Please turn to Matthew 22. We're going to look at Matthew 22. It's page 984 in the Pew Bibles. Here in this passage, Jesus is giving a summary of the law. He's distilling the law down to the greatest two commandments when he's asked by the Pharisee lawyers. We're going to look at this passage along with the Heidelberg Catechism that we might understand how our confessions are biblical and are based on the scriptures that we might better understand what we confess as a church and understand how we get it all from God's Word. If you want to look at the Heidelberg Catechism, it's in the back of the Trinity Psalter on page 872, if you'd like to look at that as well. Let us begin with God's Holy Word, Matthew 22. We'll read verses 34 to 40. Matthew 22. on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets and we'll look at the heidelberg catechism as well we'll read lord's day two questions three four and five and if you'll notice question four is just this very passage from matthew 22 question three says 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, 37 to 40. 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 greatest and first commandment, and the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Can you live up to all this perfectly? No. I am inclined by nature to hate God and my neighbor. I presume that most of you brothers and sisters consider yourselves to be law-abiding citizens. Imagine in your day-to-day lives you aren't seeking to break the laws that our government have set above us, but I also imagine that you take a pretty lax approach to the law. I imagine most of you have not read the penal codes. Maybe judges and lawyers and policemen have, but most of you don't really know all the laws that are set above us, and you probably break them every single day. Perhaps it's when you're on the freeways and you see all the cars going 85 miles an hour past you on these San Diego freeways. You might be inclined to go 66 miles an hour, or perhaps when you're coming home and you're in your neighborhood and no one's around, you roll through that stop sign, or perhaps when you are in the privacy of your own home, you throw away batteries and electronics into your trash can without taking them to the proper recycling center. You see, these are laws that are above us, and we casually break them all the day long because there aren't really consequences for us. The stakes are low, and it doesn't seem like it really matters, where we might get a fine or a warning, but they're just infractions, maybe misdemeanors, and we don't really take the law seriously all the time. As long as we're not doing the big ones, as long as we're not murdering, we think we're law-abiding citizens. I'll tell you that it is not so with God's law. With God's law, there are no misdemeanors, there's no infractions. We don't get a warning or a ticket, but with God's law, it's a matter of life and death. As we look at God's law in summary in Matthew 22, we'll consider the standard of God's law. we'll see how god's law functions and we'll also consider the fulfillment of god's law who can fulfill and as we're thinking of the law and the standard we see in heidelberg catechism question answer for it says what does god's law require of us that's ultimately the same question being asked in the scriptures what is the requirement of god's law what's the most important commandments. See, God, as our creator, created his creatures and set a moral law, a standard by which his creatures need to live up to. He set that standard, and we are all under what's called a covenant of works, as Adam was in the garden. For Adam, this covenant of works looked like this. You shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die. So Adam and Eve were not allowed to eat from the tree, and if they did eat of it, they would die. But there's implied the same promise that if they did obey God's command, they're offered life. This is a commandment of life, and Paul tells us that all men are under this same covenant of works. Paul talks about the law of God offering life. He says the very law that promised him life. And in Romans 10, he says, for Moses writes about righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does them shall live by them. So you see that there's this promise of life held out by God's law. And our Lord Jesus says the very same thing in the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. He's asked, teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? and Jesus immediately says, what is written in the law? You see, when someone's asking, what do I need to do in order to get life? The answer is, what does God's law say? And he answers, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor is yourself. And Jesus says, you've answered correctly. Do this, and you will live you see there's the covenant of works most simply put do this and you will live see god's law is like a tightrope that if you walk along the tightrope on the other end life is held out but if at any point you make a misstep you fall into a chasm to your death you must always walk according to this tightrope, taking every step meticulously and perfectly. God's law is perfect obedience. The standard of God's law is perfect obedience. We read this in the scriptures when it says, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law and do them. And James says, whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point becomes guilty of it all. So God's holy standard is perfection. You can't make a mistake. If you want to get the life that is offered by God's law, you need to be perfect. So Jesus gives us this summary of the law. When you want to think about what is the standard, Jesus says, if you were to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, your neighbor as yourself perfectly your whole life and you never ever strayed from that path you would get life. So how does Jesus summarize the law? He says you shall love. Love the Lord your God and you shall love your neighbor. He can summarize it all in love. It's not to make it abstract or weak to say that as long as you're loving, anything goes. But what Jesus is saying is that the basis and foundation for all of God's commandments