02: Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone)

This is a psalm that David wrote for worship.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours out a speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words whose voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom, leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs its course with joy.

Its rising is from the end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them.

And there is nothing hidden from its heat.

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.

The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.

The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.

The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover, by them is your servant warned, and keeping them there is great reward.

Who can discern his errors?

Declare me innocent from hidden faults.

Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins.

Let them not have dominion over me.

Then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight.

O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

You may be seated.

Good afternoon.

Thanks for joining us.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

Uh just to repeat that announcement, the bathrooms are not functional downstairs.

So if you need to go to the bathroom, it will be uncomfortable, but you'll need to walk down to these doors up front.

And we'll know what you're doing, but it's okay.

Something we all have in common.

And there's signs directing you once you get back there.

So uh yeah, the bathrooms downstairs are being renovated by the Heights Church.

So we're in this lovely season of our church's life where we just get to sit around and experience uh our church home getting renovated around us.

It's kind of lovely.

Um with no we don't have to do anything except for not go to the bathroom sometimes.

Uh so at Redemption Church Denver, we say that there's two ways to be connected.

We gather large and we gather small.

So our large group gathering you are experiencing right now on Sunday afternoons, and we gather small in each other's homes throughout the week.

If you'd like to be a part of one of those smaller groups, we call those redemption groups, uh, then uh the best way to do so is to uh download the Redemption Church Denver app in your app store of choice, and then tap connect.

Just tap that connect form, fill that out, we'll get in touch with you and help you get connected to one of those small groups.

Um those are really gonna be ramping up uh starting in September, the week of September 8th.

So we're looking to get those sorted out and kind of filled out uh by that week.

That way you can join and jump into our fall curriculum altogether.

Uh so a couple more announcements, just some updates on where we are as a church.

Over this past summer, we went through a process of establishing RCD's first elder board.

And we've been meeting throughout the summer as an elder board, and we've really been focusing on four things in particular, and wanted to just uh bring everyone up to speed on what these are.

The first thing is we've been focusing on elder formation.

So we've really been looking at how are we spiritually forming this board of elders.

So we're moving through a book together at 6 30 a.m.

on Wednesday mornings.

It's awful.

Uh I mean it's great, but that's a horrible time to do anything.

But we love our wives, and so we scheduled it at 6 30 in the morning.

And we are uh moving through a book called Gospel Eldership, uh, which is basically a biblical study of what it means to be an elder in the church.

We wanted to make that our first focus.

That way, as we came together as the first elder board, we are doing so we were doing so in a way that was truly biblical.

Uh secondly, what we're looking to accomplish is uh establish what our membership will be.

So this is kind of tied in with eldership because as elders, we're responsible for the church.

But does that mean that we're going to stand before God and He's going to hold us accountable for every person who happened to walk into a service?

We certainly hope not.

There's some regard in which that may be true, but as far as a true shepherding and caring for responsibility, that that certainly isn't the case.

So, membership, the idea of it is to establish sort of a clear group that we are accountable to each other with.

So the elders are accountable for shepherding, that group is accountable to the elders, and there is some boundaries around the responsibilities in the church.

So, what we're going to be doing to establish our membership is over the fall, we're going to be moving through a series that breaks down what it means to be a member of Redemption Church.

So each week we'll go through a topic in line with church membership, and we'll kind of build that together, culminating with a description and the ability to become a member.

In the meantime, we're going to be basically writing down prayer lists.

So the elders are each making lists of people who we know that are already in our circles, who we know in the church, or people who we just know by name and not really know personally, that we want to commit as a board to praying for.

Because we want to make sure that uh a church, a church of our size, we aren't in a position where we just need to pray for the church, right?

Sort of writ large.

Because we're small enough where we want to pray for your names.

We know your names.

Like it sometimes we'll fall into this thing where we'll like make decisions and we're talking in percentages, and it's like, guys, we don't need to talk in percentages.

Let's just talk in like the names of the five people we're talking about.

Uh that's kind of uh that's a leadership tip.

I read that on a blog by uh uh Tim Ferris.

I didn't really, that was a lie.

Um uh so that's membership, shepherding.

Another thing that we're looking into right now that we're exploring pretty intently is our church's affiliations.

So we we don't have one now.

We are currently an independent church, unaffiliated with any other church uh in any sort of formal capacity.

And so uh what we've been exploring is uh potential denominational partnerships.

So that's pretty intense.

That's where we really marry a denomination and we would uh come under their leadership, as well as network partnerships.

