hide the sight of the dust. But that doesn't mean that the dust isn't still there. It still is, much to the dismay of many housewives, I'm sure. You can't get rid of that dust. The sin and misery that hides inside of us might be hidden from the sight of others, but when the light of God's law is turned on the darkness of our sin, it is illumined. Paul cries, What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? But when did he cry this? Not when he was suffering in prison. He sang, remember? He sang when he was in prison. But this passage of Scripture shows us that Paul became distressed because of his sin when he saw his distorted life in the light of the law of God. When he discovered that he is carnal, sold under sin. When he saw the barren unfruitfulness in his life where there is so much selfishness and so little selflessness for the Lord. He says it this way in verse 19, For what I do is not the good I want to do. No, the evil I do not want to do. This I keep on doing. In verse 9, he says, Once I was alive apart from law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. Beloved, that's the deception of sin. He even says that here. Sin deceived me. Those who don't understand their sin and misery think they are just fine. They're alive and well. But those to whom their sin is revealed by the light of God's law begin to realize that their life is nothing but a constant and ongoing death. But the more God's child grows in the faith and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, the more He increases in holiness, He also becomes more and more aware of His wickedness, which He didn't realize before. This is the paradox of the Christian life. This is the puzzling thing that Christians deal with. God builds us up in the faith by bringing us down in the knowledge of our sin and misery. Only then, you see, will we understand what a great salvation is ours. Now, practically speaking, this means that when the light of the law is turned on, then we may begin to realize, even if we've been a Christian all our lives, then we may begin to realize that certain things we have always done that we had no problem doing or particular customs that we have always thought were okay or many other things we may find out are not appropriate for the child of God. Yes, beloved. We must continually be reforming. There may be things even in the latter years of life that we realize we haven't been obedient all this time. And God has now revealed that to us. But when the light of God's law is turned on, then what does it reveal to us? Again, the law of God is the sole source. And it reveals the required content. It reminds us of what God created us to be. What does God's law require of us? Christ teaches us this in summary in Matthew 22. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. This is the great and first commandment and a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. Beloved, this is God's norm. This is the standard which man was originally created to meet. This is the mirror which we are to gaze into and to see our reflection. This is the measuring stick we are to stand against today. Society lives by the standard which says that what is most popular among the people is right. The so-called public opinion polls are used to shape how Americans are expected to live. But by God's grace, the Christians strive to live according to the only standard, the sole source, the law of God. Now the catechism, as you recognize, uses the words of Christ in giving what we call the summary of the law. He gave that when He was asked by a Pharisee what is the greatest commandment in the law. And of course, when the Pharisee asked that, it was meant to be a trick question. But Jesus, knowing that the Pharisees had multiplied the Ten Commandments to literally hundreds of commandments, Jesus makes it clear that the great commandment cannot simply be chosen from a list of commandments. But the greatest commandment is the root of the whole law. It is the essence of every commandment. It's not that which simply touches the external exercises of life, but it deals with the inner motives of the heart. You see, beloved, the Ten Commandments, although the Catechism deals with the Ten Commandments in the third section, the section on gratitude, the Ten Commandments are not left out of the summary. You cannot separate the summary from the Ten. The ten are very much included here. In fact, the summary really includes the full expression of God's law. Every commandment in reality begins with Thou shalt love. Thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Therefore, you shall not have any other gods before Him. You shall not make a graven image with which to serve or worship Him. You shall not take His name in vain, and you shall not violate the Sabbath day. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Therefore, you shall not dishonor your parents. You shall not kill, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness against or covet against your neighbor. When God gave the Israelites His law through Moses, in reality this was nothing new. In many respects, the Ten Commandments show us what is abnormal. They show us what we must not be because that's what we want to be by our sinful nature. The Ten Commandments show us, point us back to what we were created for, and that's love. We need to understand that it is possible to keep God's law, His Ten Commandments, and keep it outwardly, but not inwardly. But without love, it's absolutely meaningless. You know well the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal making a whole lot of noise. