All right, I wanna begin with a reading from Isaiah 53 that will fit well in with what we're gonna talk about tonight. Beginning in verse three. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, what an incredible prophecy and promise about your Son, our Lord Jesus, our Savior, what he went through in his life and in his death, and what he accomplished for us in those. that we have forgiveness of sins, that by his wounds we are healed, that you were pleased, as it says later in Isaiah, it was your will to crush him, that you laid upon him the iniquity that was due unto us. So we pray for our time this evening, that you would bless it. We pray that we would learn more about you, that we would grow in our love for you and our remembrance and in our understanding of all that you have done, everything that you have given to us. what you have accomplished for us through the life and death of your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. We thank you for this time, and it's in Jesus' holy name we pray, amen. Well, we're gonna continue looking at the Heidelberg Catechism this evening. All right, Evelyn, Luke, Sorin, I'm gonna have some questions. I have three words that I want you guys to remember. Can you remember these three words for me as we get going? I think you can. We're gonna look at Heidelberg tonight. Last time we were together, we finished our discussion of the first two questions. And that first well-known question is, what is our only comfort in life and death? Our comfort is that we belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. That's our comfort. But the second question follows up with that and asks us, how many things must we know to live and die in the joy of this comfort? And there's three things, okay? Three things. We can summarize them into three words. I'll get to the words in a second. The first thing is how great my sin and misery are. The second, how I am delivered from all my sins and misery. And the third is how I am to thank God for such deliverance. That second question and those answers, those three things, they outline all of the Heidelberg Catechism for us. And they really outline the Christian life. And we can further, we can summarize then those three questions, those three statements rather, we can summarize them into three words, all right? Here's the words, ready? They all start with the letter G. Guilt. Grace and gratitude. Those are the three words. Guilt, grace, and gratitude. That's how this catechism is divided up into those three categories. So tonight, when we look at the next few questions, it's in that first category. What's that first category? What's the first word? Guilt. We need to know, we need to understand the depth of our sin and misery that we have apart from Christ. That is our guilt. So these are the three questions. The first question we're looking at tonight, which is question three, how do we come to know our misery? And it's the law of God that tells us. Then it asks, what does God's law require of us? And the answer is that Christ teaches us what it requires in summary, Matthew 22. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. That's the first and great 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, Jesus told us. So the next question follows that. Can we live up to what that requirement is? Can we live up to all of this perfectly? And the answer is no. And the catechism says that I am inclined by nature to hate God and to hate my neighbor. That's what we're gonna talk about tonight. Those are those three questions. They're three points for our time this evening. In order to understand the human condition apart from Christ, we need to understand what this question's getting at, what these questions are teaching us about that first word, about guilt, about our misery apart from Christ. So we have the test of our condition. How do we understand what our condition is? Well, the question says that it's the law of God. So we have the law of God, now what's the requirement of the law? Well, the requirement is to love God and love our neighbor. And thirdly, our inability to fulfill those requirements, that we are being prone, we are prone by nature not to love God, but to hate him and our neighbor. So in the first place, and how do we know this truth? Well, it's from the law of God. You know, this is an appeal to a higher authority. There's no greater authority than God in this world. Only God, only his word has that absolute authority. We can't even trust our own consciences. We can't even trust our own judgments all the time. Only can we trust them when they are compared to the word of God and what God's word says. How can we explain the world around us? How can we make sense of the world in which we live? It's only from God's word. It's only God's word that helps us to make sense of the world. Scripture is the only place that we can go to that gives us an answer, an answer to the question of our existence, to the question of the brokenness of the world. Scripture's answer is that God is good, that he made all things good, and yet it was our rebellion against him, our sin against him that plunged the world into sin and into brokenness. So God as creator and sovereign king over all creation, he alone has the right to give his creation his requirements of them. And that makes sense, just as we are to follow what our parents tell us we're supposed to do, just as we are to follow and to submit to the proper leadership and authorities in our lives, how much greater then do we need to follow our Creator and what He has required of us? That's what that first question we looked at tonight is getting at. What's the test? How do we understand what our condition is? Well, we have to look to God's word. We have to look to the law of God. Romans 3 20 says for by works of the law, no human being will be justified in God's sight since through the law comes knowledge of sin. That's what God's law does. It brings the knowledge of sin into our lives. So how do we know what our miserable condition is? How do we understand our guilt? It's from the law of God. That raises the question then, what does God's law require? That's the second thing we wanna see tonight, the requirement of God's law. What is it? It's to love God and to love our neighbor. This is, The perfect, this is the most pure form of legislation that exists in the world, that exists of any society, of any government, of any institution. I was reading a commentary on the catechism and it's put this way, the statutes of human governments fill many volumes and are then proverbially indefinite, while every attempt to condense them has only made the uncertainty worse. I love that. And we're getting into tax season. And if there's ever any uncertainty within and before the law in this country, it's it's around taxes and how they work. Don't ever grow up. Don't do it because then you have to pay taxes. And it's so confusing and it only ever gets more confusing and it gets more worse, more worse, if that even makes sense. But on the other hand, the commentator continues, but the whole law of God is written in two sentences. And the whole duty of man in one word, love. It's wonderful. It's exactly right. That's what God requires of us, is love. The summary of everything he desires