Network partnerships are like they're, I don't know, they're kind of loosey-goosey.

They're like the speed dating of uh denominations.

So we are uh looking for network partnerships as well, uh so that we can be connected with the Church Catholic, right?

With the universal church, and also gain the wisdom from other churches that we can bring into our body here.

So uh as a board of elders, we've been meeting with uh uh leaders of other networks or folks who have connections to particular denominations, and uh that's something that there's no decisions, we're in an information gathering and exploring phase, but uh want you to be aware of that.

And lastly, location.

Where will we be meeting?

Uh we don't know.

So right now we've got uh a year-long uh uh uh uh basically what we've established is we can be here for a year.

The first six months is free uh with the Heights Church.

And uh the second six months will be about$2,500 a month to continue renting this space for the evenings.

Then once that year is complete, we'll have the opportunity to re-up that same sort of contract, but in the meantime, we'll be searching.

Um so that search, once the elder board was established, we kind of put a pause on, said, let's establish what the character of our church will be, because that's what we want to drive the search for the building, especially while we have this time that we can fade being in this spot.

So we're just trying to use that time uh wisely.

So that was a lot of announcements um regarding the uh uh decisions and the meeting of the elders.

Um, but don't want you guys to be in the dark on what's happening.

Uh and uh yeah, it should be an exciting fall.

So uh let's start preaching before something bad happens.

Uh would you join me in pray?

Father, we praise you for the way that you have guided and cared for our church down to the smallest details.

Lord, I pray that you would today, even today, demonstrate your faithfulness by showing yourself to us in your word.

Lord, open our hearts.

Apply your word to us, that we might be the type of creatures that glorify you and our trust of you.

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So we are closing out our summer with a series on the five solas of the Reformation.

So during the 1500s, there's this incredible revival across Western Europe, and uh we call it the Reformation.

And it uh has become typical to sum up what what doctrines were established during the Reformation or were rediscovered or preserved through the Reformation, and those have it's been typical to call those the five solas of the Reformation.

So sola being the Latin for only, and they are five doctrines that uh make these key distinctions for what does it mean to have been saved by Jesus?

If we lose one of these five critical pieces, then we're no longer doing Christianity.

We're doing something else.

So think of this as like salvation, the minimum viable product.

If you lose one of these, then we don't have salvation anymore.

So these are really key.

And last week, to introduce the series, I did kind of a defense of doctrine generally.

Because we have in our culture built in this idea that faith starts to go astray when we define it and we make it clear and we anchor it on these doctrines.

And faith becomes more real and more authentic when we remove ourselves from those doctrines, and instead we focus on the personal experiential aspects of our faith.

And wanted to, so last week, uh I'm not going to do it again this week, so listen, it's on the app.

Uh we offered just a critique of that way of thinking, which is that our doctrines are the very places that inform our personal experience.

When our personal selves start to waver and we start to wonder, can we trust God?

Is he really there for us?

Does he really save?

Is he really good?

It's our doctrines that act as the ballast stones in our souls, that keep us steady in the midst of the chaos of the world.

So to focus on the doctrines is not to limit the personal experience, it's what actually becomes the basis of this real personal authentic faith in Jesus.

So that was an introduction to doctrine generally.

This week we're moving in on the first of the solas, which is sola scriptura.

So that means scripture alone.

And uh for the smart allochi among you, you may be thinking, uh, scripture alone, that's not in the Bible.

So how can scripture alone be a doctrine that says only take things out of scripture, but sola scriptura isn't out of scripture?

Aren't we just done now?

Well, the answer is yes.

I'm just kidding.

I've got so much more time, you suckers.

What we're going to see is, first of all, the answer to that question, uh, which is sola scriptura uh does not mean that we can't have doctrines like sola scriptura.

Uh and we're going to do this by looking at what scripture really is.

So scripture is first and foremost revelation.

It is God's word and it is God revealing himself to us.

So in order to understand scripture and what scripture is, we need to understand the category of revelation.

And then once we understand the category of revelation, then we'll be able to talk about scripture.

And then once we understand scripture, then we'll be able to talk about scripture alone.

So those are the three sort of movements we're going to move through this evening: Revelation, Scripture, and then Scripture alone.

So we're moving through Psalm 19.

And Psalm 19, which we read, is broken down into two parts.

And the first part describes God's revelation in the created order.

And the second part of Psalm 19 describes God's revelation in his word, in the law.

And so this gives us what the economy of God's revelation is.

It's that he reveals himself in creation and he reveals himself in his word.

And how these two work together is incredibly important to understand.

