Transcription
[Music]
What is the misery of that estate wherein to man fell?
All mankind, by their fall, lost communion with God, are under His wrath and curse, and are made liable to all miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever.
The catechism now moves from the sinfulness of sin to the misery and the miseries that come with this estate after the fall. These two things are very much connected. To move from sinfulness to misery, these are closely connected, as we'll see throughout this.
This is catechism question: the source of misery is not the harm that we receive, the hardships that we bear, our health problems, and so on. Those are not the source of our misery. It is miserable when you stub your toe; it's miserable when you get sick; it's miserable when a person dies that we love; and a person loses their job or whatever. But that's not the source of misery.
The source of misery is to be found in the sinfulness of the estate that we find ourselves in. The catechism helpfully lists off six things for us that we need to highlight about the misery of this estate. I want to spell those out for us and then connect them to the gospel.
So here we have man, and I'm going to put a sword here to represent our point. Alright, there's a sword, and then underneath, I'm going to put a fire. So this is my attempt at a fire anyway. Underneath him, and here we're going to see in these upper three, we see the source of our misery. Underneath, in the bottom three, we see the consequences of this misery.
First of all, we go from communion with God to enmity, to being enemies. Friends of God to being enemies. We also go from peace, being at peace with God, to being under His wrath. And we go from blessing, a state of blessing before the fall, to a state of cursing, of being under the curse.
In the next three, I'll get these all up on the board, and then we'll go through them. We are, as a result, liable to miseries in this life, and we are liable to death, and we are liable to the pains of hell forever. Alright, we can emphasize the eternal nature of hell.
So these are a description, this kind of the source of our miseries, along with the consequences of our miseries.
Now, let's think through this for a second. What is the worst thing in the world? The worst thing in the world is not war or disease in Africa, or homeless children, or whatever. The greatest wretchedness in this world is sin.
I think that's an important distinction because we need to ask ourselves sometimes: do we desire to be free of sin as sin because of its evil and because of the dishonor it brings to God, or are we more interested in just being free of the miseries of sin? In other words, do we want to get rid of the consequences of sin, but we're not so concerned about the source of our miseries?
That's a question that we have to ask ourselves. We don't want to just not be sick, but we're concerned about the fact that apart from Christ, we are at enmity with God Himself.
Now the question comes: what do I deserve? What do I deserve? Well, the unbeliever doesn't deserve anything. Well, they deserve hell; they don't deserve anything good. So for the unbeliever, every minute that they are outside of hell, they're receiving more than they deserve.
Now the Christian, left to himself or herself, would be in the exact same predicament, the same problem. But the Christian has Christ, and Christ has come in His mercy to redeem and save them. Christ has forgiven their sin, removed their guilt, and clothed them in Christ's own righteousness.
And so, because of what Christ has accomplished for His people, relief or deliverance from sin and its miseries are guaranteed to us. The miseries of this life are, in a sense, just a foretaste of eternal misery.
So the miseries in this life, culminating in death, are precursors or a foretaste of the misery that will be perpetual and that will last forever—the pains of hell that will last forever.
And so we have to say this: this world is miserable. It's miserable. As good as this is for the unbeliever, this is as good as it gets. This is the best they will ever have.
Now, what happens is this all provides the background for the gospel. It all provides the background for the gospel because the gospel reverses all six of these things. But I want you to notice something: you can't remove these second three unless we first remove the first three.
You can't be delivered from the miseries of this life, or from death, or from the pains of hell forever unless enmity is removed and communion is restored, wrath is removed and peace is restored, the curse is removed and blessing is restored.
Right, there's an order. People think, "I don't like all of this," but you can't get rid of all of this without first removing the source of our miseries. And this is what the gospel does for us.
The gospel comes; Christ comes and delivers us from these things. He is brought under the wrath of God as a substitute in the place of His people in order to restore peace. He is alienated from God, bearing the sins of God's people in order that we might have communion with Him.
He has made the curse for us in order that we might be recipients of His blessing. And as a consequence of Christ's work in removing these things, the Lord's people also enjoy relief in the second category of things as well.
Well, if you're looking at the board and reading down through the list, you're going to have some questions. I mean, you can follow me in saying sin is not friendly, right? Sin does not bring true pleasure with it; it always brings misery.
So whether you're coveting something, or whether you're stealing something, or whether you're having an unchaste thought, or whether you're taking the Lord's name in vain, it will never bring the pleasure that it promises. It will only result in misery. You can follow that much. There is no true happiness until these things are removed.
So if you're following me, though, you're going to say, "Now wait a second, pastor. You said Christ removes this in order that God's people would have relief from this, but what about these two? What about number four and five: liable to the miseries of this life?"
Right, what about that? And what about being liable to death? Christians do die, and Christians do suffer. Christians get sick, and they can be terribly sick. Christians lose their jobs, and Christians suffer under broken relationships, and Christians have all sorts of the miseries of this life. So what about that?
For the Christian, the answer is that even the sorrows of this life take on a different form. They end up being sanctified. The sorrows of this life are sanctified for the Christian.
So the Lord brings one trial or another into the life of the Christian—a cross that they have to bear—that is a token of God's goodness. He uses what is otherwise painful to produce wonderful joy and blessing.
Now, it's not to say that you don't feel pain when you're terribly sick or something else, but it's transformed into a vehicle of good so that we are weaned from our love of this world and increase our hatred for sin.
We revel in the promises of God, and we seek sweet communion with Christ in the midst of our sorrows. The Lord brings all sorts of beautiful fruit by the Holy Spirit out of that context.
Even death—you say, "Well, Christians still die." They do, of course. They don't suffer under eternal death; they don't suffer under the pains of hell forever. But what about death?
The answer there is that death ends up, rather than being the great enemy that only brings evil to us, becoming a servant of God's people. The Puritans referred to death as the porter that takes us across the river to glory.
So at death, as we'll see later in the catechism, our souls are made perfect in holiness. For the first time in our existence, we'll be free of sin, and we'll be in the presence of Christ. We'll have all of the blessing and joy that comes with that.
So that, as Paul says in 1st Corinthians 15, "Death, where is your sting? Where is your victory?" I think Christ's work upon the cross, His work of redemption, takes the sting even out of death itself. It does not allow death to be, if you will, the final victor.
And so we see that the misery of sin—all of this is preparing us for what the Bible teaches us about the Redeemer, about Christ Himself.
In other words, we have to understand the bad news in order to appreciate the good news. Right? The word gospel means good news, but we have to have this background with regards to the bad news—facing reality, really owning up to the condition that we find ourselves in—in order to appreciate the message that God brings about the redemption that is to be found in the Savior, in the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
In other words, these doctrines which we're being taught drive us to Christ. They drive us to Christ. We see the sinfulness of sin, we see the misery of sin, and we see that we're completely helpless and completely hopeless by ourselves.
It drives us to say, "Here is the provision God has made in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here is the one who is able to remove the sinfulness and the misery of sin and to reconcile us to the Lord and to bring us into fellowship with Him."
So as heavy as some of these things seem, and this list sounds pretty bleak, it is true, and it is a means of accentuating, of setting forth the glory of Christ Himself.
So in question 19, it says: What is the misery of that estate wherein to man fell? All mankind, by their fall, lost communion with God, are under His wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever.
[Applause]