Amen. My name is Eric, one of the
pastors here and it is Reformation Sunday today and if
you don't know what that is, John opened up our service
explaining that a man named Martin Luther on October 31st
fifteen, 17508 years ago, he was a Roman Catholic monk and Bible
professor. He nailed 95 theses statements
to the church in Wittenberg, Germany's door.
And it was it was contesting, it was opening up a debate about
some of the bad teachings in the church, things like indulgences.
These were things that were going on at the time.
Pope Leo the 10th was building Saint Peter's Basilica, among
many other buildings that they've built over in in Europe.
And, and this was costing a lot of money.
And so a man named Johan Tutzel, a good salesman, became kind of
a speaker for the Pope, went around and, and was selling
these things called indulgences to make money for the building
of this building, the church. And what he was saying is, is if
you gave money, it would buy you and your family members out of
so many years in punishment in the afterlife, in a, in a thing
that they called purgatory, which is kind of this in between
state. Christians don't believe in
purgatory, but they did. They got these things from
outside of Scripture, not inside of Scripture.
And that was what was going on. In fact, a quote from Tetzel was
as soon as the penny jingles into the Money Box, the soul
flies out of purgatory. This was the sales statement as
they were going around trying to raise money and in fact,
preachers in the churches were saying the same thing.
The more money you give, the more money you can earn your way
out of out of the punishment that you're going to have to go
through in purgatory. You see, they believed that that
no matter if you had faith in Jesus or not, that didn't
automatically get you to heaven. Every person was going to have
to pay penance or partially atone for their own sins or work
off their own sins in a place called purgatory before they
would get to heaven. Martin Luther at a point was
realizing that this just didn't line up with scripture.
So he writes his 95 theses, nails them to the door.
October 31st, 1517. And so that puts us today, it's
Reformation Sunday. It's not actually till Halloween
that that is Reformation Day. And so you want to dress up like
Martin Luther. You wear a robe, you know, put a
coffee filter on your head or shave your head and, and, and go
around with the Bible. And that would be a great way to
celebrate Reformation day. Things that were going on in the
church was not only not only the sales of indulgences, but the
word of God had been very deeply darkened and shadowed.
You see, the Bible was written in Greek and Hebrew.
And then in the first couple, 100 years, many of the people
were speaking Latin because Rome was kind of the, the, the world
power and they became Christian. Rome did and they all spoke in
Latin. And so the Bible was first
translated in the Latin Vulgate into Latin.
And they, this is how they were practicing their faith in the
early, early days of the church. But eventually Rome was
conquered and that no longer was the language of the people.
And it started to the the Latin language started to die off.
And yet they believed that they were supposed to keep the
language in Latin during their worship services and during
teaching. And So what happened was, is
people weren't understanding what was being read or taught.
And, and so then what really ends up happening is man's own
opinions, man's own spiritual ideas and feelings and
persuasions, leanings started taking on more authority and
more precedence than Scripture did.
And that is what happened which took the church into what we
call the spiritual dark ages from 500 to 1500.
We believe that it was a the dark ages of the Christian
Church where very few, there were still some.
God always has a remnant of believers, but there were very
few believers in these times because the Word of God was
darkened. I believe that history is
important. History is important because if
we don't study it and if we forget all about it, what
humanity ends up doing is repeating the same mistakes over
and over again. We don't.
We can look into the Old Testament and see when, when
God's law was hidden or not used anymore or uplifted by certain
kings, they fell into all kinds of sin, worshipping in wrong
ways, worshipping false idols and false gods.
And then God brings about a a reformation.
And, and So what happened in the 1500s is something that we need
to keep in mind. And so here at this church, we
often quote reformers in Puritans and go back to old
confessions, not because we believe that they were inspired
by by God in the sense that what they say is the highest
authority, but it's because that they fought against what happens
to God's people when they get outside of worshipping him God's
way. Instead make up their own ways
to do it the way that they see fit.