When you see the connection between God's revelation in creation, which we'll call his general revelation, and God's revelation in his word, which we'll call special revelation, we're going to see the heart of the gospel.

Without sola scriptura, we won't understand any of the other solas, because they are based on scripture.

And if we don't have it in our minds clearly that scripture really is the word of God, we'll have no basis to draw any conclusions about who God really is.

So let's go ahead and dive into Revelation with the beginning of Psalm 19.

So this is Psalm 19, verses 1 through 4.

Psalms 19:1–4

This is to the choir master, a psalm of David.

It says, The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours out speech, night to night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words whose voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

I know.

They're fireflies that flew up too high, and then they got stuck in that bluish-blackish thing.

And then Pumba says, Oh, I always thought they were balls of fiery gas billions and billions of miles away.

That's funny, right?

Because Pumba is, he's, you know, right, uh, and he's being corrected by Timone.

But the point is that uh when we look up into the sky, we all see the same points of light.

We all seen and have seen forever, for all of human history, these very same points of light.

But what it is we think we are looking at has changed radically throughout human history.

From fireflies that flew too close to the sky to balls of gas billions and billions of miles away.

Aristotle, when he looked up, he said there's earth, wind, and fire in September.

And uh uh water, and that makes up all the elements down here in the earth, but up in the heavens, those stars, that's the quintessence.

That's the fifth element of Bruce Willis.

And there's I I'm sorry today.

And uh there's uh uh and then you have Einstein who looks up and he says, this is just uh dense field and it's surrounded by loose field.

You know, we we're looking at the same points of light.

And then we're wrapping them in these stories so that we can, and then that informs what it is we think we're looking at for all of history.

It's been this way.

And we think we're getting closer and closer to an accurate description of what it is we're looking at.

But there's something that this psalm is claiming, which says all of these descriptions that we're making, where we think we're getting progressively more accurate with what it is we're seeing, those could be obscuring more than they are clarifying.

Because when you look at the stars, the proclamation that they are most fundamentally making, is not that we are fiery balls of gas.

Timon then says, everything's about gas with you, Pumba.

The most fundamental proclamation that they are making is that God is glorious.

When you look up at the stars, these are not a metaphor for God's glory.

These are the proclamation of God's glory.

And this is true of all of creation.

You walk through and it is proclaiming the very glory of God.

This is God's, this is the beginning of God's revelation.

The psalm goes on and it says, day to day pours out speech, night to night reveals knowledge.

The day is like speech is happening, the night with all the stars, it's proclaiming knowledge about the living God, just by the fact of its existence.

And then it says, it pours out speech and knowledge, but it says there's no speech, nor are there words.

Do you see the sort of poetic reaching that the psalmist is doing?

Saying creation is proclaiming, it's speaking, it's relaying this knowledge, but there's not speech.

There's not words, but it is proclaiming.

It's saying something, but it's not using words to say anything.

The psalmist is just reaching to try and communicate to us that creation itself is relaying to us real glory.

Real glory.

The glory of God is being shown to us in creation.

And so the psalmist then zooms in onto one aspect of creation, one tiny little speck of creation, which is actually gigantic and huge, and it's the sun.

So he continues on in verses four through six.

It says, in them, which is the heavens, he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber.

This is like the you know, the bridegroom who's going to get married that day.

The way that he walks out of his tent that morning is like, yeah, I'm getting married today.

And that's the way the sun rises.

When it comes up, we used to grew up in Florida and on the East Coast, which is where the sun rises.

And there's uh uh the way the sun comes up over the ocean, it's exactly like that.

It's like bam, I'm here, and I'm gonna light up everything.

And it does that every day.

Every day the sun rises with this amazing character.

And here's how it's described like a strong man runs its course with joy.

Its rising is from the end of the heavens, its circuit to the end of them.

There is nothing hidden from its heat.

It warms the whole world.

Every single day the sun does this, and it runs its course with joy.

Why does the sun declare God's Glory because every day it acts just like the sun.

The sun doesn't, the sun isn't wherever it is right now.

What a stupid thing to say.

The sun is not thinking like, you know what, tomorrow, I'm thinking I'm gonna take a different route through the sky.

Now, I know what you're thinking.

The earth moves around the sun.

And you're right.

But the sun isn't thinking, you know, I'm gonna be out of position a little bit, or uh I'd like to do things of not the course that God has set for me.

I'd like to do things just with my own course.

No, it doesn't do that.

It it joyfully lives in the boundaries that God has set for it.

