The scripture reading this morning is from Mark chapter 12. Mark chapter 12 verses 13 through 34. We read this in connection with Lord's Day 2. concerning the law of God. Mark 12, beginning at verse 13. And they send unto him, unto Jesus, certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians to catch him in his words. And when they were come, they say unto him, Master, we know that thou art true, and carest for no man. For thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not? Shall we give, or shall we not give? But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said unto them, Why tempt ye me? Bring me a penny, that I may see it. and they brought it, and he saith unto them, whose is this image and superscription? And they said unto him, Caesar's. And Jesus answering said unto them, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they marveled at him. Then come unto him the Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection. And they asked him, saying, Master, Moses wrote unto us, If a man's brother die, and leave his wife behind him, and leave no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto her brother. Now there were seven brethren, and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed. And the second took her, and died, neither left he any seed. And the third likewise. And the seven had her and left no seed. Last of all, the woman died also. In the resurrection, therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them? For the seven had her to wife. And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the Scriptures, neither the power of God? For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels which are in heaven. And as touching the dead that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses how in the bush God spake unto him saying, I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. Ye therefore do greatly err. And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. And the scribe said unto him, Well, master, thou hast said the truth, for there is one God, and there is none other but He. And to love Him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love His neighbor as Himself is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And no man after that durst ask him any question. So far the reading of God's holy, infallible word. On the basis of this passage of scripture and on the basis of many passages of scripture, we have the teaching of the Heidelberg Catechism found in Lord's Day 2 on page 3 in the back of the Psalter. Lord's Day II, where we begin the first section of the Catechism of the Misery of Man. Whence knowest thou thy misery? Out of the law of God. What doth the law of God require of us? Christ teaches us that briefly, Matthew 22, verses 37-40. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first and the great commandment, and the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. Canst thou keep all these things perfectly? In no wise, for I am prone by nature to hate God and my neighbor." Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, I would suppose that nearly everyone here this morning, as you were getting ready for church, looked into the mirror. That's what we do. Sunday mornings, as we're getting ready for church, as maybe we're brushing our hair or we're brushing our teeth, we look into the mirror. We look into the mirror to make sure that we're presentable for church. I suppose that most mornings, as you're getting ready to leave the house, you make sure to look into the mirror to make sure everything is how it should look. Well, this morning, as we look at Lord's Day two together, there is another mirror that we are going to look into. It's called the mirror of God's law. In fact, in the Scriptures, in James 1, James uses the figure of a mirror when he speaks about God's law. He says, he calls us to look into the perfect law of liberty as a mirror. The law of God is a mirror, and we're going to spend some time this morning looking into that mirror. Why? What is the purpose of looking into the mirror of God's law this morning? Well, what's the purpose of looking into any mirror? The purpose is to see your reflection. That's why you looked into a mirror this morning. The purpose is to see not only how you look, but then to also see how other people of what other people are looking at when they look at you. And just so, we look at God's law this morning so that we might not only see how we look from a spiritual point of view, but that also especially we might see, and not just how other people look at us, but how God Himself views us. We want to see how we look before God when God looks at us and who we are of ourselves outside of Jesus Christ. And that's important. We want an honest mirror. You know, sometimes you can come across a mirror that doesn't give you an honest reflection of who you are, of what you look like. Mirrors that twist and distort shapes. Maybe they give you a reflection that makes you look better than what you actually look like. Well, we need an honest mirror, a mirror that tells us exactly what we look like. And so we look at God's law this morning because that law of God will tell us honestly, faithfully, it alone will tell us accurately what we look like before God. And that's going to be very humbling because the law is not going to reflect a pretty image. The law is going to reveal to us this morning our totally depraved, sinful natures. But as humbling as it's going to be, that's also very good. It's good because we get to hear the truth about what we actually look like. And it's a very good thing because when we come to see that, and we come to see just how great our sin and misery is, We also come to see more just how great God's love for us actually is in Jesus Christ. And we come to see just what a redemption Jesus Christ has given us. And