And we look back and we see that these these men and women fought
for the truth and one out and and by the way, because of the
Protestant Reformation, by the way, it's called the Protestant
Reformation means that they were protesting and the Protestant
Reformation is the longest protest, public protest that has
ever taken place in history. 508 years of protesting that the
word of God is the highest authority, that justification by
faith alone is the only way to be saved by grace, the grace of
God alone through Jesus Christ alone, to the glory of God
alone. We look back and we find these
principles and, and it was because of the Protestant
Reformation that you and I even can come to a Christian Church
here in America. If it wasn't for the Protestant
Reformation, we would either be Catholics or Orthodox or
Anglican and, and still be darkened, not having the light
of the truth fully expounded to us.
But now because of the printing press and everything that
happened back then, we can all have our own Bible.
Now. We don't have to read it or hear
it in Latin, but we can discern it in our own language.
And I believe that God did do God was behind this as he is
behind every faithful movement that uplifts God's glory.
And so with all that to be said, today we're talking about the
five solos of the Reformation. I, I mentioned those, these are
principles that we can gather that make up the Protestant
faith or the faith of that came out of the Reformation.
Really the Christian faith, Christians should believe in
these five solas and, and, and most of them, if not all of
them, if they are not believed, I, I would say don't go to that
church. And it's probably an unhealthy
theology that the person or a church has if they do not hold
to these five truths that came out of the Reformation and
they're called the solas. Sola is in Latin and sola means
alone. And so the first one I want to
bring up as we walk through these is scripture alone.
They believed in scripture alone being the highest authority.
See what was going on was with popes and and and different
Saints and things going through history.
They would write their own writings.
They would have what they called personal revelations almost like
prophets, did they? They, they, they were believed
to carry on the, the Apostolic authority to have personal
revelations from God. And they have rooms and
buildings of popes and other people's writings, basically
adding on to or their own interpretations of Scripture.
And that's where they got into trouble in the 1st place.
And they were elevating whatever this Pope or this prophet said
up to or even above the Word of God, the word of God's
authority. Christians, though, believe that
nobody or nothing can usurp the authority, authority of the Word
of God. We get that right from the
Bible. By the way, if we look at Second
Timothy 316, it says all Scripture is breathed out by God
and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for
training and righteousness, that the man of God may be complete,
equipped for every good work. What is this saying here?
This is saying that all of Scripture, all of the finished
Canon of the Bible, the 66 books of the Bible, Old and New
Testament, all of it in its completed state is the Word of
God, the very word of God that was breathed out of his mouth.
And it is profitable for teaching, for proving truth, for
correcting error, for training and righteousness and holiness.
What this means is, is that Scripture is sufficient.
It means that if we had no other books, the word alone would
would would be enough for us to have a relationship with God and
to live out this godly life pleasing God.
We don't need any other writings.
Any other ideas, Any other opinions other than the word of
God and anything that that then contradicts the word of God must
be thrown out, must be considered as as false because
the word of God is sufficient it's inherent meaning in its
original manuscripts. When it was being written is
without any errors, you see, because the Bible says that.
The Bible says that the Holy Spirit inspired men to write
down the words of God. Actually, it says it in second
Peter 20. It says, knowing this first of
all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's
own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by
the will of man. But men spoke from God as they
were carried along by the Holy Spirit as they were writing this
being imperfect, fallible men, God in His sovereign power was
still be it was able to make his perfect word come out of their
mouths and threw their pens onto the original manuscripts,
meaning that there are no errors in it.
It cannot be wrong. And when I say inspired it, it's
not like the same kind of inspiration you get from a a
cool quote on Facebook. Man that really inspired me.
No, this is controlled by the Holy Spirit to write the words
of God down. That's how amazing this book is.
It cannot be disproved. People have tried to critique
the Bible over millennia and they will never win the
argument. The Bible will stand for all
time. The Word of God will always
remain, and it is powerful. And so really, it wasn't Martin
Luther who started the Reformation, although God used
him. It was the word of God once it
got released into other languages where other people
could now start reading it and went once God unlocked the mind
and heart of Martin Luther himself to understand some
things that caused some people to now stand up and say, wait a
minute, if this is God's word, I'm willing to go against all
opinions of man if they contradict.