And it lives perfectly in those boundaries.

And as we assess and explore the boundaries that have been set for the sun, we we discover that in the universe there seems to be this reason where we can take paper and pens and mathematical equations and write them down and then map them onto the stars.

And it works.

We can make accurate predictions about where they will be because they're running the course, their boundaries with joy.

In the creature, this aspect of creation, which is the sun, we see the glory of God proclaimed because it moves through its course joyfully.

What we're seeing is the demonstration of a happy God.

All of creation is shouting this.

All of creation is revealing God's character to us, God as the creator, God as the maker, that there is a reason behind this, that things are put in their place precisely because that is where God desires them to be.

Creation is shouting this to us, and yet we don't hear it.

And the reason is because we're not like the sun.

We don't run our course with joy.

God lays out our course and we say, I would rather run my own way.

God lays out the boundaries of our lives and we say, I would rather flex beyond those.

And in doing so, our course is not something, a thing of joy that we revel in, but even the joyful course that God has set out for us feels like an act of tyranny that we ought to rebel against.

This is the way that Paul describes this feature of fallen humanity in Romans 1.

Romans 1, 18 through 20, he says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

That's an active thing.

We suppress the truth.

For what can be known about God is plain to them.

How?

Because God has shown it to them.

For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse.

We live in a world that is constantly proclaiming the glory of the real God.

Yet we actively suppress that truth.

Instead of seeing the glory of the sun as a proclamation, we say the glory of the sun is something to be worshipped in and of itself.

And we make up narratives for that glory, where we exchange the glory of God, the creator of it, for the glory of the object.

And it's not a real glory in the object, it's just a proclamation of God's glory in the object.

And we make this exchange in ourselves which corrupts our own minds.

Fallen humanity actively suppresses the truth.

So then we have narratives where we say that, well, the stars are so glorious and they're these incredibly glorious things.

You know what?

I bet they're the real creators.

I bet we're just stardust.

And then when someone says we're stardust, we say how beautiful and poetic.

And we don't say we have robbed the creator of his glory.

C.S.

Lewis writes that we are a particular type of creature.

A particular type of creature who is only able to find our happiness in the revealed God.

Here's what he says: he says, God made us, invented us, as a man invents an engine.

A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else.

Now God designed the human machine to run on himself.

He himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on.

There is no other.

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from himself because it is not there.

There is no such thing.

For a creature like us, there is no such thing as a happiness apart from knowing and loving God.

There's no such thing.

And so, what a wonderful place for a creature like that to live.

In a creation that is constantly proclaiming the glory of God.

For a creature like a human that can only run on the love and the beauty of God Himself, well, we live in the perfect place for that.

But we don't see it.

Because in our sin, we have rejected that glory for a glory of our own.

And so that means that as this type of creature who could only find our hope in knowing and loving God, and we're a fallen creature who, although we're surrounded by glory, we're constantly rejecting it, we need a God who is able to intervene to warm our dead hearts.

And so that's precisely what God does.

God reveals himself in a way that goes beyond just his general revelation in creation.

And he reveals himself as one who will save this fallen creature.

And he does that through his word.

So it is not just stars that are proclaiming, but it's this tailored, this precise revelation of God, which promises his fallen creature, he will save us.

And so that's exactly where this psalm goes.

The psalm moves exactly into this new type of revelation, which goes beyond the general revelation to speaking to a creature in a way that even our fallen minds can know God.

Says this in Psalm 19, 7 through 9.

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.

The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.

The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes, the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.

The rules of the Lord are true and righteous all together.

Where it begins this section, and when you're just reading through the Psalm, it's like, why were we talking about the Son?

And then all of a sudden he's like, and the law of the Lord is great too.

It's because the psalmist is bringing together these two forms of God's revelation, of God's self-revelation, which is we've seen God, he's proclaiming himself in creation, but our dead hearts can't even see it.

But our God is good and he's gracious.

So he doesn't say, you dead hearts, you're trapped there.

He says, I will save you and I will rescue you.

And the way I will do that is by revealing myself to you in a way that even your dead hearts can hear.

And he does that with his law, with his word that he gives us.

The law here is a huge term that encapsulates all of God's revelation in his word, all of his revelation in the scripture, his whole revealed will.

And when you look at the words, the descriptions of the law, you see it's perfectly tailored to a fallen, broken human.

It's perfect and therefore it revives the soul.

You know the type of soul that needs to be revived, revitalized, the dead one.

The law of the Lord, it's sure, it's certain, so it makes wise the simple.

