Word of Salvation – Vol. 20 No.14 – December 1973

 

God’s Law Shows That We Are Sinners

 

Sermon by Rev. Fred L. Vanderbom on Lord’s Day 2

Scripture Readings: Jeremiah 17:5-14; Romans 7:7-25

Psalter Hymnal: 170; 29:1,2,5 (after rule of gratitude) ― tune no. 28;
                                    228:1,2,4; 250 (after sermon); 438

 

“Whence do you know your misery?”

In other words, how do you know that you are a sinner, that you look miserable in God’s eyes?

That’s a very bold question!  That’s a question you would perhaps only dare ask a Christian.

If you asked this Question-3 of the first person you met out on the street, what would happen?  “How do you come to know your misery?” this person might not even understand what you mean; he might think you were mixed up; he might even punch you on the nose for daring to ask such a question.  How do you know that you are a sinner!

Most people just don’t think of themselves as “sinners”.  They don’t like questions like Question-3; they have never really thought of themselves in that way.

“I’m a good man, a good person.  I’ve never been caught stealing.  I’ve never killed anyone.  I’ve never gone out with another person’s wife or husband.  I was christened, I believe in God!  What right have you got to tell me that I’m a sinner?”

We know how people talk, and how they think about this subject.  If you can read these three questions and answers without getting hot under the collar; if you can read them, and agree with them, then it shows that God’s Holy Spirit is alive and at work in your life.  It shows that the Lord has opened your eyes to some very important facts.

In 1Corinthians 2:14 we read: “The natural man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them, for they are spiritually discerned.”

There are certain things which the non-Christian finds completely unacceptable.  You can tell a person what the Bible says, and how God looks at him.  But he will not accept this – he simply refuses to believe what the Lord says.  It is a gift of God’s Spirit if you believe what the Bible says, and what the Catechism says here.  And man as a sinner refuses to believe – he says that it is all irrelevant, meaningless, “folly to him”.

What the Catechism tells us in Lord’s Day 2 is like that.  How do you honestly react to Question-3?  Are the answers here your answers to these questions, or do you get a little warm under the collar when you read them?  Our attitude gives us a pretty good idea as to whether or not the Holy Spirit has opened our eyes to the Good News of the Bible.

In this Second Lord’s Day, God faces us with
            an utterly vital QUESTION and
            also with TWO FACTS.
And it takes God’s Holy Spirit to make us willing to answer
            this vital QUESTION –
            and to face these TWO FACTS.

First, then the question: it is Question-3, of course.  “Whence do you know your misery?  How do you come to know your misery?  How do you come to know that you are a sinner?

As I said before, there are many people who feel very much insulted when they are faced with this question.  It is quite possible that some of us might feel insulted too.  “What, me a sinner?  Why use the word ‘misery’ for my life?”

It’s very easy, isn’t it, to think that Question-3 is a good question to ask the member of the congregation who has a bit of a problem with drink: How do you come to know that you are a sinner?

This is the sort of question to ask a criminal, or people who have made a mess of marriage, or someone who has got himself hurt on the road.  We hate thinking of our own life as “misery”.

Yet we should notice very well that the Catechism expects everybody to face this question.  It is a question aimed at everybody: “Whence do you know your misery?”

Most people think: the other fellow is the sinner.  Most people are worse than I am.  And so: this is a question for them – for the alcoholic, for the unfaithful wife or husband, for the man in prison.

It is really only the Christian who has come to see that really, I am the sinner.  The real problem is: sin in me.  That is what the law of God tells me.  The natural man hates God’s Law telling him this – he doesn’t want to think of his life as “misery”.  But let God’s Law speak to you, and you come to know your misery.  It takes the work of the Holy Spirit to make a person willing to swallow that.  And it takes the Bible to tell a person that he is miserable, a sinner.  God’s Law is the only book honest enough to tell us how we stand in God’s eyes.

You don’t have to be an expert to know that some people have made a real mess of life.  Most people today will admit to you that sin and misery are real.

