We turn to God's Word this morning to Psalm 21. Psalm 21, we'll read this in connection with Lord's Day 5 of the Heidelberg Catechism concerning the justice and the righteousness of God. Let's read the 13 verses of Psalm 21. The King shall joy in thy strength, O Lord, and in thy salvation, how greatly shall he rejoice. Thou hast given him his heart's desire and hast not withholden the request of his lips. Selah. For thou preventest him with the blessings of goodness. Thou settest a crown of pure gold on his head. He asketh life of thee, and thou gavest it him even length of days forever and ever. His glory is great in thy salvation, honor and majesty hast thou laid upon him. For thou hast made him most blessed forever. Thou hast made him exceeding glad with thy countenance. For the king trusteth in the Lord, and through the mercy of the Most High, he shall not be moved. Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies, thy right hand shall find out those that hate thee. Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger. The Lord shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them. Their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth, and their seed from among the children of men. For they intended evil against thee. They imagined a mischievous device, which they are not able to perform. Therefore shalt thou make them turn their back, when thou shalt make ready thine arrows upon thy strings against the face of them. Be thou exalted, Lord, in thine own strength. So will we sing and praise thy power. Thus far we read God's holy and inspired word. It's on the basis of this psalm, Psalm 21 and others like it, that we have the teaching of the Heidelberg Catechism. The Heidelberg Catechism, Lord's Day 5, which is found on page 5 in the back of the Psalter. The four questions and answers of Lord's Day 5. Let's read that Lord's Day together. Question 12. Since then, by the righteous judgment of God, we deserve temporal and eternal punishment, is there no way by which we may escape that punishment and be again received into favor? God will have his justice satisfied, and therefore we must make this full satisfaction either by ourselves or by another. Can we ourselves then make this satisfaction? By no means, but on the contrary, we daily increase our debt. Can there be found anywhere one who is a mere creature able to satisfy for us? None. For first, God will not punish any other creature for the sin which man hath committed. And further, no mere creature can sustain the burden of God's eternal wrath against sin so as to deliver others from it. And then the last question, what sort of a mediator and deliverer then must we seek for? For one who is very man and perfectly righteous, and yet more powerful than all creatures, that is, one who is also very God. Beloved congregation in our Lord Jesus Christ, there might be some Lord's days that when we read through them, we become rather impatient with them. Impatient because it seems that they are repeating truths that we have already learned or that they are repeating truths that will be coming up shortly. And we have that, for example, in that long section of the Heidelberg Catechism on the sacraments in Lord's Days 25 through 30. So that whenever we come to that section of the Heidelberg Catechism, it might seem that it takes a long time to get through that section with the catechism's instruction on what the Lord's Supper means and what it doesn't mean. And that's understandable in the context of the Heidelberg Catechism being written especially against the Roman Catholic Church's desecration of the sacraments. Well, Lord's Day 5 also is one of those Lord's Days that we might tempted to be impatient with because Lord's Day 5 takes truths that we have already looked at in depth and it repeats those truths. So that, for example, from Lord's Day 4, at the end of Lord's Day 4 we read of the justice of God. So that there was that attempt of the flesh to get around the justice of God by appealing to the mercy of God, but then God's justice is developed there at the end of answer 11. And now we come to the beginning of Lord's Day 5 and we come to God's justice again and the need for that justice to be satisfied. And then we might become even more impatient with Lord's Day 5 when we peek ahead a little bit and look at Lord's Day 6 and find that some of the things that are brought up here in Lord's Day 5, namely the qualifications for the mediator, are going to be brought up in Lord's Day 6. And so Lord's Day 5 might make us impatient because it appears to us that there is a little bit of a lingering and of a repetition. Well, let's not be impatient with Lord's Day 5 if we might be inclined that way, because understand the way that the Heidelberg Catechism is leading us. The Catechism doesn't just drop us all of a sudden into the lap of our Savior so that we see Him and behold His beauty, but the Catechism leads us to the Lord Jesus Christ very slowly, but very carefully and deliberately so that it may be impressed upon our souls there is indeed only one way there is only one way of deliverance and so long as we would seek ways of deliverance other than through Jesus Christ then we will never receive comfort for our souls And that then becomes. the new material that we have here in Lord's Day 5. There is some repetition from Lord's Day 4 and