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. There are many, like the rich young ruler who came to Jesus, who think, well, I'm not a thief and I'm not a murderer. I'm not a profane person. I must be okay. Everything is fine. Yet that is not proof of love for God and neighbor. Love means not only abstaining from the negative requirements of the law, but also promoting the positive requirements of the law. You shall not kill your neighbor. Instead, you shall build up your neighbor. You shall tend to his well-being, his safety. Just because I attended church twice on Sunday and didn't do my daily work, does that mean that I have demonstrated love for God? Not necessarily. Of course, these things are necessary and they are supposed to be a visible demonstration of love for God. However, it is possible that love for God has nothing to do with it. Love for God is that Sunday observance. Testifies to the fact that all the days of my life I rest from my evil works. This love that we're talking about is no warm, fuzzy feeling. This is talking about the heart of the matter. The heart of God's law deals with the heart of man. And obedience begins in your heart. in your new heart. And that's necessary again because, as we've mentioned over and over from Proverbs 4, the heart controls the man. From it flows the issues of life. From your heart flow your inner desires and thoughts and purposes and motives and words and deeds. We follow our hearts. But Jesus includes with all your soul, which means with your will and your desires. Loving Him with all your mind means your intellectual activity and your understanding and with all your strength as Mark includes in his Gospel means with your hands and your feet. In short, beloved, the point is that God claims the whole man all the time. The whole man. All the time. Young people, that means that when you're with your friends, whether it's in the mall or on the beach or on a date or during an athletic competition, God claims your whole being all the time, every moment. All of our human existence is to be inflamed with this love. With this love, we are called to love the Lord our God. And this means the true God for who He is with all of His perfection. It doesn't do any good to love a God of our own imaginations because there is only one God of creation and redemption. But this love, which is to be for God above all, is also demonstrated toward your neighbor as yourself. I've mentioned this before, but I find it fascinating how God in His wisdom said that. Love your neighbor as yourself, not more than yourself. Because the older I get, the more mature in the faith I become, I realize as well that I can't love anyone else more than myself. I too am vain. I like myself pretty well. And God commands us to love our neighbor as ourself. But this second great commandment is not separate from the first great commandment. You cannot separate the two. But the second commandment is itself an expression of the first. You cannot. And you will not love your neighbor as yourself if you don't love God above all. It's impossible. In fact, you can't truly love yourself unless you love God above all. Now, who is your neighbor? In a general sense, all of mankind. Even the starving child on the other side of the world. But, we are to understand especially and more specifically, your neighbor is all who cross your path. This is not talking about only those who love you, but also those who annoy you, those who are unloving or unpleasant toward you, those who are difficult. Maybe if you happen to be in sales like I used to be, it could be your customer, it could be your competition, it could be your co-worker. Jesus said, if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? What good is that? You see, that's easy. That's easy. Love for your neighbor is and is to be an automatic expression of your love for God. John says, you say that you love God, but you hate your brother? You're a liar. You're a liar. And this isn't just talking about putting up with them, but actually to love them. It means to seek their best interest before your own. Beloved, not slandering them, not stealing from them, and not murdering them is not enough. I must promote the honor and reputation of my neighbor. I must deal with him as I would have people deal with me or as I would deal with myself. Again, no one ever hated his own flesh and I'm sure not one of us here would purposely hurt ourselves. One commentator rightly said, I must continually live and act and desire in such a way as if I were that neighbor and that neighbor were me. We've considered the sole source. We've considered the required content, but we're not finished yet. It's one thing to know what God requires of His people, but now we must face the question, what do we see of ourselves when we gaze into the mirror of God's law? What do you see as you stand before that mirror? As the Catechism reminds us, Scripture is clear why we are miserable. Question answer 5 again says, Can you live up to all this perfectly? No. I have a natural tendency to hate God and my neighbor. Beloved, this is the humbling application. Notice as well what Paul says in Romans 3, verses 10-18. As it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away. They have together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves. Their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Ruin and misery mark their ways. And the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes. It's not a very flattering picture of all of mankind. Beloved, this is a confession. This fifth question and answer is a