A few years ago, this was not so, of course.  People used to think that only the Christian Church believed in sin.  Talking about man as miserable was the hobby horse of Christians.  “Man is basically good,” they said.  “If man is given a good upbringing, a good home, a good school, then sin is no problem.  If you give a person the right treatment, he will get over his sinfulness.  Only the Church believes in sin.”

Things are a bit different today!  Most people agree: sin is a fact; there is evil in the human heart.  Good homes and good schools mean a lot, but they will never make people good, without sin.  Many people today will admit that.

But: Are you a sinner?  How do you know you are?  This is the question of the Catechism, and this is the vital point.  You know there are lots of sinners, but do you know your own misery?  You may agree that sin is real, but how do you know that sin is real and powerful in you?

This is the vital question, because it is only the child of God, the person whose eyes have been opened by the Lord – it is only the Christian who can happily say, “Yes, I am the sinner, I am miserable, especially as I compare myself with my sinless Lord.  I am the sinner, and the Bible shows me that I am.”

If that is how you answer Question-3, if that is how you honestly feel about it, then it is the Holy Spirit of God Who makes you answer in this way.  You also know then that the Lord has accepted you as His child.  “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins….!” (1John 1:9)

= = = = =

Now we come to the two facts with which the Catechism confronts us in this Lord’s Day.

You find the first of these two facts in Question and Answer 4.  (suggest you read this in full).

The Catechism here faces us with the fact that the Lord has high standards.  Notice that the Catechism quotes only just four verses out of the Bible.  These four short verses are really nothing compared with the four whole books of the Law in the Old Testament – more than one hundred chapters, to help the people of God under the old Covenant to remember that God has high standards.

And apart from these four whole books of Law in the Old Testament, there are many more chapters and sections, in both Old and New Testaments: all laws, or instructions, or guidelines, to help God’s people to be holy, just as the Lord is holy.

But the Catechism doesn’t try to drown us with laws!  Just read these four simple verses.  Just look at this clear little summary of the Law, and you know that God is holy, that He has tremendously high standards.  You know what David meant when he said in Psalm 16, “In Thy presence is fullness of joy”.  God’s ways are good, they make people happy.  God’s rule for our life was never meant to be a burden, there is nothing wrong with it.  The problem is in me!

All I have to do is read these four short verses, and I know that I am a sinner.  I know why I often make other people miserable.  I know why, as it were, I make the Lord miserable over me.  Read God’s Law, even the briefest summary of it, and I can see my sin and misery.

Just for now, let us look at two ways in which God’s Law shows us that we are utterly sinful.

First of all, Jesus teaches us in this summary of the Law, that God wants our hearts, He wants heart-obedience.  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart”.

Now, that is very difficult, isn’t it?

Perhaps your teacher gives you some homework, or your boss gives you a job or project to do.  What happens?  The important thing is that you do what you are told to do.  Whether you do your job or your homework out of love or out of duty is not going to worry your boss or teacher very much.  For them the important thing is that you do the job, not how you do it.

It is the same with the police, and, for instance, the speed limit.  The police don’t really care whether you love them for it, just as long as you do the right thing.

This is where you notice that our Lord’s standards are so much higher.  These four verses make it clear that God expects more than doing the right thing.  Jesus says: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, in other words, with love and affection, not just out of duty or fear, or tradition.

So, God wants us to be in church, but with our heart here too.

And when you help somebody in trouble: God’s standards are: from the heart.  Not out of duty, “because I have to”, or with a painted smile.  And the same goes for the policeman, or anyone in authority: respect him from the heart.

The Lord has high standards!  We are truly happy, if we can accept this fact, and confess that we are sinners.  We can thank God if we don’t get hot under the collar when we have to face this fact.

There is another way in which the Law points out to us how utterly sinful we are.  The Lord doesn’t only demand heart-obedience.  He also demands perfection.  “Love the Lord with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. . . !”