is love of God and love of neighbor. So when he says heart, soul, mind, and strength, he's saying love God with all of your faculties, all of your faculties, everything within you, every part of you needs to love God at all times. And when the scriptures say, heart, love the Lord your God with all your heart, that is indicating the whole inner person. It's your mind, it's your affections, your feelings, it's your will and the choices you make. So with your will, you need to submit your will at all times to your heavenly father. Every choice you make is done for the love of God and for his glory. With your heart, the affections, every feeling, every desire, every inclination of your heart needs to be done for the love of God. None of your desires can stray from loving God at every moment of your life. See, God cares about our attitude and the disposition of our heart. God does not just want external obedience. He doesn't just want lip service, but he wants true worship and true obedience from our hearts. In the mind is our understanding. To love the Lord our God with our mind is all of our thoughts, all of our deliberation, all of our reasoning, all of our intellectual faculties are to be loving God. That when you are trying to use your mind to know God and to better understand and grasp Him, that you might better love Him. In the same way, the more you know and love your spouse or your friends, you can better love them. Here we are to use our minds to better know God, that we might better love Him. And when Christ tells us to love God with all of our soul, this is to just, again, encompass the whole inner person. Like in Psalm 103, the psalmist says, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. So Christ is telling us that the inner man, the inner self, must always love God with every part of your inner self. And then when he says, love the Lord God with all your strength, that all these desires, choices, thoughts, must work themselves out into your actual physical body to love God with your actions as well, that the entirety of your person would at every moment, in every choice, in every junction, every action of your life, would be done for the perfect love of God. You see this high standard? What would it look like even to love God just in public worship? To love him with your strength would be to be here in worship, right? To show up, to actually be on time to worship and to use your strength of your diaphragm to sing out praises to God. But God doesn't just want you externally here, just sitting in the pew. God wants your heart, your soul, and your mind engaged. That when you are singing the psalms and praising God, you are singing from your heart. You are meaning what you say. when you sing God's praises you are actually meaning it and you're feeling the emotion when you say bless the Lord when you are giving gratitude and prayer to God you're meaning it from your heart and your desires and your affections are fixed on God but also with your mind when your pastor is up here preaching to you that you aren't just checked out and just sitting in the pew but that you are using the intellectual faculties that your God has given you to try to better apprehend and understand your God, that you would know him and love him as your pastors faithfully explain your word to you, God's word to you. Jesus tells us that this is the standard of loving God. He says this is the greatest and first commandment. It's the greatest because it includes and subsumes the rest of God's law, and it's the first because all of God's commandments flow from it the greatest and first commandment matthew henry says that god is to be loved in the first place none beside him but that which is loved for him so the reason we love our neighbor we love our wives and our children and our friends and even our enemies is because we love god in the first place and all the rest of our obedience flows from our love of god this is what makes it the greatest and first commandment. And likewise, Jesus says that the second commandment is like the first, and that it is based in love. We love God. And here's the second commandment, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. This is the golden rule. This is what you hear in kindergarten, and this is also the basis of the moral code for every civilization, every society across time and space here on earth because God's world has been created according to his moral order. The morality, the real morals of this world, of human interactions, are based on God's perfect character. So everyone intuitionally knows that they ought to love their neighbor as their self. This is written on the hearts of all men. But realize that it is a high calling to love your neighbor as yourself. Because we are so prone to self-love, I mean, you see how our society is focused on self-love, treating yourself, right? I mean, that's so popular today because that's the first inclination of the corrupt human heart is to love ourselves. We place ourselves on a pedestal that everyone around us should be concerned about number one. Everyone should be focused on my desires, my needs. They should be worried about me. But what this commandment is telling us that actually you need to remove yourself from the throne in your heart and put God there. And if you are rightly worshiping God, it will reflect itself in love of neighbor. You see, love of God draws us out of ourselves, out of loving ourselves, to love God, and as he works in us and reflects his character through us, we also love our neighbors. And of course, as we know from the parable of the Good Samaritan, who are our neighbors? Our neighbors are everyone that God providentially puts into our path. Our neighbor is everyone that we come across. It's not divided by class or race or occupation. It's whoever God puts before you. See, this is the high commandment, the first and greatest, and the second commandment, love God and love neighbor. Jesus then tells us, on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. The law and the prophets depend on these two commandments. In what way do they depend? See, the Ten Commandments and the Torah and all the rebukes and admonitions of the prophets are all