And so it was really the word of God that started the
Reformation. I love what Psalm 14715 says.
It says he sends out his command to the earth and his word runs
swiftly. His word was running swiftly
through this time to make it so that we could have the light of
the knowledge of the truth of the Scriptures, Charles Spurgeon
said. The word is like a caged lion.
You don't really have to do anything other than just let the
lion out and then it will go do its job.
It will go run and conquer. That's the word of God.
So Martin Luther four years later, after he after the the
the nailing of the 95 theses was called in to an imperial council
called the Diet of Worms, where they asked him, will you recant
of all of this stuff that you've been preaching and, and, and
saying because he had built quite a following.
Now people had mass produced his writings now through the
printing press along with Scripture.
And here's what he said in the Diet of verms.
He says, unless I am convinced by the testimony of the
scriptures or by clear reason for I do not trust either in the
Pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have
often erred and contradicted themselves.
I am bound by the scriptures I have quoted and my conscious
conscience is captive to the word of God.
I cannot and will not recant anything since it is neither
safe nor right to go against conscience.
May God help me. Amen.
And at the end of it he says, here I stand and I can do no
other. He said, whatever you're going
to do to me, do, do it. But I, I will not go against the
the authority of Scripture. This is something that we need
to understand as Christians. One of the main, you know,
foundations of our faith is that scripture alone is the highest
authority. But but that scripture is
sufficient, inerrant, inspired, infallible, and it hasn't been
changed or mistranslated. You know, I know you know this,
that all the false religions out there, that's the number one
thing they attack first is the word of God.
If they and who did that first? Satan in the Garden of Eden, he
said God did not say you shall not die if you eat that fruit.
Lying to humans, right? Satan's behind every false
religion, even if even if the religion is based on Christ or
has Jesus Christ in the name of their church.
If they do not believe that scripture is the breathworth of
word of God without error, then it's very very likely that
they've been LED astray and believe false doctrines and
false teaching. We must uphold Scripture.
In fact, I was thinking, man, I want to, I should go put a Bible
up on that scaffolding there because the, the word of God
should be elevated above all of us here today as the highest
authority. And it's not that it's, it's,
it's because it's the word of God, not because the book is
God. It's his words.
In fact, in the, you know, Reformed days and Puritan days,
actually the pulpit, this is a sad thing, by the way, for me
that churches nowadays don't like using pulpits.
They're like, it puts, puts a barrier between between me and
the people or it makes me stand over them.
Well, that was the point. The point was not to lift up the
man behind the pulpit. The point was to keep the word
of God elevated above the people.
And in some of these pulpits, man, you had to climb up a
spiral staircase to get there because they thought that highly
of the Word of God. We've got to move on to the next
one, though. Through Scripture alone, we're
able to find out, and Martin Luther was able to find out that
we are saved by faith alone. That means not works plus faith
not not faith after all we can do, but faith alone and
justified by faith alone. That was a huge term that came
out of the Reformation. What does it mean to be
justified? That's a legal term to be made
right with God. You see, we are sinners and we
are not right with God. We are born not right with God.
All humanity is separated from God.
We we've born in sin and we continue to sin.
And so the biggest question is how does a man or a woman become
right with God? It is through faith alone we are
justified. Martin Luther, his mind was
open. I'm going to read you a little
story here of some history about how it happened and what verses
was he in. He was reading in Romans and
Galatians, but we read this today as our assurance of
pardon. And it was actually verse 17.
But I got 16 up there for some, some, some context says for I'm
not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for
salvation to everyone who believes.
You got to emphasize some words sometimes when you're reading
Scripture because sometimes you just breeze over it.
What does that say? It says the gospel is the power
of God for salvation. For to everyone who believes, to
the Jew 1st and also to the Greek.
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith, for
faith as it is written. The rest shall live by faith.