The simple type of person who would walk out and could only see the sun and could never see the glory that it's proclaiming.

All of a sudden, by the scripture, we can see the sun as it is, which is a proclamation of God's glory.

It makes us wise.

It is right, and so it rejoices our heart.

That means we have hearts that are sad and they need to be taught to rejoice, and the word does that.

It enlightens our eyes.

We could go on and keep moving through the text, but you can see how the law is accommodated to a fallen, broken humanity.

It's meant to bring new life.

That's not the description that we see of general revelation.

Because general revelation, the God that you know just in by looking at the world, by looking at the mountains and the trees, that doesn't describe a God that will save you.

It's enough to let you know that you should know that a God made this.

But it's not enough to say that this is the God who will save you.

God shows us he will save us in his word.

We can see as the Psalm continues that there's this interaction between God's general revelation in creation, and between God's special revelation in his word.

So this is Psalm 19, 10 through 11.

It says, More to be desired are they than gold.

This is the laws, more to be desired than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.

By them your servants warned and keeping them, there's great reward.

You know, it says this the scripture, by looking at this, by looking at the world through the lens of the scripture, all of a sudden, creation finds its right place.

Gold.

Gold is good.

Gold is a good thing.

I don't know why, but it's good to have gold.

But you know what's better?

The law of the Lord.

To know God clearly, to know God, who He is.

And so, what is the gold now doing through the lens of Scripture?

Now the gold is informing this better knowledge of who God is.

There's something about gold that reveals something about God, but our fallen minds can't make that connection.

And so we worship the gold instead of seeing something far greater that the gold is pointing to.

So there's this interaction between general revelation and special revelation, because the world was designed to constantly be bringing God his glory.

And as broken, fallen people, we don't see it.

But through the scriptures, we're able to.

Honey is the same thing.

Honey is sweet, but scripture is sweeter.

By scripture, we're able to see the true revelation of God.

So the doctrine is, so what we've established so far are is revelation generally, the economy of God's revelation, which is he reveals himself in creation, but our broken hearts ignore it, and then he reveals himself in his word to redeem our fallen nature.

But the doctrine that we're looking at today is sola scriptura, which is scripture alone.

So what is it that we are stick that we are establishing by that?

What we're establishing is, or what's important to see is that these five doctrines that we're establishing all have to do with our salvation.

They have to do with the redemption of humanity, God's plan to redeem humanity through Jesus Christ.

And so we mean Scripture alone in relation to that project.

By scripture alone, we mean that Scripture is the supreme authority concerning God's redemption of sinners.

The supreme authority that we have in the world that can correct our broken hearts is found in the Word, in the Bible, in Scripture.

That is what God has given us to have our hearts redeemed.

It is the supreme authority.

And this is where the Psalm goes next.

Description of how this law is a part of our redemption.

In Psalm 19, 12 through 14, it says, Who can discern his errors?

Declare me innocent from hidden faults, keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins.

Let them not have dominion over me.

Then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

See, as the law opens and enlightens the eyes of this person's heart, and they're able to see the glory that they should have been living in, that they should have been worshiping this great God that made them and that gave them the existence that they have, they come to this conclusion that I am full who can discern his errors.

I looked at the world and I thought I knew that those were just balls of flaming gas.

I thought I knew that this marriage wasn't really before God.

It was just my own personal decision.

I thought I knew that my lies could be something I could manipulate and make work for me.

I didn't realize that there was a world that was declaring and pointing to the glory of God.

Who can possibly discern his errors?

When you realize that you viewed the whole world wrongly, this is the right conclusion.

And then he says, God, declare me innocent from hidden faults.

Think how fool of them we must be if it is news to us that the world is declaring the glory of God.

The final phrase here is it says, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

This is a specific declaration for the salvation of a specific creature, which is accomplished through a specific covenant that God promises to us in His Word.

Here's what I want us to see.

The only hope you have for happiness is to know the living God.

And your heart has been corrupted so that you can't.

But God, by revealing himself in words, sentences, things we can say, things we can hold, we can know his character through these phrases that we have in Scripture.

Now we can know that God.

We needed to hear that.

See, the fact of Scripture.

Do you see how it is the gospel?

Do you see how God revealing Himself in words that we can grasp?

How that is Him enacting the gospel?

This is what I want to see and be blown away by your Bible, right?

Because it tells the story of the gospel, and the very fact of its existence is a demonstration of the character that upholds that gospel, which is that we have a God who saves.

We have a God who redeems, that takes broken people who are so foolish that we reject his glory, even though we're surrounded by it.