based on these two principles, love God and love neighbor. We can see this as we look at the Ten Commandments. It's traditionally divided up into two tables, right? The first four commandments are love God, and five through ten are love neighbor. So if you are loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, you will not put any other gods before or beside him. You would not make any idols. You would not take his name in vain, but you would praise his name. You would set aside a day as he's commanded to worship him with his people. And likewise, love of neighbor, if you are loving your neighbor, you would listen to your mother and father. You would not murder or commit adultery or steal or lie or covet. Notice that this is the basis of all God's commandments. They can be expanded to the Ten Commandments or further out to all of God's law. That the basis of it can be condensed down in Jesus' words to love your God and love your neighbor. So what does this mean, acted out in life, that loving your neighbor would look like all the people you come across in your day, you have good intentions and feelings towards them, and you take every opportunity to bless them and do good with heartfelt sincerity towards them, treating others as more important than yourself, serving them for their physical and spiritual well-being, and all the while doing this with the glory and love of God in your heart at all times, praising God and prayerful worship of him and doing everything in obedience to his commands. Does this sound like your day-to-day? I mean, think what a day in the life would look like. Even on a Sunday, before you even leave the house, have you broken God's law? Have you failed to love him with all of your heart as soon as you sit up out of your bed? I know in my house, sometimes even just getting into the car, getting ready to go to church is full of strife, trying to get the kids in the car. Sin is all around us. And then once we're in the car, maybe you hit every red light and you're impatient and someone cuts you off in traffic and you're late to church. and sin pours forth out of your heart. Think about what a day would look like, not an argument with your wife, not a harsh word for your children, to truly love your neighbor, that throughout the day you'd never have an evil thought, never an impure intention, no lust, never a vulgar word, never a fit of anger. That certainly doesn't describe my days. Jesus tells us, Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind, and all of your strength. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Anything short of God's high standard is sin. So if the Holy Spirit's been working in your heart as you hear God's commandment, as you hear the standard of the law, you ought to be feeling the function of God's law is that the law gives us knowledge of our sin and misery. That's what the Heidelberg Catechism says in question answer three. How do you come to know your misery? The law of God tells me. It's the very thing that Paul says in Romans 3 20, through the law comes the knowledge of sin. My mother-in-law has this makeup mirror in her bathroom that seems to just zoom in on your face and show you every detail. And to make it worse, there's an LED ring around the outside that just lights up and you can really see every flaw. And you look at yourself and you thought you looked okay today and then it's like, oh, I have a blemish there and my glasses aren't on straight and there's something in my teeth and is my nose crooked and, you know, I missed a spot when I was shaving. You're looking at yourself in this mirror and all I see are all the flaws because it shows in detail everything wrong with me. God's law works in that way, like a mirror, a bright light that exposes every flaw in us, all of our sin, that when we hold our lives up to God's mirror, we see how we fall short of his standard and we need god's law because in our sinful hearts we like to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to we put on a filter of pride and self-righteousness and you might look at yourself from a distance or with a filter on and it smooths out all the imperfections and you can think day to day in your life i look okay i look good but then when the mirror of god's law is held up to you you realize no i'm not good no i have fallen short i have broken god's law and if we've broken god's law if we've sinned against his commandments that promise of life and the covenant of works is taken away we've fallen off that tight rope of god's law unto our death it's galatians 3 10 for all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse for it is written cursed be everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law and do them the wages of sin is death we are left in condemnation but not just condemnation, we're also left in misery. Notice the language of the catechism, how do you come to know your misery? And when we read in question answer five, can you live up to God's law perfectly? No, we can't live up to God's law perfectly. We get condemnation and misery. Misery is the effect of sin. Misery is the consequence of sin. So our nature is corrupt. One of the consequences of sin is the corruption of our nature. We see that from birth, even from conception, we are sinful because of our first parents, Adam and Eve, and their disobedience have so poisoned and corrupted our nature that we are born hating God and hating neighbor. If the tightrope we need to walk on is love God and love neighbor, before we've even taken one step on the tightrope, we've fallen already to our doom. The guilt of Adam and Eve is imputed to us and also their corruption is transmitted to us, that now every human being is born totally depraved. Sin has touched us in our heart, soul, mind, and strength that we can't perfectly love God. We are inclined by nature to hate God and to hate neighbor. Here we stand in corruption by nature, children of wrath, incapable of any saving good, prone to all evil, dead in sin. We cannot fulfill the law. We cannot enter heaven. Misery is more than just corruption, though. We also experience suffering. We know that our own sin inflicts suffering upon ourselves, and as we sin against our neighbor, we