The Five Solas of the Reformation

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

Galatians 1 · chapter mention

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

John 3 · chapter mention

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.