Can We Save Ourselves?

1. 0:00Adelberg catechism, Lord’s Day 5. According to God's righteous judgment, we deserve punishment, both now and in eternity. How then can we escape this punishment and
2. 0:20return to God's favor. God requires that his justice be satisfied. Therefore, the claims of this justice must be paid in full, either by ourselves or by another.
3. 0:34Can we make this payment ourselves? Certainly not. Actually, we increase our debt.
4. 0:40every day. Can another creature, any at all, pay this debt for us? No. To begin with, God will not punish any other creature for what a human is guilty of. Furthermore,
5. 0:53no mere creature can bear the weight of God's eternal wrath against sin and deliver others.
6. 1:00from it. What kind of mediator and deliverer should we look for then? One who is a true and righteous man, yet more powerful than all creatures, that is, one
7. 1:12who is also true God. We come now into the second main part of the catechism dealing with deliverance, the blessing that we come to know, our deliverance, our salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ.
8. 1:29Lord’s Day 5 follows right upon the heels of Lord’s Day 4, which left us in the lurch, you might say, it left us with the reality of hell.
9. 1:39the seriousness of judgment, that sins committed against the supreme majesty of God be punished with the supreme penalty, eternal punishment of body and soul.
10. 1:52And over against all of the so-called objections in Lord’s Day 4, all of the ways in which we would have protested and sought to protect ourselves.
11. 2:04Lord’s Day 5 now begins in the question that's asked with an acknowledgement, a confession.
12. 2:13According to God's righteous judgment, we deserve punishment.
13. 2:18We deserve punishment both now and in eternity.
14. 2:23So we come to the place where there is no more desire to get out from under this reality.
15. 2:31It has to be confessed, needs to be acknowledged, and we need to begin to ask, what are we going to do about this?
16. 2:38How are we going to deal with this?
17. 2:39this. And so question 12 goes on to ask, "How then can we escape this punishment and return to God's favor?" I think it's very important that we appreciate that those two questions,
18. 2:54it's a two-part question, "How then can we escape this punishment and return to God's favor have to be included together. We might be satisfied with the idea, "I just
19. 3:09want to escape. I just want to escape this punishment that I know I deserve, that I know I'm worthy of," but that's not sufficient. And there are many ways ways in which we may find ourselves seeking to escape.
20. 3:24There are many diversions that people can pursue in life and we can all do this, right?
21. 3:30If we have the idea, I'll just escape any sort of needing to think about the reality of God, the reality of his perfect justice, escape by devoting myself to entertainment. Maybe I can escape in terms of
22. 3:45devoting myself to substances that take my mind off things. I can escape by busying myself with work, with pleasure, all kinds of things as a means of escape.
23. 3:58But here we are.
24. 3:59running from God and at the end of the day there is no escape because the catechism is reminding us and assuring us from the Bible God requires that his
25. 4:13justice be satisfied and therefore the claims of his justice must be paid in full either by ourselves or by another. So any of our own efforts at escape, any of our own diversions, will necessarily fall
26. 4:29short. God's justice must be satisfied and will be satisfied. So any sense in which we try to run away from these realities or run away from God will not be successful and not be helpful.
27. 4:47In fact, it's exactly the opposite.
28. 4:51Instead of running away from God, we need to come to the place where we are running to God.
29. 4:56So it is escaping this punishment that we deserve and returning to God's favor.
30. 5:03So running to God.
31. 5:06Now the question is, how do we do that?
32. 5:08That's the question that's being asked for us here.
33. 5:11And it's a very fundamental question that we need to have an answer for.
34. 5:15And the catechism is taking its time, answering those questions for us to make sure that we're not being frivolous or superficial, to make sure that we're not missing the mediator, to make sure that we're not missing
35. 5:31the comfort that is found in Jesus.
36. 5:34And again, with the questions that are asked, the next question, Question and answer 13, can we make this payment ourselves?
37. 5:45There's kind of the acknowledgement there that there is a tendency among us to think, I can fix this, I can take care of this.
38. 5:56I know there's this talk about the judgment of God And it is serious, we're left with that reality, but I'll take care of it, I'll fix it.
39. 6:08And so there is the sense that by our own devotion, we can make it better.
40. 6:13And many people have the idea that if we pile up for ourselves accomplishing accomplishments that God ought to be pleased with, and they outnumber our misdeeds, then we can come to God with a credit to our account.