further from what we'll have in Lord's Day 6, which is good repetition, but Lord's Day 5 has new material. And that new material is that now we are looking directly at the way of escape. Every other door has been shut. There is only one door left open. That's the door that when we pass through we escape the justice and that wrath of God coming down upon us. Lord's Day 5 then comes to us and says the one way that's left open is the satisfaction of the justice of God. That's the only way out of your deserved punishment. If God's justice isn't satisfied, then you don't escape. And the flesh takes a hard look at that door and that way, and the flesh, and now I'm saying that carnal flesh that we have, that old man of sin, the flesh says, I can't go that way. If I go that way, I'm going to be consumed. If I have to go that way, I have to endure the justice of God myself, and I know that God is a consuming fire. But the new man within us, takes a long, hard look at that way of escape, and the new man within us rejoices. The way of the satisfaction of God's justice, that's the only way for me to go through. That's exactly the way that I want to go, says the new man within us, because I know that God's justice will be satisfied. not by me, not by any other creature, but by my Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. So that the new man takes a look at this last way of escape and says, I will escape punishment only because I belong to the Lord Jesus Christ who has satisfied for all my sins. So I call your attention to this Lord's day with the instruction of Psalm 21, the theme of the sermon, Escape Through Satisfaction. Let's note first, God's strict justice, and the second point of the sermon, our only way of escape, escape through satisfaction. Now in order to understand this whole matter of the satisfaction of God's justice, we first have to understand what exactly God's justice is. Sometimes the Bible describes the justice of God as His righteousness, and we've looked a little bit at God's justice and righteousness in the past few weeks, in the past few Lord's Days, and now we take the time to develop that a little bit more fully regarding the righteousness of God. Righteousness is a virtue, it's an attribute of Jehovah God himself. so that our God, Jehovah, is a righteous God. The righteousness of God is that God himself perfectly measures up to his own standard of what is right and wrong. God measures up. Now that's something that applies to us. We understand that concept. Every one of us, we have to measure up to some standard of what is good and what is bad. And we especially remember that we have to measure up to that standard when we are driving down the road and there happens to be a policeman behind us with his lights flashing. And we remember all of a sudden that, yes, we have to measure up. to the laws of the land even with regard to our driving. Well, that's true with God as well. God has a standard to measure up to. God's righteousness is that he perfectly conforms and measures up to that standard in every possible way. And then the question is, well, what is that standard? What is the standard that God must measure up to? Because God doesn't look to the laws of the land decreed by men to define for him what is right and wrong and good. What is the standard according to which God is measured? God's standard is God himself. He is his own standard. God conforms in everything he does to his own standard of what is right and what is wrong. In other words, everything that God wills, everything that God thinks, everything that God does is in perfect harmony with his own being. Nothing that God does violates his being in any way. God is perfectly good and perfectly right in every single matter and every single detail. His righteousness is that everything he does then conforms to that standard of his own good, righteous being. Now that's not the way that man wants it to be. Man today wants God to answer to man's standard and that can sometimes creep into our hearts as well. That's something that we read of in Romans chapter 9. In Romans chapter 9, where man comes to God and wants God to answer to man's bar of justice. In Romans 9, man saying, God, how can you find fault with anyone? God, we've only done that which thou hast decreed for us to do. And you see the accusation. The accusation from man is that God is not being fair and that God must answer to us for why he does things, especially for why God does things in election and reprobation. But you see, that's not the standard that God answers to. God doesn't answer to you. God doesn't answer to me. God Himself is right and good and His righteousness is that He perfectly conforms in all His will, in all His actions to His own perfect being. And that ought to amaze us. We ought to stand in awe of God and praise God. for who he is in and of himself, the most pure, good, holy, and righteous spiritual being, the one true and living God, who is God alone. Now, the next step is that God, righteous in himself, now comes to us, to human beings, and God says, You must measure up to my standard of righteousness. You may not do anything or think anything, that violates my being. You may not do anything that goes against the standard of what I declare is good and bad. So that God turns to the whole human race and says to everyone head for head, you must be