Martin Luther in 1519 after two years after he nailed the 95
theses. He was in an Augustinian
monastery that had a tower called the Black Cloister Tower
of Wittenberg. He was studying in it and he had
this life changing experience where he admits that he was
angry with God because he thought God was a, a judgmental
God that nobody could please. And he kept reading these verses
and and here's what he says. I had conceived this desire to
understand what Paul meant in his letter to the Romans, but
thus far there had stood in my way, not the cold blood around
my heart, but that one word which in this chapter, in
chapter 1, the justice of of of God revealed in it, or justice
and righteousness can be interchanged.
Here I hated that word, justice of God or righteousness of God,
which by the use and custom of all my teachers been taught done
philosophically as referring to formal or act of justice, as
they call it, that just by which God is just and by which he
punishes sinners. But I blameless monk that I was,
felt that before God I was a Sinner with an extremely
troubled conscience. So in other words, he's saying
if IA monk, who, who, who, who? Deprives myself of all kinds of
worldly things and have studied your Bible probably more than
most. I'm still a Sinner before God
and I'm have to face your wrath because of your justice.
Then how is it possible that anybody could be saved?
He said in silence, If I did not blasphemy, then certainly I
grumbled vehemently and got angry at God.
I said, Isn't it enough that we miserable sinners, lost for all
eternity because of our original sin, are oppressed by every kind
of calamity through the 10 commandments?
Why does God heap sorrow upon sorrow through the gospel and
through the gospel threaten us with His justice and His wrath?
This was how I was raging with wild and disturbed conscience.
I constantly badgered St. Paul about that spot in Romans 1
and anxiously wanted to know what he meant.
By the way, this is how people feel.
I don't know if you've been in a works based righteousness
religion before, if you grew up in that.
You never know when, if you're doing good enough, when you're
gonna be right with God, if you ever can be right with God.
The burden. He was a depressed man because
of this, and here's what he says.
I meditate, meditated night and day on the words until at last,
by the mercy of God, I have paid attention to their context.
The justice of God is revealed in it as it is written.
The just person lives by faith. I began to understand that in
this verse, the justice of God is that by which the just person
lives, by a gift of God, that is, by faith.
I began to understand that this verse means that the justice of
God is revealed through the gospel, but it is the passive
justice that by which the merciful God justifies us by
faith. As it is written, the just
person lives by faith alone. All at once I felt that I had
been born again, entered into paradise itself through open its
gates for me. Immediately I saw the whole of
Scripture in a different light. I ran through the Scriptures
from memory and found that other terms had analogous meanings.
And he goes on to talk about that.
All these statements that how God works in us, it's God doing
the work in us. The work that is that is
required was done by Jesus Christ and he was reading things
like we've read today. We hold that one is justified by
faith apart from works of the law.
It makes you think, how did they get to this point when they had
the scriptures right before them?
Well, again, the Word of God was darkened.
It wasn't being taught. Everybody else's opinions were
being elevated to the same level of Scripture.
That's why all these are connected.
Faith alone in Christ alone is what makes a person right before
God. Jesus Christ is the exchange
with us. He's the perfect righteous man,
the only one whoever lived who is God.
And when he died on the cross, he exchanges all of our
sinfulness and our unrighteousness.
He exchanges his righteousness and trades it.
And he took all of our sin and all of our shame, all of our
guilt, and nailed it to the cross with himself, absorbing
all of our sins, past, present, and future.
And now we stand before God, justified as if we were in a
court and all of our charges were brought up against us.
And yet Jesus Christ comes out and says, I will bear their
punishment for them. I will take their sentence for
them, declare them righteous and me guilty.
That is the gospel. That is the gospel.
But here's the thing, the Roman Catholic Church did not teach
this, did not agree with this because of how far they had
fallen away from grace. And actually in response to the
Reformation, they did. They had a council called the
Council of Trent where they released these things called
Anathema's statements of curse of of condemnation.
Anathema means to be cursed or condemned to hell.
And they said if you believe any of these things, you are
anathema. Here's what it says.
Session 6, Canon 9. If anyone says that by faith
alone the Sinner is justified and and so as to mean that
nothing else is required to cooperate in order to the
obtaining of the grace of justification, that it is not in
any way necessary, then let him be anathema.
