Word of Salvation – Vol.50 No.28 – July 2005
My Misery
A Sermon by Rev S Bajema on Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 2
Scripture Reading: Romans 7:7-25
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ…
With Lord’s Day 2 we begin to deal with the first thing we must know in order to live and die in the joy of true comfort. We heard about this when we looked at the answer to Question 2 in Lord’s Day 1. And this first thing, as that answer says, is that I must know “how great my sin and misery are.”
Sin. Now that’s a word that’s almost disappeared! A hundred years ago there were many sermons, in many churches, preached on sin. There was even a phrase used to describe such preaching – “that was a real hell-fire and damnation sermon!”
In our age, though, Christians have typically moved right over to the other side of the theological spectrum. It’s become all love and joy. And Reformed-Presbyterian churches have experienced this just as much as any other churches.
Now, this new thinking is certainly right to see the need to praise the Lord for what He’s done. People are glad of the tremendous blessings that they have as His children. But the need to talk about sin seems to have virtually disappeared!
And if you ask them, they say, “We’re saved, aren’t we?” “All our sins are washed away!” “So why go on about something that’s in the past?” You won’t hear about hell in their circles. They won’t read the law. It’s all up-beat and up-market. Christians have arrived!
Well, we are saved alright. But just that situation of being saved means that you acknowledge your total unworthiness. When we talk about the grace of God to us, we’re also saying something about our complete inadequacy. As we come into faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the first thing we see is just how bad we really are! Together with the apostle Paul you cry out, “What a wretched man I am!”
Let’s consider, then, how you get to that point. How do you begin that most phenomenal U-turn in the whole world? Lord’s Day 2 unfolds the teaching of Scripture about the first part in the Christian life – the part about how bad we really are. That’s why, first of all, GOD’S LAW TELLS US HOW WE’VE COME.
God’s Law tells us how we’ve come.
Friend, think about coming into faith as a Christian. And especially reflect on someone who comes into the church from the outside world. When this happens you step into a completely different world. You
come from a place where you have always pretended you were okay, where you have always thought you’ve never really hurt anyone, and where you’ve always maintained that basically you have usually done the right thing!
And then you come to realise that you’ve done every wrong, and you have hurt everyone – most of all God Himself! You realise that what you’ve done all along has not been okay. You have hurt many people.
You have been doing very much the wrong thing! Indeed, you’ve broken every one of God’s commandments!
Question 3 asks, “How do you come to know your misery?” That’s a question which doesn’t enter the mind of an unbeliever. They don’t realise they have sinned.
For the believer, though, this question brings them right into the heart of their faith. Remember, the Heidelberg Catechism is a personal Christian confession. And this is where it really hit home to us – and it still does!
So, dear Christian, how did you personally come to realise your inadequacy? Did you come to realise that your own understanding, your own initiative, had really gotten you nowhere? Every other religion in this world says that the only way to progress is to strive in your own strength. But not so for you!
Although this whole world speaks to us of God, we can’t comprehend that unless God Himself speaks to us. Unless God, through His Spirit, convicts us of His Word, we cannot see God.
As Christians, then, we have been given the gift of faith. We have the glasses by which we can see. And what we see is that God’s Word tells it like it really is!
When the apostle Peter preached his sermon on Pentecost Day, the Holy Spirit so used his words, that in Acts 2 verse 37 we read, “When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ And Peter’s inspired response was this, ‘Repent and be baptised, everyone of you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven’.”
Repentance. Repentance opens up the way for the people of God. Now, that repentance was part of these early Christians coming to faith.
It is the way every Christian first comes to Christ. But repentance is not just a once-only thing. It has to be a continuous, on-going process in our lives. We must continue to repent and believe every day, as Peter himself knew in his own life.
We always need to check ourselves against God’s Word. GOD’S LAW TELLS US HOW WE’VE COME. And that’s why we read and listen to God’s Word. It details God’s perfect standard. The standard
summarised in the Ten Commandments.
In Romans 7 the apostle Paul tells us how God’s Law points out our inadequacy. We call this the second use of the Law. This means that the Law acts as a teacher to bring us to Christ. As Paul points out in Romans 7:7, “I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what it was to covet if the law had not said, ‘Do not covet’.”
A bit confusing? I mean, what use is it to know the law only to break that very law through the sin in us? Was it worth having the law in the first place?
The key here, however, is that GOD’S LAW TELLS US HOW WE’VE COME. We’ve come to God, come to new life, through our dying to ourselves. We cannot live unless we first die! We cannot begin to grow
unless we have first been buried!
Still confused? Well, it’s this paradox again. And a paradox is something which goes against what we think makes sense.
But think about this: A seed, before it can produce new life in the form of a plant, first needs to die. It becomes shrivelled up and dry. Then it’s planted and soon life bursts forth!
To all intents and purposes, that seed was dead. It’s true – isn’t it, boys and girls? When you’ve looked at a seed it doesn’t look like it’s got any life in it, does it? In fact, if you keep seeds stored in a bag they can stay that way for ages. There doesn’t seem any life there at all. They just look dead!
Our Lord Jesus Christ went through a similar process. He died so that we can live this new life. In Colossians chapter 2 we read how this is so. There we’re told in the verses 11 and 12, “In Christ you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.”