right and you must be in conformity with my own being. And after hearing that, we say, well, how do we see then? How do we see if we measure up? Well, God has revealed himself to us in his word, and God's standard for righteousness is the word of God, so that when we set ourselves up against the straight, true, perfect edge of the Word of God, then we find out whether we are right or whether we are crooked and whether we are at odds with God's Word and therefore not righteous. More specifically, it's the law of God that becomes the standard for us for righteousness. And that's one of the benefits of reading the law every Sunday morning as we did this morning. We could probably recite the Ten Commandments by heart. We've heard the Ten Commandments so many times in our lifetime and we know the summary of those commandments. Love God and love the neighbor as yourself. But it's good for us to keep reading that law week after week because it sets for us the standard for righteousness so that we can see whether we measure up to what God declares in His Word. And that means then that every thought and every action and every desire that you and I have, everything that we are must conform to the law of God, especially to the summary when God says, you must love me with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, which is another way of saying love me perfectly, and to love your neighbor as yourself. That's righteousness for us. Now the next step to understanding the satisfaction of God's justice is to see that we deserve punishment for not measuring up to God's standard. And that's the truth that has been developed in the previous Lord's Days and now summarized in question 12 here, the first question in Lord's Day 5. And here we have another example of where the Heidelberg Catechism teaches us not only in the answers, but also teaches us mightily in the questions that it sets forth. But question 12 that we read earlier of Lord's Day 5, Since then, by the righteous judgment of God, we deserve temporal and eternal punishment. Is there no way by which we may escape that punishment and be again received into favor? Now the question becomes, why would we deserve punishment? Because that's true. You and I, we deserve punishment. And the answer is because every sin we commit is not merely breaking some insignificant, violating some small detail of God's law, but every sin we commit really is a violation against the very being of God himself. That's what makes sin so horrible and terrible. It's a sin against God. And that's why sin is so awful. That's why sin deserves not simply punishment, but eternal punishment because our sins violate God's being. God's being is the standard of right. Violating God's being doesn't mean that we hurt God. We can't do that. We can't ever hurt God and make God less of what He already is. But violating God's being means that we would assault Him It means that man would by way of his sin lash out against God in violence toward Him and that violation of the being of God deserves temporal and eternal punishment. And that right there ought to give us a moment of brief pause. contemplating that truth that our sins deserve temporal and eternal punishment, that ought to sober us up in our Christian walk. Because how many sins do we commit in a day that we consider in our minds, we try to excuse them away, try to say, well, it wasn't that big of a deal? Something minor. rather insignificant. Nobody knew about it. It didn't hurt anybody. What about this or that bad thought, a wrong word here or there to the neighbor, bad attitude that we might have, a bad attitude about church and about the worship of God in church. Well, any and every sin is so serious because we do violence against God's being and that, God says, deserves temporal and eternal punishment. And that takes us then to the final step here in the first point of the sermon yet in seeing the satisfaction of God's justice. We see that God is righteous in himself, And we see that God requires that any unrighteousness in you and me deserves punishment, but now the satisfaction of God's justice means that the eternal, infinite being of God actually gets its vengeance. God actually pours out that wrath of His upon all of those who are disobedient and those who are unrighteous. And that's the reason why I chose to read Psalm 21 earlier. Psalm 21 sets forth that righteous anger of God. Psalm 21 sets forth the wrath of God, that is a real thing. even as the love of God is real, so also the wrath of God is real. And Psalm 21 expresses that wrath of God's justice in a very striking way. In verse 8, of Psalm 21 we begin to read of the enemies of the king whom God has set up and the enemies of the king, the king being the Lord Jesus Christ. And about those enemies David says in verse 9, Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger. The Lord shall swallow them up in his wrath. and the fire shall devour them. A fiery oven in the time of thine anger. That's a picture of the wrath of God, and now don't think, first of all, of the kind of ovens that you and I have in our homes, in the kitchen. You put that oven on, and you know that it gets very hot in there, but there is a barrier between you and that heat, and you can't really see that heat so much, but rather think of a campfire. And you look at the bottom of that heap of logs and