You see, that's a different gospel.
And they've anathematized themselves by preaching a
different gospel. You see, that word anathema was
written way before they used it in Galatians chapter 1, where it
says, But if we or even an Angel from heaven should preach to you
a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be
anathema accursed, as we have said before.
So now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel
contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.
Canon 11. They said this.
If anyone saith that men are justified either by the sole
imputation of the justice of Christ, or the sole remission of
sins to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which was
poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, and is and is
inherent in them, or even that grace whereby we are justified
is only the favor of God, let him be anathema.
Another one, Canon 30. If anyone saith that after the
grace of justification has been received to every penitent
Sinner, the guilt is remitted, and the debt of eternal
punishment is blotted out, and so much that it remains not any
debt for temporal punishment to be discharged either in this
world or in the next, in purgatory, before the entrance
of the Kingdom of heaven can be opened to him, let him be
anathema. This is a different Gospel.
This is a gospel that cannot save.
Why is this such a big deal? You know, sometimes people will
say that men or women, people who stand in and preach against
false teaching, especially when the religion could be so close.
Or maybe we believe the same thing.
And, and, and I, I read this quote, I think it was by a
Spurgeon. He said cowards will call
courageous men mean. It is not a mean thing.
It is the most loving thing to do, especially when so many
people gave up their live and risk persecution to correct the
error. This is not just some error,
this is damning error. Again, that's why the
Reformation was so important. You see, here's this thing, you
can have justification without wait.
You can have faith but not justification, or you can have
justification with faith alone. If you add anything to it, it
now becomes your works alongside Christ works.
And now what you've done is you've minimized Christ on the
cross and you've said it was it was good enough, but I've got to
do more. Almost making yourself equal to
Christ, that somehow your works could help you.
In fact, they do the opposite. So who do we have faith in
getting to the next one? Christ alone, Solas Christus,
what does this mean? Our faith is in Christ alone and
no one, no work, no no person at all other than Jesus Christ.
First Timothy 25 says, For there is one God and there is one
mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ.
Here's what the 1689 London Baptist Confession says about
Christ the Mediator. In paragraph 9 it says this
office of mediator between God and man is proper only to
Christ, who is the prophet, priest, and king of the Church
of God, and may not either be in either in whole or any part
thereof transferred from him to any other.
So there's this thing called sacramentalism in the Roman
Catholic Church where there are the seven sacraments that play a
role in even imparting some kind of grace or earning your way out
of time in purgatory, which Christ alone is the one who took
our punishment. But the if there's a belief that
we have to also pay some part of our punishment through and, and
work off some of the debt through works, they do it
through these the seven things. Baptism, baptism does it.
We don't believe that baptism saves you at all.
We believe it's a, a symbolic act, but they believe more than
that, that it's required for salvation as salvific properties
and then to be confirmed by them and then confession.
You must confess your sins and some someone in leadership would
say, OK, say so many Hail Marys or you know, so many our fathers
and your sins are absolved again.
Their sins are being forgiven again by a man on earth instead
of God who already took care of our sins.
And it goes on. You know, the anointing of the
sick, the holy orders of the, the leadership and the clergy of
the church and even marriage is one of them.
But listen to this Hebrews 927 And just as as as it is
appointed for man to die once, and after that comes the
judgement that gets rid of the idea of purgatory all already.
You are judged immediately when you die, whether you had your
sins forgiven or you didn't have your sins forgiven.
And your spirit goes to two places.
There's not a third place. And there aren't three places in
the one place, there's two places.
And it goes on. So Christ having been offered
once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time.
And then and in Romans or in Hebrews 10/12, it says, But when
Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he
sat down at the right hand of God all time.
When Jesus died on the cross. You must know, Christian, that
every sin that you ever committed, that you're
committing now and that you will commit in the future was known
in the mind, in the heart of God the Father and the Son as is
hanging on the cross. And he was dying for those sins,
all of your sins. He is it's, that's how powerful
the cross is, is that it doesn't just take care of the sins for
one time, but for all time extending back all the way to
the first human beings and all the way to the last.