Paul goes on to relate this to our everyday lives. He says in Colossians 3, verses 1 & 2, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”
The Catechism shows us how we are to set our hearts on things above.
In answer to Question 4, which asks, “What does God’s Law require of us?”, we’re given the summary of the Law in Matthew 22.
There our Lord Jesus teaches us, “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
the second is like it, You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”
These words from Christ shows how setting our hearts on things above, where He is now, means that we must live as God requires us to. And that’s something we haven’t done! We haven’t kept God’s
commandments. Whether in Jesus’ summary in Matthew 22, or in the more expanded version in the Ten Commandments, in the words of our second point… GOD’S LAW TELLS ME WHAT I HAVEN’T DONE.
God’s Law tells me what I haven’t done!
Congregation, when Question 4 asks, “What does God’s Law require of us”, it clearly tells me what I haven’t done. If we were to do what God’s Law required; if we were to fulfil Matthew 22 and the Ten
Commandments; what would we be?
Well… perfect I suppose! Exactly. God’s Law requires of us nothing less than absolute perfection. In the Lord’s words in Leviticus 19:2, “Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy.”
Perfection would mean we would show, right now, our righteous standing before God. It’s right through Scripture. Jesus taught it in His mandate for the Christian life in the Sermon on the Mount. He said
there, in Matthew 5:48, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
God’s standard is nothing less than perfection. He demands the very best. And it’s nothing less than what He Himself is! Since he is perfect, his standard can be nothing less than perfect.
So He’s looking for what mankind was like before the fall into sin. He wants what Adam and Eve were when they had that blessed communion with Him. That time they were both naked and felt no
shame. “Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy. Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
It’s the hardest thing! We know it’s the very thing we don’t have.
Each Sunday when we sincerely come to church, as we enter into God’s presence with His people, we have to confess that we’ve fallen short once again. Those heart-wrenching words of Paul in Romans 7 are ours, too. We have to confess also, “I have the desire to do what’s good, but I can’t carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I don’t want to do – this is what I keep on doing.”
Now, can God really be serious? Is this what He expects of us? Does he expect us to be perfect? And is his verdict against us true? I mean, do we really always sin, do we really trip up again and again? The answer to all these questions is, “Yes”!
It’s the hardest lesson from the Greatest Teacher. This is something far worse than the worst run of ‘bad luck’ anyone ever had. When you come down to it, we have to acknowledge, in the third place, GOD’S LAW TELLS ME I’M NOT THE ONE.
God’s Law tells me I’m not the one.
Congregation, the perfect standard of God’s Law confronts us with what we’re really like. And that’s not nice! In the words of Answer 5, “I have a natural tendency to hate God and my neighbour.”
That’s what you’re really like. And until you see that, and honestly admit that you have a natural tendency to hate God and your neighbour, you are not the Lord’s.
And it doesn’t just stop once we’re the Lord’s either. It’s a principle we will continue to find to be true throughout the Christian life.
For example, you, fellow believer, have a particular sin. It may be any kind of sin. That particular sin forms a large obstacle in your walk with the Lord. That’s the nature of sin. But you rather like that sin! After all, you’ve been friends for a long time. In fact, that sin has become so much a part of your life that you don’t even think about it any more.
You don’t seek the Lord’s forgiveness for it any more. You don’t work at trying to fight it, and keep away from it. So you are caught in a vicious circle.
Now, what’s the way out? Well, it’s certainly not your way. Your way has got you deep into it. The only way out is by confessing that you can’t do it. It’s by having a broken and contrite heart. It’s by turning to
someone else. You can’t do it on your own!
That’s what Lord’s Day 2 proves. GOD’S LAW TELLS ME I’M NOT THE ONE. And until you can confess that natural tendency to hate God and your neighbour, there’s no way out! You can’t do it on your own!
There was once an American president who was a man of few words. It must have been a long time ago! Anyway, this President, whose name was Coolidge, was asked by his wife, after coming home from church, “What did the minister preach about?” The President replied, “Sin.” The First Lady wasn’t satisfied with that. She then asked, “What did he say about it?” And the President answered, “He was against it.”
Being against sin is every Christian’s business. That’s what the Bible and the Catechism clearly state.
For sin is behind all our problems. And you can read all about sin every day in the paper, hear it on the radio, and watch it on TV. There are the assassinations, the power struggles, the terrorism, the child abuse, the oppression of minorities, and so on.
If you don’t see something is seriously wrong you’re blind! But to see that the problem is sin, rebellion against God – that’s where we need the Bible, God’s Law. It’s only the penetrating power of God’s Word that gets to the heart of our trouble. And that means His Spirit strikes our hearts!
Before you can grow you have to die. And you have to continue to die again and again and again. Like the apostle Paul you have to say, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of
death?”
Friend, you won’t find any other religion like this. In fact, this is the one religion you can’t do yourself. You’re not the One!
That’s why Paul can straightaway declare, “But thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Because if GOD’S LAW TELLS ME I’M NOT THE ONE – who is?
Amen.
PRAYER:
Let’s pray…
O LORD God, you are the One! You, whose Word so devastatingly proves that none of us can do the slightest shred of good, are also the One who through the Living Word becomes our righteousness.
By your Spirit, make us look only to you through Jesus Christ. And help us to keep looking to Him – the author and perfecter of our faith – He who shed His blood to give us faith.
Amen.