after 15 minutes, half an hour or an hour and you see all those coals, red hot or even white hot, burning and so hot. And you can see that fire, you can see that heat glowing. And that's the idea here in Psalm 21 verse 9, God will consume them, all the enemies of Jehovah, all those who are unrighteous, not though by burning them up into nothing, but God will consume them by putting them in the fire so that the fire continually burns them. And that hot, fiery campfire that I mentioned earlier then only becomes a picture. It's not nearly as hot as the wrath of God that burns up the sinner. The Lord shall swallow them up in His wrath, Psalm 21 says, and the fire shall devour them. And that is a picture of hell. That's the horrible thing about hell, is that God is there in his wrath and the sinner will always and constantly be devoured and consumed by that hot wrath of God in hell. And that devouring and consuming never comes to an end. There's never a time when the sinner is reduced to ashes and when the fire stops. But the sinner, the unrighteous person is eternally devoured by the wrath of God in hell. And that's what Jesus himself indicates. When in Mark chapter 9, Jesus says at the end of Mark chapter 9, Jesus says three different times. In Mark chapter 9, these words are familiar, where the worm dieth not and the fire shall not be quenched. Jesus is describing the fiery destruction of hell. and that it's internal and it's external. So that when Jesus says, where the worm dieth not. That worm is a reference to the maggot that consumes the dead corpse. And that maggot doesn't die. It continues to eat that corpse and destroy that corpse. And then externally, the fire that burns the body. The fire is not quenched. so that without and within, that will be the horrible, painful, eternal punishment for the sinner. And that's what the strict justice of God demands. The infinite God must have his vengeance against all unrighteousness. The satisfaction of God's justice means that his justice devours all those who are against him. All right, and now Lord's day five, what's the point? The point is, that's the way of escape for you and for me. Going through that justice of God and satisfying it is the only way of escape. There are no doors left open, but that way alone. Now as we go on in the Heidelberg Catechism we might think that the Heidelberg Catechism is asking the same questions over and over again. And in question 13 of Lord's Day Five, can we ourselves then make this satisfaction? And we might think, didn't we already learn that truth? We already saw that over and over again and learned that we can't make this satisfaction. Of course we can't. Is the Heidelberg Catechism trying to open up now another door for us? But that's not the way to read Lord's Day 5. The Heidelberg Catechism isn't still trying to find excuses and ways for us to escape punishment, but now the catechism in Lord's Day 5 is facing that only door the door of the strict satisfaction of God's justice. And the catechism asks, well, when I go through that justice of God, can I myself make that satisfaction that we've talked about? And so the catechism asks that, can we ourselves make this satisfaction? The catechism is committed. Satisfaction is the only way. But by who? Who will make the satisfaction? Can we ourselves make the satisfaction? Can we go through that burning, fiery furnace of the wrath of God and escape unscathed? And the answer is, no, we cannot, by no means. But on the contrary, we daily increase our debt. Catechism comes back to that same truth that has been developing. We are sinners. We cannot do anything to lessen the debt that we owe God of perfect obedience. There is nothing that we can do to make God say of us, well, I suppose I will regard you as righteous after all. In fact, the only thing we can do is daily increase our debt. Daily increasing our debt by our own sins and so we can't deliver ourselves and then the next question is can there be found anywhere one who is a mere creature able to satisfy for us can a creature do it all right well we're beginning to look around us now who can do this if we can't And the answer with regard to a creature is that no creature is able to satisfy the justice of God, no mere creature, because these other creatures aren't the ones who sinned. Man is the one who sinned. And therefore, man is to be the proper object of the punishment and the wrath, and man must be the one to satisfy for sins. But no mere creature can deliver us either, because no mere creature has power in itself to sustain the wrath of God. What mere creature in this world can have the infinite wrath of God come down upon it and then expect that creature to survive and expect that creature to do that in the place of others. No mere creature can sustain God's wrath against sin. And that's something also that the Canons of Dort teaches us. In the second head of doctrine, Articles 1 and 2. This is found on page 63 in the back of the Psalter. At the bottom of the page, Articles 1 and 2 of the Confession of Faith. That God is not only supremely merciful, but also supremely just. And his justice requires, as he hath revealed himself in his word, that our sins committed against his infinite majesty should be punished not only with temporal but with eternal punishment both in body and soul which we cannot escape unless