God is perfect.  In every possible way you could think of, God is perfect; in His loyalty, in His forgiveness, in His promise keeping, in His care for us.  There is no sin in Him.

And this is also how the Lord made us: we were made without sin, able to love, to care, to be loyal, to obey.  We were meant to live in such a way as to please Him utterly, and always.  That was how God made us: able to love and obey Him.

This is why there is nothing unfair about the fact that God still expects us to be perfect.

We just hate being perfect.  The congregation meets twice on a Sunday.  Are you one of the many people who say: “Once is enough for me?”

Of course, we would not usually think for one moment of killing somebody, or committing suicide ourselves.  But God demands perfection.  That means: it also matters whether you smoke, how you drive your car, how you talk about other people.  Check up the Bible texts under L.D.40.

“Nobody is perfect”, we say.  Perhaps you say that as an excuse to do what you like.  Some Reformed people believe so strongly in our sinfulness, that they no longer even aim at being perfect!

But the Lord says: “Be perfect, just like your heavenly Father is perfect.  Love to God, and love to neighbour means: perfect loving, all-out loyalty, all the heart, all the soul, all the strength.

God is perfect, He made us perfect, and His standard is that we be perfect.

= = = = =

We come now to the second fact.

The first fact is what we are told in Question and Answer 4: God has high standards.  The second fact we must face is that we cannot meet God’s standards.  Question and Answer 5 (suggest you read this again in full too).

A Christian doesn’t have to go to the nearest gaol to see a sinner; he doesn’t even have to look next door.  Just read the Law of God, and let it sink in what God’s standards are.  Just read these four verses of what Jesus said in Matthew 22, and you know that you and I are just as far from God’s standards and God’s ways as anyone else.

People who have grown up in a Christian home sometimes feel that they are at a disadvantage.  They have never experienced perhaps the utter miracle of coming from darkness into the Light.  They have probably never had a father who is usually drunk; if they were lucky, they had parents who were not enslaved to the tin god of making money; Christian homes don’t usually see from close-by the emptiness and the hollowness of so many people whose life consists of nothing but cheap thrills and frills.

But praise God!  You don’t have to grow up with unbelieving parents to know what sin is.  Whether you come from a Christian home or not, the Lord faces us all with the simple fact that we do not meet His standards.

John Wesley was one of the men who started the Methodist Church.  It was during a wild storm on the Atlantic Ocean, that God faced Wesley with the fact that he did not meet the Lord’s standards.

Wesley had always thought of himself as a Christian, but during this storm, he was terrified.  On the same ship were some German missionaries.  Wesley saw the quiet trust and calm confidence of these German Christians, and he was faced with the fact that he did not trust God.  The Lord can use something like this to face a person with his sin and misery.

So, face yourself again with the Law of God.  Tell God, just like John Wesley did, that you fall down on trusting God to look after you.

Admit to Him, how hard you find it to really love another person, how impossible perfect love is.  Confess what a struggle it is to let the Lord rule and guide your life and choices.

Forget about looking at other people, even other members of the Church.  If you want to have confidence on that Day when God will open the books, don’t waste your time looking at the sins of the drunk, and the unfaithful couple, and the people who laugh at God.

Don’t worry about the other sinners; face the fact that you need to be cleansed and forgiven by God.  You need that, utterly, absolutely.  “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.”

Confess to God: “I am prone by nature to hate God and my neighbour.”  If you are able to confess that to God, it shows that the Holy Spirit has helped you to get on top of your pride.

It means that you will also be able to thank God for giving His Son.

The Lord Jesus thus has taken your sins and your guilt off your shoulders, and He has carried your punishment too, when He died on the cross for sins.

And not only did the Lord Jesus die for our sins and guilt.
  He also gives us His perfect goodness as a gift.
  Our sins paid for by Him, and His goodness given to us!

Praise the Lord!
  Jesus did obey the Law of God, where we failed.
  Jesus kept God’s standards: He did it perfectly, and He did it from the heart!
  And the Bible tells us that He did it for us!