confession again that only the convicted sinner who was born again, only the believer, can make this confession. I have a natural tendency to hate God and my neighbor. And notice, there's no room for error here. The question, can you live up to all this perfectly? All of this perfectly. That is, to love God with all the power of my being. Loving Him above everything. having my mind filled with the thought of God, my soul having unbroken communion with Him, my heart and my whole being responding in love to my Maker, especially in respect to my neighbor. And to do this perfectly? Can I do this? What a resounding answer. No. No. The older version of the catechism says, in no way. Why? because I'm not able. I couldn't even if I wanted to because I am abnormal. But this is no excuse as we hope to see maybe next week or the following week in connection with Lord's Day 3. My nature is no longer normal with love, but it is abnormal with hate. This is my diagnosis. This is my misery. And this hate affects every part of my life. By nature, I do not have the desire to love God above all with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. Instead, my desire is to be completely separated from Him. My misery, boys and girls, is that I am as alienated from my true environment as a fish that's out of water. God says to the fish that it must live in the water. That's where its life is at. In the water. And boys and girls, you know what happens when that fish comes onto dry ground, on dry land. It is absolutely miserable. And what happens? It's going to die. God says to His people, just as the environment of the fish is the water and the fish must live in that environment, you must live in your environment, which is My law. my law. You must love because that is my will for your life. And congregation, when we don't, we become absolutely miserable and we will die. So now why can God demand perfect love? As we hope to see in Lord's Day 3, first of all, because God created man good and after His own image capable of giving to God and neighbor that love. But God can demand perfect love because He Himself gives it. That's our comfort. Jesus Christ rendered perfect love to God the Father with all of His heart, soul, mind, and strength. And He did this on behalf of His people. He was perfectly righteous and His righteousness is imputed to you and me. And by doing that, He satisfied God's justice for the hate of His people. It's no secret that we, and even the most godly here among us, is still prone by nature to hate God and neighbor, even as Paul says in verse 21, So I find this law at work. When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. But by the grace of God, we find another law in ourselves that moves us to pray with the psalmist in Psalm 86, Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer and attend to the voice of my supplications. congregation through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, we are renewed to a nature of love. And once again, by God's grace, we are able to exercise love and obedience more and more every day. Why is it necessary for God's people to know how great our sin and misery are? Because through that knowledge, God reveals the greatness of His salvation. And He confirms our faith daily that only our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ could restore us to that normal relationship with God. Every day in our Christian walk and growth, we must be brought lower in the despair of our sinful condition. Only then, not to stay there. Not to stay there. Only then, every day, to be raised to even greater heights in the joy of salvation. Only those who by the grace of God know their sin and misery today will be delivered from it for eternity by God's gracious hand. Those who don't know their sin and misery today, apart from repentance and faith, will die in it eternally. Beloved, do you know it? You must. You must. Don't be fooled as well into thinking that membership in a Reformed church or attending Bible study or Sunday school or going to a Christian school or fellowshipping with Christian friends. Don't be fooled into thinking that that means that the misery of sin is absent, that it's not there, that it doesn't exist. Of course, all of these things are good and necessary and right, but without knowing your natural condition in your heart, without understanding it and repenting of it by the grace of God, you are just blind. May each one of us truthfully say with Paul, What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death? Because only when you can humbly confess that can you also confess with comfort and assurance these words, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Only then can you give the answer. Truly knowing and understanding your misery is the first step on the road to recovery. Beloved, have you taken that necessary step by God's grace? Amen. Shall we pray? Father, we, as Your people, give You thanksgiving and praise again tonight for Your Word. Indeed, Your Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. Your Word challenges us. It comforts us. It hits us right where we are at, where we need to be hit. Your Word disciplines and chastens us as Your people. But we thank You and praise You for the assurance of Your Word that You have delivered Your people out of bondage, out of sorrow, out of the night of our sin. And Father, our prayer is that You would renew us more every day through the power of Your Holy Spirit to greater love and obedience for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Lord. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.