we come to see why, more clearly, we are to live a life of thankfulness and devotion to the praise of our God. And the more we grow in our knowledge of these things, the more we will also enjoy comfort. The comfort of belonging to Jesus Christ. And that's what the catechism ultimately has in mind here. To highlight for us the comfort that is ours in the fact that we are not our own, but we belong to Jesus Christ. We take as our theme this morning, the mirror of God's law. And we look at that theme under three points. First, the perfect mirror looking at the law, second, the ugly reflection, what we see of ourselves, and third, the good news. When it comes to what we look like from a spiritual point of view, the reality is many people don't actually want to see it. They don't want to see the truth about what they look like spiritually. In fact, you and I all, by nature, are so proud and so sinful that we refuse to accept what we actually look like spiritually. Because the reflection we see is so humbling that we're inclined to change mirrors. Or we're inclined to turn away from that mirror altogether. However, as I just said, if you want to know what you honestly look like, you need to look into the right mirror. You need to look into the mirror of the law of God. And that law is the perfect mirror because it gives you the reflection of yourself in the light of what God sees. Not just in the light of what other people might see, but in the light of what God sees. The congregation, even when you have that straight, and you know that you need to put yourself in front of the law of God, and you are looking into the law of God as your mirror. It's still of utmost importance to know what that law of God actually is, because what's so easy to do is this. Say that we're looking into the mirror of God's law, and in reality, we have distorted that mirror. We have minimized what that mirror actually reveals. Because many people would say that they are looking into the law of God and seeing their reflection, but the reality is they might not even have a proper understanding of what the mirror of God's law is. Or what it demands. We might say that we're looking into the mirror of God. We're looking into the Scriptures. But in fact, we're minimizing. We're not seeing what that law of God truly reveals. And we do so, once again, because our sinful natures try to paint a better picture of what we actually look like. And I bring that up, I say that because that's exactly what the Pharisees were guilty of in Jesus' day. That's exactly what the Pharisees themselves were doing in the scripture passage we read this morning. What is the law of God? Well, when you look at the Old Testament, and especially the first five books of Moses, you see that the law of God is made up of hundreds, literally hundreds of laws. Moral, ethical requirements in the hundreds, both negative and positive, that God places upon His people. And what the Pharisees of Jesus' day were doing with these laws was this. they liked to debate those laws. So that by the time of Jesus there were different schools of Pharisees that reflected different ways of thinking, different rabbis that had different opinions concerning the law and they would debate with each other. For example, I know that there were two different schools of thought, two different rabbis that taught different views concerning divorce and remarriage. A conservative view and a liberal view. That you can marry anyone you want after divorcing someone. And if you remember from Matthew chapter 19, the Pharisees came to Jesus asking Him about divorce and remarriage exactly in order that they might tempt Him. So that Jesus might have to pick sides. Which school of thought does He belong to? So that they could alienate some of the people from Jesus. Well, we see that being done also in the scripture passage this morning. In the reading this morning, we see the Pharisees asking Jesus about taxes, about what we should give to Caesar. Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not? They were tempting Jesus by giving him one of the questions that they liked to debate. They wanted to make Jesus give an answer that would alienate Him from a certain group of the people, that would make Him unpopular with the people or make Him appear soft when it comes to the commandment of honoring those in authority. They wanted to catch Jesus in His words. And then after they bring up the question about taxes, we see the Sadducees coming to Jesus, asking him about the resurrection from the dead. And the Sadducees, as the passage says, they didn't even believe in the resurrection of the dead. So they were clearly trying to trick Jesus with this question. They asked, if a woman lives and has multiple husbands, in the resurrection, whose husband will she be? And Jesus, once again, had to set the Sadducees straight. Questions that they debated. They wanted to catch Jesus in His words. Well, one of the other questions that the Jewish leaders liked to debate concerning the law was this. What's the greatest of the laws? Among all these laws that we have, what's the most important law of all? What's the first commandment we should be keeping? And that was no easy question, evidently, for the rabbis, because they had literally hundreds of laws to choose from. Some argued that Sabbath observance was the first commandment to keep, most important. Others emphasized that circumcision was the most important of the commandments. Still others emphasized that The commandment that receives the harshest punishment, if you break it, that commandment must be the greatest. And so there were these debates. And now in their hatred towards Jesus, and their desire to trip Him up in His words, they bring this petty debate to Jesus. They try again to make Him stumble. In verse 28 we read, And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, Which