of his righteous law can be summarized the way our Lord did in those two sentences, to love God and to love our neighbor. That's what Jesus does in Matthew 22, but he's quoting himself from the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 6.5, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And Leviticus 19.18, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. That's a summary of the law. So what do those things mean? What does it look like to love God? Well, to love him with all our heart is to love Him supremely. It's to cherish Him. That every motive which prompts us to love should ultimately lead us to Him. That we would love God above everything else. And the love that we have toward one another would ultimately be an expression of our love toward God and of our understanding of His love toward us. So we love God with all our hearts, we love God with all our minds. That is, we love Him intelligently. How can we love someone that we don't know? If we were to say that we love our spouses, yet we couldn't begin to say the first thing about them, or their likes or dislikes, or their mannerisms, or their hopes or dreams. Could we really be said to love them? So we seek to know God in order to love him with our full minds. And to love God with our soul and with our strength. Again, this commentator, he says that that is to love him zealously. Those two words we could understand to be a zeal, an earnest desire that prompts us toward action. But we love God, so of course we're going to spring into action. What can we do to show and to demonstrate our love toward Him? I was reading from the Valley of Vision earlier this evening. It's a wonderful prayer book. full of wonderful prayers. And I think in this one prayer here, it really captures what it means to love God in this way, heart, soul, mind, and strength. So part of the prayer, it says, oh, how desirable, how profitable to the Christian life is a spirit of holy watchfulness and godly jealousy over myself. when my soul is afraid of nothing except grieving and defending thee. The blessed God, my father and friend, whom I then love and long to please, rather than be happy in myself. That's what it looks like to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength. And of course, then we're called to love our neighbor as well. George Bethune and the commentator I've been referencing, he says this about this second great commandment. He says, our blessed master in his parable of the Good Samaritan has clearly defined our neighbor to be every human being brought by the providence of God within the reach of our kindness. That's how he defines neighbor. Every human being brought by the providence of God within reach of our kindness. So who's within reach of you right now? Right? That's your neighbor. That's who you're called to love. Of course, makes sense that it would begin with our households, with our siblings, with our younger brothers, with our spouses. We're called to love them, to love them the way that we love and care for ourselves. In the household of faith, within the church, certainly. But all those who God providentially brings into our lives, if we have opportunity to care for them and to love them, we are to do that as well. So the law then it proves our miserable condition and we have seen what the law requires. So is there then any hope for us to be able to keep this law? Is there any hope that we'd be able to keep it in a way that could restore us out of this miserable condition that we find ourselves in? That's the last question we have tonight, which is question five. Can you live up to all this perfectly? Can we live up to everything we've just talked about perfectly? No. That's the depth of our misery. No, we cannot. That's our guilt. Rather, we are inclined by nature to hate God and our neighbor. The key word there is perfectly. especially for Christians who have been regenerated and renewed, we are able to obey God's commands through his spirit working in us, yet we can never do so perfectly. But what God's law requires is perfect, perpetual obedience to his law, ongoing obedience to his law. But we cannot do this We are inclined by nature, this is our original guilt, our sin before God, we're inclined by nature to hate God, to despise our neighbors, to want what's worse for them, to want what's best for us. God's word shows that to be true, of course. But so do our everyday experiences. So do all of our actions. We know that we fall short of this holy standard. We never live up to it in our lives. That's a sad thing. It's a depressing thing to think about. But the importance, why the catechism starts here, starts with that first word, guilt, is to prepare us to understand More of the beauty of that second word, do you remember it? The second word, what Christ has done for us. His grace, absolutely. Because we can understand our guilt and understand it, we can better understand, better see the fuller picture, better marvel and fall at the feet of Jesus for all that he has done for us in his grace. It makes the gospel so much sweeter to us. Understanding the depth of our sin, understanding our guilt is like Being so parched after a long day of sweating and being outside and you have that first cold drink of ice cold water. It's so much more refreshing after being out in the hot sun all day. The gospel is like a diamond put against a pitch black velvet background. where you can see when the light shines on it even more clearly all the facets and all the beauty and all the dimensions of what Christ has done for us in his life and in his death. Again, let me quote from him here about the blessedness of the gospel when we compare it to our guilt. He says, O blessed gospel that thus meets us at our last extremity, turning our despair into joy. O blessed law of God, whose very terrors drive us to welcome Christ. O blessed Bible, which thunders on one page from Sinai the curse of eternal death. and on the next shows us Christ on the cross dying in our stead. Then beyond it, Christ on his throne, beckoning the penitent to eternal life. Glory to God, the lawgiver. Glory to God, the redeemer. Glory to God, the sanctifier. Glory to God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, our covenant God throughout all ages, amen. Amen and amen. Remember that our guilt before God is great, but we have a greater Savior. He's given us grace and we're able to live for him in gratitude. Let's pray. God, may you receive all the glory, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We thank you for this wonderful assurance of our salvation that we have, that you are for us, and if you are for us, who could be against us? We thank you for this reminder that though our sin was great, but where sin abounded, grace superabounded, that there is no sin that is greater than our mighty Savior, that we are never so far gone, that we are beyond your ability and your power to bring us back and to save us and to restore us. Thank you that our guilt leads and gives way to your grace. Help us to rest in that. Help us to remember that always. Help us to delight and to see just how sweet the gospel is. I pray that you would help us to do that even this evening. We pray all this in the mighty name of Jesus, our savior, our shepherd, and our friend, amen.