cause them to suffer. and likewise all those around us also sin against us, that we are suffering. The affliction and suffering and torment that you experience in this life is also a consequence of sin. So here we are, condemned. We have not fulfilled the covenant of works. We've broken God's law. We are corrupt to our core. And we are suffering and sinned against. Misery, corruption, curse, unable to fulfill the law. And this is where the catechism leaves us. This is what section one of misery looks like in the catechism. God's law is good, but it's not good news. The law makes us to know our sin. We see that we can't live up to the standard. And the law, in its condemnation, causes us to look for a righteousness outside of ourselves. A righteousness that's been revealed apart from the law. Our condemnation and misery leads us to Jesus Christ. In our sin and misery, we need someone else's righteousness. And Christ fulfilled the moral law for the elect. Christ came as the last Adam to fulfill this covenant of works that in the fullness of time God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law. Jesus Christ came. He did not have the same corruption that we did. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the Immaculate Conception, born without corruption, still bearing the yoke of God's law. With his true human nature, he lived a perfect life on this earth that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons. In Adam, his trespass and disobedience led to condemnation for many, for all men. But Jesus Christ in his obedience and his acts of righteousness led to justification and life, that his people might be made righteous. Jesus has fulfilled the righteous requirement of the law in us. He lived a perfect life. He walked that tightrope that he might get to the other side and earn life for his people, and then turn around and offer that life to all those who trust in him with faith. And knowing the rigor and the standard of God's law really makes Christ all the more glorious to us, doesn't it? As you think about what it would look like to live even one hour, one day without sinning, to realize that Jesus lived his whole life in perfect obedience to God's divine law, that he never had a sinful thought, that he never had a sinful word every action he did was in perfect love of god and love of neighbor that makes jesus all the more amazing to think about the life that he lived and that jesus might fulfill the law on our behalf that we might be justified by faith so now his people are no longer under the law. We're led by the Spirit. We are now under grace because God saw in his mercy and grace that we could not fulfill God's law. In our corruption, he sent Jesus Christ that for all who put their faith in him, we might receive life graciously, eternal life in Christ Jesus. And more than that, he removed the heart of stone that we had and has given us a heart of flesh and put his spirit within us that we might walk in obedience in this life. He's given us his Holy Spirit to walk according to his law, that the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, leads us to love God's law. We can sing with the psalmist as we did earlier, oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. I keep your precepts and I hold back my feet from every evil way in order to keep your word. God's law can be like that mirror in that light exposing all of our flaws. But God's law can also act as a light to guide our path. God's law for Christians is also how we regulate our lives. The psalmist says, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. Christians now regulate our lives. That's why we read the Ten Commandments in church, that we can see God's standard, His will for our lives, and try to walk according to that by the help of the Spirit. We read in 1 John 5, for this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. See, Jesus Christ has fulfilled the covenant of works, that yoke, that burden of the law, that you have to earn life for yourself. Jesus has taken that yoke off of us and put on his gentle and easy yoke, that by faith in Jesus Christ, he will lead us along by his spirit to walk according to God's ways because he's already given us life. And now he's teaching us to walk according to God's will. So we can say, thanks be to God that we've become obedient from the heart. We truly can be obedient. We can do spiritual good, real spiritual good, as the spirit works in our hearts. We can't fulfill God's law because we've already failed. But in part, in moments and glimpses and good actions and pious thoughts, we can in part fulfill God's law. For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, and you shall not covet, and any other commandment are summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is fulfilling the law. God gives us his spirit and he's sanctifying us, making us like Jesus Christ, renewing us in the image of Christ that we might walk according to his law. So as we looked at Matthew 22 this evening, we saw the standard of God's law, that high standard of perfection. We saw that we do not live up to God's law and God's law exposes our sin to show us that we need jesus christ to fulfill that law on our behalf and he has done that and by faith in jesus christ we can receive the life that he earned on our behalf and as he gives us his spirit he teaches us to walk according to god's law that we might truly love the lord our god with all of our heart all of our soul all of our mind and all of our strength and that we truly can love our neighbor as ourself as we walk in gratitude for the great salvation that Jesus has earned for us. Let's pray, brothers and sisters. Lord God, would you please help us as we try to walk according to your law? We see how we fail. We thank you for the forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus. We thank you that, Lord, he has fulfilled the law, that he has given us his righteousness, that he has given us eternal life for all who believe in him. Thank you for being so long-suffering and patient and merciful to us, Lord. Please make us like Jesus in every way. Sanctify us by your spirit and your word, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.