41. 6:32But the reality of life and the teaching of the Bible, as is summarized for us here, When we ask this question, can we make this payment ourselves?
42. 6:43The answer is certainly not.
43. 6:46Actually, we increase our debt every day.
44. 6:50So we're not building up for ourselves a treasury of merits, of our accomplishments.
45. 6:56In fact, the Bible tells us that even our best works are imperfect and stained with sin.
46. 7:04And so every effort to try to say, here God, you should be impressed with this, is imperfect and stained with sin.
47. 7:11So we're actually not piling up credits for ourselves.
48. 7:15We are increasing our debt.
49. 7:17We're treasuring up wrath for the day of wrath, as Romans chapter 2 teaches us.
50. 7:23So our own devotion is not going to help us.
51. 7:28The catechism was helping us, I think, a little bit already by saying, "The claims of God's justice must be satisfied, paid in full, either by ourselves or by
52. 7:39another. So we've already had the notion that we can do it ourselves taken away. If we're honest, we know that that's true. What about another? We continue to look around in desperation,
53. 7:53and the catechism asks the question, can any other creature, can another creature, any at all, pay the this debt for us. And so we're looking for another way out. Is there any other way?
54. 8:06And the Bible also makes plain, no. The catechism summarizes that teaching. No. To begin with, God will not punish any other creature for what a human is guilty of. The soul that sins
55. 8:19shall die." Ezekiel 18:4. God will not punish any other creature. An angel cannot save us.
56. 8:28An animal cannot save us. The Bible makes very plain in the book of Hebrews, chapter 10, "There is no salvation in the blood of goats and bulls."
57. 8:39there is only salvation in the blood of Jesus Christ. We may be inclined to look in many other places, but the teaching of the scriptures summarized for us here:
58. 8:54"God will not punish any other creature for what a human is guilty of. Furthermore, no mere creature can bear the weight of God's eternal wrath against sin and deliver
59. 9:05others from it. If we were to look to anybody else, any other creature, to atone for our sin, that person, that creature, would be obliterated necessarily by their
60. 9:19righteous wrath of God, there would be nothing they could offer us, nothing they could share with us, nothing that could save us. So the teaching here that we must look to another
61. 9:33is driving us to the realization we cannot do it. It can't be done in our own strength.
62. 9:42So finally, the final question in the Lord’s Day, you might almost say, seems to be asked with a sense of desperation.
63. 9:53What kind of mediator and deliverer should we look for then?
64. 9:58There's the realization we can't cannot do it. There's the realization we cannot come up with the answer. We cannot put together the way of salvation. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot get around the reality of God's
65. 10:12judgment. We cannot escape this punishment. We in and of ourselves cannot return to God's Now the answer leaves us with the credentials of our mediator, his qualifications.
66. 10:29And we're going to have to wait until the next Lord’s Day to be introduced to him by name.
67. 10:34Again, the catechism is going slowly to make sure that we're not hasty, that we're not jumping to conclusions that we're actually appreciating our own inability and our own
68. 10:45need for the mediator, the one, as we're told here, who is a true and righteous man, yet more powerful than all creatures, that is one who is also true God.
69. 10:59Now, none of us can say these particular things about ourselves, except for that we're true humans.
70. 11:07But we're not righteous in and of ourselves. We don't meet those qualifications.
71. 11:11And we're not true God. We need a mediator who can meet those expectations fulfill those credentials for us. And so what we see, what we're left with at the
72. 11:25end of this particular Lord’s Day, is the realization we can't do it. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot come up with a way to make ourselves acceptable to God, God's
73. 11:39got to do it. God's got to come to us. And what we're being encouraged about here in this teaching is that's exactly what he's done in the Lord Jesus Christ. How can we
74. 11:51escape this punishment? How can we return to God's favor? It's through the mediator, through the one he has sent.
75. 11:59We need to satisfy God for his justice.
76. 12:03We need to satisfy God and his righteous demands.
77. 12:06Love me with all of your heart and soul, with all of your mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.
78. 12:13But we can't, and we don't.
79. 12:16Someone has to do it for us, and Jesus did.
80. 12:19Thank you.

Made automatically from the audio, so a word here or there may be wrong. Tap any line to play from there.