And he sends us his word that we might know him.

We are redeemed by his revelation, and we are redeemed to his revelation.

Do you get that?

Because what is our happiness?

It's to know him.

That's what we're saved to.

We get to be with him instead of not being with him.

And when you're a creature who finds its whole satisfaction in being with him, that's what salvation means.

So this means that God's word is the ultimate authority.

It's the ultimate authority because this whole story has to go together.

The types of creatures that we are in the world that He created, His word is the ultimate authority in our hearts.

So that must be settled.

When we come to Scripture, it must be settled that this word of God is the ultimate authority.

Now I realize there's so much work that I'm not doing, in the sense I just totally bit off more than I could chew with the sermon series, because I'm not offering a defense of the Bible.

I'm not saying here's why these 66 books are the Word of God.

We can have that conversation later.

I know I'm not saying that.

There are good reasons to think that.

You know, hear that.

And I and I understand that I'm not saying that right now, but what I want you to see is the shape of why we say scripture alone is the authority.

It's because it's the word of God, and that's the mechanism that he saves us.

That without Scripture alone, we don't have the good news of the gospel.

Because he tells us the gospel in Scripture, and Scripture is a demonstration of His grace of the gospel, the fact of its existence.

So, a couple of final points.

First of all, it is our ultimate authority, which means that everything else we do must come into submission to Scripture.

So that means that it is not the church that confirms Scripture, it is Scripture that confirms.

Confirms the church.

This is the reformational point for sola scriptura, which is it is not the Catholic Church that confirms that this is Scripture, it is Scripture that confirms that this is the Church.

That is the order.

And so when we are living in our traditions, which we will, and that's good, and we should live in our traditions, we must ensure that these traditions are informed by Scripture and not the other way around.

This is sola scriptura, which means that scripture is the supreme authority.

That's the argument.

It is not saying that scripture is the only authority, because scripture itself establishes other authorities.

For example, the church is the pillar and buttress of the truth in the world.

So the local church is the plan to uphold scripture, preserve it throughout generations.

So because scripture establishes other authorities, we must say that there are other authorities that really work.

So that's why we need to make sure that we don't make sola scriptura say too much.

It doesn't say it's the only authority.

This doesn't mean, okay, we don't need the church.

We don't need traditions or doctrines that have informed the way this has been interpreted well throughout history.

Sola scriptura means just me alone in my room with the Bible.

That's not what it means.

Because Scripture itself establishes these other authorities.

So there's just some guardrails for this doctrine.

Here's where I want to finish.

The whole psalm culminates in this name of God, where God is called my rock and my redeemer.

In that description of God, we see this interplay of general and special revelation.

God is a rock.

Which means, have you ever held a rock?

It's about God.

It doesn't change, it's steadfast.

It preserves.

It's what it means to be a rock.

And God is our redeemer.

Something that can only be known by Scripture.

Only be known by a God who tells us, I'm here to save you.

So when we approach God's word, we need to know that we are, you know, when we hold our Bibles, when we look through the app, and we're flipping through our Bible reading plans.

You know, it's a cliche, right, to say that the Bible is a love letter.

That's a cliche.

But consider it is by these very words, by our faith in these very words, that we find our salvation.

This is God saying, You rejected me, and I could have said nothing, and you would have wallowed in your silence.

But instead I spoke again.

And I spoke again just to save you.

That is a love letter.

That is a love letter.

So it's important to have an application, I guess.

My application is read it.

Read it.

Read it as that.

Read it as God extending his hand to you, saying, You would have wallowed in your own ignorance, but I'm giving you my word.

Start today.

Download the app.

We do a Bible reading plan together as a church.

It's built in there.

That's like why we have it.

Today we started in Psalm 1 and Psalm 2.

So you can start in the Psalms today, which is great.

And join in.

Sit before God in His Word and realize the fact that you can read it and know Him is evidence of His love towards you.

So with that, let's take a question, if perhaps there is one.

Is there one, Tim?

Nope.

Great.

Okay.

Let's pray and then we'll take communion together.

Father, we thank you so much for your word.

Lord, when we see the role that your word plays in the way that you've saved us, Lord, let us cause, let that make us hold on to it so tightly.

That when people ask us to stray from it or to change from it or to see some other authority in our lives, that we would say, don't you realize that in this is how I know he says he'll be my God?

Lord, that we would know that this is how you say we'll be your people, that this is how you proclaim our salvation over us.

God, let that sink into our hearts.

Let us hear your voice in it.

Father, I lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.