is the first commandment of all? And from Matthew's account, in Matthew 22, we learn that these Pharisees actually first gathered together, they first huddled to discuss what question they might bring next to Jesus, and then they send this scribe to ask Jesus this question. So it's clear this was not a sincere question. And their purpose was again to make Jesus appear soft on some laws so that ultimately he might lose credibility. If Jesus chooses Sabbath observance as the greatest of the laws, well maybe then he's soft when it comes to circumcision. But if Jesus chooses circumcision as the most important of the laws, well maybe he's soft on all the requirements for making sacrifices at the temple. Which is the greatest of the commandments? When the answer Jesus gives, we see Jesus cutting right through the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. The Pharisees and the scribes and the lawyers thought they knew what God's law was all about. But they hadn't really grasped that law at all. And Jesus, as it were, says, you've missed the entire point of all the laws in the Old Testament. You waste your time arguing about individual laws. But where's your heart? You are all about the external. You're all about the show. You like to debate, but you debate for the sake of puffing up your own pride. And not out of love for God. The law is spiritual, first of all. The law has to do with your heart, first of all. What is the greatest commandment? The first of all commandments is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment, and the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the laws, all the Old Testament scriptures. Don't you know? Isn't that why you're so zealous to debate and discuss the laws? Because you love the Lord? Because you want to do what is pleasing in His sight? And because you love your neighbor deeply and you want your neighbor to pursue righteousness and walk in the ways of the Lord? No? You do it only to puff yourselves up? Then all you're discussing and debating is vanity because loving God is the great commandment. Now what were the scribes and the Pharisees doing? This is the point of why I've been talking about this. The scribes and the Pharisees were acting as if they were looking into the mirror of God's law. But they had changed that mirror and distorted it in such a way that it was only reflecting what they wanted to see. That mirror they were using was a mirror that only showed them what they looked like on the outside. It was only showing them what they were comfortable with. They weren't treating the mirror honestly. They had corrupted it. And that's why the Catechism immediately starts with the pointed question, Whence knowest thou thy misery? And it answers not by giving the Ten Commandments, but it answers by giving the summary of the law. This is the heart. Love the Lord thy God. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Well, we need to ask then once again, what is the law of God? The summary, Jesus says, is love. As 1 Timothy 1 verse 5 says, the goal, the end of the commandment, The goal of the commandment is love, is charity. Love out of a pure heart. Love God. He comes first. He comes first. Love Him with all your heart. And then, love your neighbor. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Love God with everything. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. And love your neighbor Out of your love for God. Love God by loving your neighbor. So we see that there are these two fundamental laws. Love God, love your neighbor, and they go hand in hand. They are inseparable. Notice that the summary of the law doesn't say obey God. It says love God. Because the reality is if you love God, you will seek out his will and you will discuss his law and you will strive to come to the right understanding and you will seek then to obey it. If we love God, Jesus says, keep my commandments. If you love me, keep my commandments. Loving God gets at the heart of the commandments. And Jesus says, love Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love God with all your intellect, with all your emotions, with all your abilities, every moment of life, with respect to every aspect of your being, with all your effort. It must be characterized by complete love for God. That's the law. That's the mirror we need to look into. And then, love your neighbor as yourself. And as I just said, I love God by loving my neighbor. This is God's command to me to love my neighbor and I do it, not just to obey God, but because I love God and I see this is His will. And out of love for God, I cannot help but love my neighbor. Ultimately, then if my love for my neighbor conflicts with obeying God, and I obey God out of love for God, if my love for my neighbor conflicts with loving God and obeying Him, then I know that that love is not a true love. It is, in fact, hatred. And that's exactly where many people would twist the law even today. And they desire to make themselves look bad. I love my neighbor. I love my neighbor. But what's the first out of which the second one flows? Love God. And to love the neighbor then must go all the way to the end goal of seeking the neighbor's ultimate good. Pursuing his salvation. I love the neighbor as I love myself. I love my neighbor with the same love that causes me to rejoice in the salvation I have. I love my neighbor by longing for his salvation even as I love the salvation I've been given. And when Jesus uses the word love, we need to understand the word love just as God understands it. And not redefine it. God is love. And what is God's love? It is that love that's characterized by all the other attributes of God. His love is a holy love. It is a merciful love. It is a gracious love. It is a righteous love. It is a just love. And He expects us to love Him with the