satisfaction be made to the justice of God. And then Article 2, since therefore we are unable to make that satisfaction in our own persons or to deliver ourselves from the wrath of God He hath been pleased in His infinite mercy to give His only begotten Son for our surety who was made sin, became a curse for us in our stead, and that He might make satisfaction to divine justice on our behalf. All right, well, there's the answer, and that's getting a little ahead of ourselves, getting into the content of Lord's Day 6. But if we can't make that satisfaction and no mere creature can, then where will we look for our deliverer? That deliverer has three qualifications. And we won't expand on them now because that's the purpose of Lord's Day 6, but I mention them now. In the first place, the deliverer that we seek must be a man. a true man, a real human being, even as much as you and I are a human being. In the second place, he must be perfectly righteous, which means that he may not have any sins, no original sin imputed to him from Adam, no actual sins that this deliverer would commit of his own self. And in the third place, he must be very God. That's the Deliverer, as truly God, as the Father is God, as truly God, as the Spirit is God. And therefore, taking all those three together, He must be man, He must be righteous, and He must be God. That's the Deliverer, the one whom we seek, and we know that one is the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's the King described for us in Psalm 21. That's the King described for us in the first verse of Psalm 21. The King shall joy in thy strength, O Lord, and in thy salvation, how greatly shall he rejoice. Thou hast given him his heart's desire, and has not withholden the request of his lips. And then looking at verse four even, he asked life of thee and thou gavest it him even length of days forever and ever. And with regard to what we read there in verse one, thou hast given him his heart's desire And insofar as that applies to Jesus Christ, then we think, what is the desire of the heart of King Jesus? And we learn that more specifically in the New Testament, in John chapter 17, the high priestly prayer of Jesus. Jesus says that all those whom thou hast given me, Father, may not be lost. Father, I will. I request that all those whom thou hast given me be with me where I am. That's the request, the desire of the heart of King Jesus. And the infinite God in all his fiery wrath, the infinite God in his wrath comes crashing down upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ sustains that wrath of God. The vengeance of the holy righteous God against all our sins is now aimed at the Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ bears that vengeance away. And Christ satisfies that wrath of God so that God says it's enough. My vengeance is gone against the sins of my people. My wrath has been satisfied. Jesus has endured it. And in Jesus is our salvation. And that means, beloved, that our escape from the wrath and the punishment of God is complete. And we go back at the end of the sermon now to the question that the Lord's Day begins with. since we deserve temporal and eternal punishment, is there no way by which we may escape that punishment and be again received into favor? And the answer of the Word of God is there is a way of escape. One way, and that's through the Lord Jesus Christ and His satisfaction. He is the way, He is the truth, He is the life. Believe in Him and receive deliverance from the wrath of God and receive salvation through Jesus Christ alone. Amen. Let us pray. Our Father, which art in heaven, we thank Thee for Thy Word. We thank Thee that we may know that Thou art a just and righteous God. We thank Thee that by Thy Spirit Thou hast given us to know that we do not measure up and that therefore we deserve punishment. therefore we come to the only in the name of Jesus Christ who bore all our sins his whole life long and especially on the cross and in our place as our substitute sub satisfied thy wrath for all our sins. We thank thee that we may have the life of Christ in us, that we now live for him, that we live for thee, and that we live godly in the midst of this unrighteous and ungodly world. Forgive our sins and pardon graciously all our iniquities. In Jesus' name we ask these things, amen. We sing Psalter number 45. Psalter number 45, versification of Psalm 21. And let's sing the six stanzas. Let's sing all the stanzas of Psalter number 45. ♪ And the heavenly saints shall rejoin one another ♪ Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave ♪ When he is crowned ♪ ♪ When he has the delight ♪ ♪ That has made him to live ♪ ♪ While the ages shall circle around ♪ ♪ There's salvation from thee ♪ Thou didst glory and honor impart, And has given us blessing forever, O God. ♪ In the strength of Jehovah's light ♪ ♪ Give a greater confidence place ♪ ♪ On the name of Jehovah we still will rely ♪ his grace. By the day of the night, when my neighbor destroyed ♪ By the eagle he fled, and the grave they employed ♪ ♪ It shall forever now, yes, he prevail. ♪ ♪ The words he only made, after baffling flight, ♪ ♪ Alleluia ♪ ♪ For it talks in it might ♪ ♪ And thy mercy shall our praises employ ♪ But He is great, and glorious King Forever more, amen. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be and abide with you all. Amen.