Foundational Theology - The 5 Solas, Part 1 - Sola Scriptura

God Centered Theology

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Foundational Theology - The 5 Solas, Part 2 - Sola Fide

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Hello there, and welcome to this special edition of By His Grace.

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I do not know how many episodes this will be or how many it will take to cover all this, so I'm just not going to put a limit on it.

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But I'm calling this special subset of By His Grace, I'm calling it Foundational Theology because I want you to understand what are the foundational theological components and principles behind my theology and what

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I believe and what I believe the Word of God to teach. So I am going to go through this and take my time, and we will continue

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By His Grace of course, which is the main podcast where I cover a whole host of different things, from scripture that talks about the grace of God to maybe stories about it and there's just general theological concepts, or I may comment on something that's either in the news or something to go on.

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Basically By His Grace is my wide open podcast. I basically cover anything I want to for the most part.

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So it gives me a little bit more flexibility there. Daily Bites of God's Word, of course, is meant to be short, three to five minute devotional style podcasts.

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A lot of what we used to have in devotions would have been in a book, or in fact

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I still have an old devotion I used to use by Charles Stanley, it's actually holding up one of my lamps on my desk now.

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Sorry, it is still serving a purpose, I have read it. But also what

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I wanted to do is I wanted to have a program where I could come to you and share with you some of the foundational theological things in the

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Word of God, but also those foundational theological concepts that are important to me. So with that, for this first episode of By His Grace Foundational Theology, I want to cover the five solos of the

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Reformation. Now in this sitting I want to cover what we call sola scriptura.

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Now sola scriptura means that the Bible, God's holy, inspired, and inerrant

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Word, which I've got my preacher's Bible with me today, and this thing is huge, so if you're not listening

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I may throw it at you. But what sola scriptura means is that the Bible, Scripture alone, is the final authority and is the sole rule of faith for the

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Christian and for the Christian church. That means we're not under a Pope, that means the pastor's not the authority, the deacons are not the authority, the committees are not the authority, the person with the most money is not the authority.

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Sorry, you're not. It means the Scripture alone is the final authority. Scripture is where we find out how to live as a

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Christian. Scripture is where we find out how our churches should be run and operated. Because Jesus Christ is the

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Supreme, He is the Sovereign. He is the one that purchased the church with His own blood. And while He is in heaven,

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He's seated at the right hand of the Father, He mediates His authority over His church through the

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Word of God. He is the Word, He is the divine author of Scripture, and because He has written it, because it has a divine author, it also has human authors.

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In 2 Timothy 3, 16, we find out that all Scripture is inspired by God. This word inspired is the

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Greek word theionostos, which literally means God breathed. It means He didn't overtake the authors,

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He carried them along to make sure that He utilized their personalities, their own writing styles, but the

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Holy Spirit superintended the work to make sure it was all true, every word, without any mixture of error.

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This means that you can 1 ,000 % trust it. It also means it carries the authority of God with it, which means there's no

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Pope, no institutions, no traditions, no other set of rules, nothing that would come in addition to Scripture that would be equal to or over the authority of Scripture.

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So that is why it is so important for us to study it, to understand it, to know what's contained in it.

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But it also doesn't mean, as those of us who believe in the soul of Scriptura, it doesn't mean that we just throw out everything else, that nothing else matters.

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I have many, many books, many commentaries, there are many websites, many sermons, things

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I like to enjoy to listen, watch, read. It doesn't mean these things are evil, it doesn't mean they can't be used.

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What it does mean is if there's anything that is not in submission to Scripture, if there is anything that is contradiction to Scripture, if there's anything you may read or listen to or watch, whatever it is, if it tries to take the place of Scripture, if it's in disobedience or contradiction to Scripture, then you need to recognize it for what it is, that it is error, but you know it's error because you know the

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Word of God, because the Word of God has the final say. For instance, in the church, if someone says, well

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I think the church should be ran like this or I think we should do this, how do you know? You go to the Word of God. What the

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Word of God says, that's what we are to do. So in your Christian life, it's the same way. How do

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I know to make this decision? How do I know if this is the right path? How do I know if this is sin or if that's right?

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The Word of God teaches us that. Now, Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, meaning that it is the sole rule of faith, means we can trust it.

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We can know that what it says is true, and inerrancy is a big part of that. I've already covered inerrancy in detail on By His Grace before, so we're not going to deal with that a lot here, but inerrancy is a big part of Sola Scriptura because the

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Bible is completely true with no mixture of error, means you can trust it. So that means what it is, it is the book that we go to, it is the book that we teach.

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It means we don't have to sit there and always wonder, well, I wonder if what is true about salvation, if I can trust that.

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See, that's the big thing about inerrancy deniers. You want to ask them, so if it isn't inerrant, how do you know what parts are true?

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Is this part over here? Am I not this part over here? Inerrancy is such a key component of Sola Scriptura.

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So the final application of this, by being a believer in Sola Scriptura, what that means is the most important thing we can teach, the most important thing that we can study is the

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Word of God. This is why it's vitally important for you to be a part of a church that exposits Scripture and teaches the

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Word of God, word by word, sentence by sentence, line by line, chapter by chapter, going through the books in context, so you can understand what the

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Word of God has to say to you. So I hope you will dive more into this. There's far more

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I could say about this, but this is meant to be sort of on an introductory level and just foundational in its concept.

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So remember, for the Christian, the Bible is the authority. It is where we find

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God's revelation to man. So I am a Sola Scriptura Christian, I'm a Sola Scriptura pastor, and I pray that you are as well.

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So thank you for joining me on this first edition of By His Grace Foundational Theology, and I will be back with you again real soon.