same kind of love. that He has, the same intensity of devotion that He has for us. God says to us, I have loved you by giving up to the cross that which was most precious to me, my only begotten Son. You love me with that same love. Love me with giving your everything. God says, I have loved you with an irresistible love, a love that would not allow anything to get in the way. You love me the same way. Love me with a love that will not allow anything to get in the way. God says, I have kept you front and center in all my dealings with men. Because I love you. You love me the same way. Keep me front and center. That's the law of God. And now that law is the mirror that we are called to look into. We come before that law and it shows us not only how we look in front of others, how we look to ourselves, but how we look to God, how we look in our inmost heart. The Pharisees never allowed the law. to reflect their hearts, to examine their hearts. They were hypocrites. They refused to dwell on the matters of the heart. They were deceiving themselves with a strong delusion. They never saw their misery for what it really was. They had replaced the true mirror with a law, with a mirror of mirror outward rules and regulations. And their comfort, therefore, was not the true comfort of belonging to Jesus Christ. It was the comfort that would ultimately betray them in the end. The comfort of their own works. If we are going to get a true and honest idea of what we look like in our misery, we must have the law search our hearts. If our comfort is truly going to be only in Jesus Christ, we must look into that law and see how great our misery actually is. Because our misery is known out of the law of God. And the reason, as I said, the catechism gives us the summary of the law, here in Lord's Day 2, is to emphasize that the law has to do with love. The law has to do with your inward man. The law has to do, not first of all with what you do, It has to do with what you do, but it has to do, first of all, with who you are, because the law has to do with love, and love gets at the root of who we are. What do I love? This law is the perfect mirror, and when we look into that mirror, what is the reflection that we see? To put it more clearly, When I put who I am of myself outside of Jesus Christ, who I am by nature, when I put that in front of the mirror of God's law, what is the reflection I see? This is what I see. Only. Only. Hatred. What do I see in that mirror? I see an ugly reflection looking back at me in the eyes. What do I see in the mirror? I see the image of Satan. Looking back at me through that mirror. Imagine that. You stand in front of a mirror one day in order to see what you look like. What do you see looking back at you? You see the reflection of Satan. You stand in front of a mirror to look at what you look like. And what do you see? You see a snake. You see a viper. The law says love. And when I look in that law and it reveals to me what lives in my own heart, this is what I see. Not love. Only hatred. God is love. But I am prone by nature to hate God. To hate love. to hate my neighbor. That's my default setting. If I move with any part of my being, that's the direction I go in. Whether it be my will, whether it be my intellect, whether it be my emotions, whether it be my actions, whatever direction I go into, that's the direction. The direction of hatred. Congregation, that is shocking. That's shocking when you really consider it. Because we don't want to hear it. This is not true. We don't want to hear it. This is something we refuse to confess by nature. Our own sinful nature rebels against the truth of that statement. So they say, not true, not true. Our sinful nature, like a slithering snake, comes to us and says, Yea, hath God's law saith this about you? Really? It's not true. You're not that miserable. But it is true. It's true when you consider what Jesus Himself says about the Pharisees and to them. These Pharisees, they were the religious elite. They were the cream of the crop. They were the holiest of the holiest. Outwardly, in the land of Israel. And how does Jesus describe them? In John 8 verse 44, He says, You are of your father, the devil. And you know there that when someone has someone for his father, he looks like him. You are of your father, the devil. You bear his image. And the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it." How offensive. No wonder they wanted to crucify him. Those who thought they were the best of the best, the most holy. Jesus says, you are the children of Satan. That's who I am by nature, too, because we're all the same by nature. That's what the catechism says in question and answer five. Canst thou keep all these things perfectly in no wise? Not at all. For I am prone by nature to hate God and my neighbor. It's a strong word, isn't it? Hate. We don't like that word. Don't use that word, we say sometimes. It's too strong. It's too direct. It's a nasty word. To hate is the very opposite of what God demands. He says, love me. Love me with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And love your neighbor. And we say, I will hate. Not only do we fail to hit the target that God has set before us, but we turn in rebellion in the opposite way. And we shoot with rebellious hearts in that direction. Is it just that I have a failure to love God? Can I call this merely a shortcoming that I have? A weakness? A sickness? No. This is an active, intense loathing. An active hostility of the creature towards his Creator. And because it is a hostility towards God. When I turn and I look at my neighbor, My hatred towards God spills over into ill will and evil intent and spite and selfishness when I look at my neighbor. Because, you see, I'm not happy with God's will for my life at this moment. I need to take it out. I hate my neighbor. I need an object