Faith in Christ alone takes care of your sins.
In the Catholic Church, they believe in this thing called
transubstantiation, that in their mass when they take
communion, the bread and the wine, it actually a priest says
a prayer over it and they believe that it turns into the
literal body and blood of Jesus. Therefore basically crucifying
him and again or breaking his, his body again in in current
state so that when you take it, your sins will be forgiven.
That's why you have to keep back over and over and doing it
again. We believe it's a symbolic
thing. It's a memorial to do with joy.
It has no salvific properties whatsoever, but they've added
this is what Christ alone means. It's by Christ.
It's not by a sacrifice and offering a priest's prayer, a
confession to someone, take a communion, baptism, all of these
things. It's by Christ alone.
Actually Ulrich's Lee, a contemporary Martin Luther, he
says Christ has borne all our pain and travail.
Hence whoever attributes to works of penance what is
Christ's alone heirs and blasphemes God.
It is a blasphemy against God to equate anything to the level of
Christ on the cross. Even even to say that somehow in
the garden before the cross that that somehow atone for our sins.
That's not where the atonement came from.
The atonement was Christ on the cross.
But there's this belief, you know, the Reformation, by the
way, we're not trying to go back to the 1500s and say that they
had everything right there. There were just, you know,
fallible people. What we are trying to do though,
and what I believe the Reformation is about, there's a
word called semper reformanda, which means always reforming.
We're trying to reform back all the way to the 1st century faith
of what the Bible had to say in the early church.
We can go back to its history. They had, they started to get
off track as soon as the apostles left.
But that's because humans mess things up.
That's why we have the word of God.
We got to go back to it, right? But they the Catholic Church
will claim, well, we have the the most history out of any
church. We are the early church, right?
That's not true because the papacy infallibility, your
universal jurisdiction, Mary, by the way, the Marian dogmas like
the Immaculate Conception, like Mary, became completely sinless
as soon as Jesus Christ was in her womb and then lived a
sinless life all the way to the death.
That's what they believe. And not only that they believe
they call her a Co Mediatrix, a Co Redemptrix or even spouse of
the Holy Spirit. Some have taught these and other
things like it are make it not the early church.
So how do we come to this understanding?
It is through scripture alone, by faith alone and Christ alone.
But what about that moment where Martin Luther says he was it was
like he was born again? Is, is it, was it because of his
work of just studying as hard as he could and and depriving
himself as as much as he could like?
And then he finally reached this point of humility.
No, that is not what he believed.
He believed that God saved him by grace alone.
And that is what Christians believe.
Grace is merited favor. It's a gift of God.
Now in the early church, there was a man named Augustine.
And Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk in the in the
5th century Augustine, he wrote this form of a prayer and it
says give what thou commandest and command what thou will.
What does he mean here? Augustine was so caught up with
this idea of of being a Sinner, being totally depraved as a
Sinner to the point where man cannot please God.
That's, that's the doctrine of original sin.
If we get away from that, we get away from everything.
By the way, we're all sinful to the core and we cannot please
God in our natural and current state.
And he said, OK, then, well, God, if you give us commands,
then you've got to give me the ability to do it then, because
in my natural person, I cannot do it.
And that's what grace is. Grace gives us the ability to
even be able to come to the humble conclusion that I'm a a
Sinner that needs to turn to Christ for faith alone,
understanding the word of God. Well in Augustine's time there
was a man named Pelagius and he believed something different
about depravity and original sin.
He said no, we did not fall with our our ancestors Adam and Eve.
In fact, we have the same free will, uninhibited or untainted
by sin that they did before the fall, meaning that there's
nothing that that keeps us from taking the first steps toward
God. Well, he was condemned as a
heretic actually, in the Council of Ephesus and Carthage and
Orange. And because all of the Church
believed and confirmed that the Scriptures were clear, we are
sinful to the core and we cannot reach out to God.
Luther himself said that no achievement of man, no faith is
no achievement of man, but it is a gift from God.
