Comfort's First Step: Rightly Knowing Our Sin
Minister: |
Rev. Ronald Van Overloop |
Date: |
1/8/2012 PM
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Text:
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Romans 7;
Lord's Day 2
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Psalters: |
424, 293, 159, 362 |
- Misery - the symptom.
- The presence of misery is assumed.
- Misery indicates there is something wrong (like a fever indicates an infection).
- It is the clear shout of God that man is guilty before God and worthy of punishment as sinners.
- Unless we see the cause of our misery and treat it, there will be no deliverance and recovery.
- How do we learn correctly about sin as the cause of our misery?
- There are two and only two possibilities: man or God.
- God’s law is the reflection of His own perfection, requiring one thing: love (Rom. 13:10).
- We are to love God supremely with our all, all the time.
- The extension of true love for God is to love our neighbor as ourselves.
- With the law God commands conformity of His rational, moral creatures - on pain of His curse.
- God’s law, like a stick rousing a sleeping bear, rouses the evil in our natures.
- The law shows that we are prone to hate God and our neighbor instead of having any love.
- We hate (not just love less) God.
- Anyone who does not fear and love God has no respect for his neighbor.
- The true believer is the only one with the ability to admit honestly his natural and constant depravity.
- But the same faith which acknowledges sin also acknowledges justification (5:1 and 8:1).
- God’s law becomes blessed to us as its terrors drive us to Christ.
- The Bible may thunder God’s curse unto death, but it also shows us Christ dying in the stead of sinners.