and I hate God, but I hate my neighbor out of my hatred for God. I don't want to do anything God tells me to do because I am at enmity against God. And even when it looks like I am loving my neighbor, it's a selfish and corrupted love. This is the testimony of the Scriptures. The Catechism will develop this a little bit more next time in Lord's Day 3. But let me just briefly establish this from the Scriptures with perhaps some well-known passages. In Romans 8, verses 7 and 8, we read, because the carnal mind And that's referring there to the mind of the flesh, the mind we have by nature, our own sinful natures. Romans 8 verses 7 and 8 says, Because the carnal mind is enmity, hatred against God. For it is not subject to the law of God, the law of love. It's not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. In Jeremiah 17 verse 9 we read, The heart is deceitful, above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? We sang that this morning from Psalter number 41. Who can know the sins of his heart? In Titus 3 verse 3, We read, Paul writes, for we ourselves also were sometimes, were at one time, foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving diverse lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. That's what characterized us, left to ourselves. In Romans 5 verse 10, Paul speaks of God reconciling us to Himself while we were yet enemies. And one place where we see this hatred, this enmity, most clearly is at the cross of Calvary. Because there at the cross, God was demonstrating His love towards His people. He was giving His Son to the accursed death to take away the sins of His people. And what were we doing? We were shouting from the bottom of our hearts, Crucify Him! Crucify Him! That's enmity. And the whole world was characterized by it. It's so significant to keep straight. That's what explains why our comfort is in Christ alone. We're so inclined to think better of ourselves than what we really are. We constantly need the Scriptures to show us what the truth is. There's so many different mirrors that we would rather look into. And it's obvious why. Because we don't want to look into this mirror. But when we do look into this mirror of God's law, it reflects an unmistakable picture. A picture of spiritual ugliness and deformity. That's who we are by nature. In congregation, we know it by our own experience. Our own sinful loss, our own anger, our own self-destructive tendencies show how true these things are. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. And what I'm saying there is this, prone to hate. Because to wander from the God of love in any direction is to go in the direction of hatred. And then here we need to remember again who it is that's making this confession. It's the believer. It's the one who gave that beautiful answer to the very first question. It's the one who's able to say, my comfort is that I belong to Jesus Christ. That's who's answering question 5. The fact is, only the Christian can stand in front of that mirror of God's law and receive what that law shows him and confess that it is true. And confess it with sorrow that it is true. That's not because we are any better by grace, by nature, we refuse to stand in front of that mirror just like anyone else. But by God's grace, he, as it were, brings us in front of that mirror by his grace and in his mercy shows us who we are. We get a sense of our sin. When he does that to you in your day to day lives, that's his grace. putting you before His law, causing you to see and to feel your misery. That's His grace. Only the child of God can receive this kind of preaching. Only the Christian can confess he's full of hatred and that that is his misery. The cause of my misery is not in something outside of myself. You are not the cause of my misery. My loved ones are not the cause of my misery. It's my own sinful nature. It's my hatred towards God and my neighbor. That's my misery. Because if only I could love perfectly, if only I could have that perfect attitude towards God, then all would be well. But this is my misery. I don't. Even as a Christian now, the cause of my misery is ultimately my own sin. My own sin in Adam and my own sin day by day. My own sin in Adam and all its consequences. And then my own sin day by day. And as a child of God, I feel that misery. Because it's bondage. Sin is bondage. It is slavery. Hatred. Prejudice. Fear, discontent, jealousy. It is bondage. It is estrangement and it is alienation from the God who is complete. My completeness. The God who is love and the fountain of all good and of everything that is pleasing. It's bondage because this sin is completely contrary to how I was originally created to live in freedom. I am prone by nature to hate God and my neighbor. That's my confession, and that's my misery. And it's my misery because I also see the curse that it brings. The curse that I deserve eternal damnation. This is not who I am in Jesus Christ. Thanks be to the Lord for that. This is not who I am by grace, but this is who I am by nature, left to myself. But that's my misery, my hatred, my discontent, my lack of love. It's my misery. And making that kind of a confession makes for a miserable Christian. It's why we weep over our sins. I see this ugly reflection. I know God is worthy of beauty. And I see an ugly reflection. And I think you sense that, beloved. The fact that we have to make this confession causes us to weep. But what we must see is that in this very fact, that this is our misery, and we can confess that misery with sorrow, that's also where we see the good news here in Lord's Day too. The good news is that we freely make this confession. This is my misery. We confess it as misery and we agree. We say amen to what the law says. Now we need to be clear here. The children of the world, unbelievers, they have the same totally depraved, sinful