You know, modern Christianity is starting to take up this again.
Why? Because we forget faith or
forget history. Why do I want to go back to
history and talk about, you know, the Protestant
Reformation? Because we want to keep kind of
grounded in great truths that were fought over and won in
great debates with, with men and women who had a lot more time
than we do because we're distracted with all this
technology and busyness. I mean, sometimes I wish I was
back in, you know, the Wild West or I was back in the olden days
where I wasn't so distracted and could study more and more and
give God more and more of my time.
But thank God we have people who did do that.
Not saying we put all our trust in them, but here's what I would
say. I'd say their word isn't
elevated to the scripture. And so scripture alone doesn't
mean you can't trust in confessions or creeds or
commentaries. It just means that they are not
inspired by God like the scriptures are.
But I'll tell you this, these people together have more
authority than you and I alone interpreting Scripture.
So going back to this grace alone idea, Jesus said this.
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him,
and I will raise him up on the last day.
No one can come to me unless the Father.
It does not say that, oh, if I take the first step, then he'll
come towards me. And that is what modern
Christianity is actually teaching nowadays.
If God does 99%, you just do the 1%.
Doesn't that sound so good, right.
But it still involves you actually doing something, taking
the step toward God. And sometimes people get
confused and say that's what faith is.
But faith, even faith itself, is.
A gift from God. Again, the ability we are, we
are dead in our trespasses and sins.
The Bible says our hearts are stone.
Actually one of the Puritans, John Owen, he said this before
the work of grace. The heart is Stony.
It can do no more than a stone can to please God.
He gets that from Ezekiel 3626 where God in the Old Testament
says, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in
you. I will remove the heart of stone
from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my
spirit in within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and
be careful to obey my rules. You see, God by his grace, his
gift to us comes and regenerates our soul by the Holy Spirit and
then we come to faith in Jesus Christ Jesus again.
You know, you know John chapter 3 where he says you must be born
again to enter the Kingdom of God.
No one can enter the Kingdom of God unless they're born again.
What does that mean? Well, think about your physical
birth. How much effort or decision
making or studying did you do? How much choice did you have to
be born into this world? Zero.
That was left up to your parents, right?
The same is true then to be born again spiritually.
You have no part of the decision making process until God
actually gives you the ability to decide.
And yes, we are accountable for repenting and believing and we
do make a choice, but that's only after the grace of God.
And I will tell you our minions and Calvinists both believe the
same thing even though they disagree on the predestination
and and all the other stuff and how that happens.
They all agree that a work of God has to happen first in order
for a person to believe. Ephesians 2, One through 9 We
were dead in our trespasses and sins, but God, being rich in
mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even
when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, made us
alive together with Christ. By grace you've been saved, for
by grace you've been saved through faith, and this is not
of your own doing. It is a gift of God, not a
result of works so that no man can boast.
The grace of God alone saves sinners and we need to come to
that conclusion more and more as Christians because what it does
it it helps us give God all the glory.
And that's the last part. God's glory alone, Soli deo
Gloria. What is God's glory alone mean
it. And not only is talking about
how God is the one who performs all of this stuff on us
undeserving people and we're just standing as grace
recipients, we did not contribute to our salvation.
He did it, which by the way, should make us the most humble
people on earth. And sometimes we're not and we
should be because really we are undeserving.
Undeserving. But also the to the glory of God
alone means that God will not share his glory with anyone.
Isaiah 42, eight, I am the Lord, that is my name, My glory I give
to no other. That means in all of this, when
it comes to religion, means that no Pope.
By the way, the Pope is called the vicar of Christ here on
earth. Vicar comes from the word
vicarious. The Pope vicariously holds the
position of Christ here on earth while Jesus is in heaven.
That's what they believe, that he has the same authority and
that he even imparts a special grace to people.
And priest can forgive sins and he can as well.
And the Bible says no, nobody is equal to Christ who is God.
There's no Pope or prophet or president or priest or pastor
who gets the glory, only God himself.
We are but humble servants that are undeserving.