nature as we do. They're in that same misery from that point of view. But when the unbeliever stands before the law of God, either he refuses to see his misery, or he distorts what the mirror is actually showing him. Either way, he refuses to see his misery or he refuses to care. He doesn't let it touch him. He is in misery too. but you might say he is so miserable he can't even feel it. Because spiritually, he is still dead. Oh yes, he feels it, and maybe then we might say he feels it not as much. He feels it somewhat, but never honestly, because he is spiritually dead. But when I see who I am of myself, and I feel it, and I see it, and I weep, and I mourn over that ugly reflection, And it troubles me. What does that tell me? It tells me I'm alive. It does trouble me. It troubles me when I sin against God. Why does it trouble me? Because I do love God. It troubles me when I sin against my neighbor. Why? Because I do love my neighbor. I do. I want to, I do. It troubles me when I see these self destructive tendencies within myself. It troubles me when I know better. And I see that sinful nature in me that still inclines me to act shamefully. And with a stiff necked spirit. So that I say within myself, Oh, wretched man that I am. Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The unbeliever is miserable, but he doesn't realize just how miserable, how wretched he is. He's dead. But through Christ, I'm alive. I can see how miserable I am and I weep over it. The congregation, what we must see is that that itself is the witness, is the evidence that I do belong to Jesus Christ. Because the mirror of God's law tells me that the sinful man in me hates God and hates the neighbor. The law tells me that I am so prone by nature to hate that the sinful man in me will not weep tears of sorrow over sin. And when I do see in me that sorrow over sin, and I do grieve over that ugly reflection I see in the mirror, Then I must come to the conclusion that the only explanation for this sorrow in my heart over my sin. It's the fact that I've been given a new heart. I've been made a new creation in Jesus Christ, I am not left to myself, there is something else in me. And that's exactly where looking at my misery. Gives way to joy. Because I see I have Christ. I belong to Christ. And this is what the gospel says. You who are so miserable over the sins you hate. You who see that you are ugly and you have a sinful nature and who are miserable over that sinful nature. Realize this. Your own sorrow witnesses to you that that sinful nature within you was crucified with Christ. Yes, it's still within me. Yes, I carry it with me. But I've died to sin. It was nailed to the cross. And I am alive unto God. Sin rules no longer in me. Sin can still influence me. Sin still has motions within me. But sin doesn't dominate me. Sin is not the whole picture of what I see. Because Jesus Christ is working within me that new man more and more. He's conforming me more and more to his own image, to the perfect reflection, the express image of the Heavenly Father. And now living out of that new man more and more, what do I see? I see within me more and more the beginnings, the small beginnings of true love for God. True love for my neighbor. I see the life of Christ in me and the image of Christ being formed and shaped in me more and more. And that's my comfort amidst the tears I shed over my sin. I see clearly I am not my own. I can't be my own because there's no other explanation for this love for God, for this desire to pursue His will and to be pleasing in His sight other than that I belong to Jesus Christ. This is the significance. I don't need to act. like the Pharisee. As much as my sinful nature inclines me to do so, I don't need to act like the Pharisee. Not when I go to God in prayer. I don't have to hide my sins in my heart. Not when I'm living in the life of the congregation. I don't need to pretend to be someone I'm not. Because we're all the same. God sees us all the same. We can confess our hope, our comfort is not who we are of ourselves, but who we are in Jesus Christ, and we each understand that. I don't need to act like a Pharisee. I will not act like a Pharisee, and I must not, because I have something real. I have Jesus Christ. And then tears of sorrow begin to mingle with tears of happiness and inexpressible comfort for the knowledge that gives. Then I praise the Lord above for what He has graciously given me in Jesus Christ. Then I praise the Lord above for revealing to me this knowledge of my misery. and showing me who I am in Christ. And then I cling to my Christ more and more each day. And I rejoice and I exalt in the comfort of knowing I am not my own. I can't be my own. I am not my own. I belong to Jesus Christ. And I rejoice in that because that reality will last forever. And that reality will be my ultimate end. I see that sinful nature still in in the mirror, but there is one day coming when that sinful nature and that reflection will be entirely done with. And what will I see in the mirror? I will see what I long for and what I am pursuing after. The completion of the image of Jesus Christ in me. To the glory and the pleasure of my heavenly father. Amen. Let us pray. Father, we love Thee. And it is a beautiful confession to say that. Because when we see who we are of ourselves, then we rejoice in the knowledge that we love Thee because Thou hast first loved us and given Thyself for us and given us Christ. May we exalt then, Father, in the preaching which magnifies Christ and speaks honestly to us and drives us to Christ causes us to recognize and see who we are in Christ. Continue, Father, to work within us more and more that image of Jesus Christ. For we love to love. Love is the keeping of the law. And the law of love is the law of liberty. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.