You know, without His grace, I wouldn't be able to speak these
truths to you. I There's no nothing special
about leaders in the church. In fact, if you knew my life
history, you might not even like me.
If you knew all my sins, I was a Wretch to the core, chief of
sinners, prideful, selfish, drug addict, loser.
And the God came and saved me. And why?
Why does he choose messed up people 'cause that's all that
there is. But when he chooses someone
that's messed up and then he can turn them around, who gets the
glory? God can do that.
He's in the business of glorifying himself through being
gracious to you and me. And we're just servants.
We're servants of God. This is why I say we should be
the most humble people on earth, because we don't deserve it.
But we're in a culture in the world where we think that we
should. And that's not only Satan, but
we ourselves want to divise up ways of believing where we can
be a part of it somehow and we can contribute to it and get
some of the glory. We should not do that.
So I say all this to #1 say that these five souls are the basis
of our faith and they're all connected.
We must know these to some extent so that we can go about
our Bible study and living out our Christian life with proper
boundaries and guidelines to our faith.
There's so there's a lot more to the Christian faith and we're
going to spend the rest of our lives week in and week out
studying God's Word. But we can take history and all
of God's Word into account to worship God in the way that he
said to do it, not in some ways that we've made-up.
And I'm not trying to be mean. I am not trying to, you know,
bad mouth or other religions. You know, I love people that are
not believers. I love all people in the world.
God loves all people in the world, and I love all people.
I love sinners. I love people in the Catholic
religion. I love people in the LDS church.
I love people in every type of faith.
But I love them enough to stand here and to go out there and
when given the opportunity, share the truth.
And we must do it in a gentle way.
I'm passionate today because you, if you are a Christian, I
want you to not just know this in your head.
I want you to feel it in your heart.
I want you to know the grace of God and how it can change you
and it can humble you. And it's a free gift.
You come here unworthy today, but God still wants to change
you 'cause it has nothing to do with you.
If you're a Sinner here today and you're living in shame and
guilt, in the burden of wondering if you measure up,
just admit that you don't and repent and believe in Jesus
Christ alone and accept the free gift.
This is why things like these have to be preached and taught
and need to continue to be taught to our people in the
church. I'm so sick of it all being kind
of muddied and watered down and people won't say what they
actually believe. And they don't want to be too
offensive or they don't want to, you know, they want to try to
get as many people as they can in into the room and then maybe
give a gospel presentation. They think that that's how it
works. But that's where we've gotten
wrong. We didn't believe in the, the,
the grace alone by Scripture alone, not by some, some
business method either, you know, some kind of worldly
ideas, some marketing scheme to get people in and, and we can
just do it all in one Big Bang and hopefully God will sort it
out later. And we won't teach them any of
the deeper truths of, of Scripture.
We've got to get people back in the pulpits preaching the truth.
I'll end with this quote from Spurgeon.
It says we want again Luther's and Calvin's and bunions and
Whitfield's men fit to mark arrows whose names breathe
terror in our foes ears. We have dire need of such.
Whence will they come to us? They are gifts of Jesus Christ
to the church and will come in due time.
And I don't say that just to say for the preachers, but all of
us. All of us need to go claiming
these truths, sharing them when we can in the most loving way
that we can, but in the most truthful way that we can.
And just remember, the Reformation is about God's
glory. Takes the focus off of you and I
having to work for the acceptance of God and helps us
to understand that He's done all that's required.
So you and I can rest in God's love and give Him the glory.
Would you pray with me, Father Triune God, we come today
hopefully offering you up a sacrifice of praise and worship.
And hopefully, Father, we've handled your word correctly
today. But we, we also know that you're
a forgiving godfather. And any time we've erred, Lord,
bring it to our attention. Help us to repent of those
things. Father, where, where we, where
our beliefs don't line up with your truth.
Father, we pray for insight. We pray for illumination.
We pray for those who aren't saved yet to have regeneration.
The Spirit would come into them today.
But God, we, we love you and we thank you and we pray that you
are glorified in these truths and I pray you'd give us the
courage to continue standing in them.
I pray in Jesus name, Amen.