Why the Reformation Still Matters | Galatians 2:14-16

ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church

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Okay, so we are living in very wicked times today in our day, and we are in great need.

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This is why the sermon title is what it is, why the Reformation still matters. The Reformation still matters for many reasons, and it's not just religious ones or theological ones, even though that is at the foundation of everything that requires reformation in our society.

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There's also political things going on. Obviously, we are on the cusp of the biggest election pretty much our country has ever had.

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There are so many black and white, in a sense, black and white choices being presented to us, and the utter corruption that has overtaken our politicians in our society, not just from the

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Democrat Party, even though that's primarily where it lies. You have this what's called the unit party and the corruption of it within the

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Republican Party as well, and we really need reformation. We need reformation in the church, in politics, in our society.

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I mean, the abortion, the murder of the unborn, there's so many things that are an absolute stain on our nation that is inviting

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God's judgment in our land. And so we do ask, and part of this is what

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I was, I talked to Pastor David about this and thought it would be good for us to consider.

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I know we just recently went on a fast, but I wanted us to consider going on another fast and prayer for our country and our elections and everything that's going on.

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And I really wanted to invite us as a church to consider doing that once again.

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As we all know, or should know and be aware of, is November 5th is the official election day, and there's a lot to be praying for in our country, and there's a lot of work that we need to do as believers in salt and light in our nation and locally, especially.

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So that's something that I think we really need to be aware of. And I would invite everybody to consider doing that, to fast and pray for our nation, our country, and that truth and justice would be restored.

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And that obviously includes not just being a pietist in our closet, right?

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That includes being clear about what it is that we should do as believers. If we do vote, that we need to vote for the right things and the right people and not vote for criminals and basically traitors, which the overwhelming number of Democrats are.

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So we need to be very careful of how we practice our faith and apply it properly because voting is a moral choice.

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To vote is a moral choice, and we need to be careful to vote wisely and to stop allowing these traitors to corrupt our nation with open borders and murdering the unborn and all of these things that Satan wants to steal, kill and destroy.

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We need to be very careful not to endorse or vote for these things because they are vile and wicked.

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So God abhors those things. So don't vote for it.

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It's funny because we just learned about all of this stuff in Halloween and the devil, the world and the flesh, and that's exactly what what this has come down to in our elections.

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Do not vote for the devil. Amen. We don't vote for evil. We need to vote for righteousness.

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And so that is what I want to put before you all today. To consider fasting and praying, you know, and I posted a video as well regarding an issue that happened that was exposed in Disney with a bunch of illegals.

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They arrested over like almost 30 or more illegals, illegal migrants that came in and were had there was a sex trafficking and child molestation and raping going on in Disney.

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And the sheriff basically called it like it was. He said this this is because of our democratic policies that are allowing rapists and criminals, gangsters to come in and tear our country to the ground.

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And it's not so much their fault as it is the politicians in charge of our border.

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And so we need more men to step up and to be the lesser magistrate and to stop allowing this corruption to happen.

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Even if that is what these politicians, vile, corrupt politicians want, the

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Biden administration is an absolute despicable institution. It is a regime and we need to be careful to take a stand against that vile wickedness.

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So and now that being said, I want us to I did want to make a few corrections regarding some of the things that I preached a few weeks back.

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I failed to mention this, but one of the sermons about I think somewhere around the flesh or the devil,

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I had said that believers are still sinners. And we want to be careful, of course, to make a proper distinction what that means.

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It's not that we're still sinners in the sense that, well, we're just vile, wicked. You know, our hearts are perverted and evil.

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Not in that sense. We are sinners in the sense that we still sin because our flesh has not been redeemed yet.

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Right. And that's primarily our physical bodies like I've made. I've tried to make very clear in that series.

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So that was one thing. The other thing was I had also misquoted the verse in 1

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Corinthians 11 6 in another sermon or maybe the same one. That is, it is a shame for a woman to have short hair.

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I mean, to have long hair. And I misquoted it. It's a shame for a woman to have short hair, not long hair.

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And that's part of what nature tells us, that there is a difference between men and women.

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Women should look like women. Men should look like men. Which again, going back to what

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I just preached about, the Democratic Party is trying to pervert our children to encourage sex changes and transgender and having women compete in men's sports and men compete in women's sports, utter perversion of right and wrong and woe to them who call evil good and good evil.

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Right. So we need to be careful not to to stand against those things.

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One hundred percent against those things. God despises that vile perversion.

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I also want to continue to encourage everybody to sign the Trinity Foundation's Reformation Day statements and declarations.

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You can find it at TrinityFoundation .org. It's an excellent ministry that those things are very good to look at and review.

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And because we as a church. Are Protestant and we take a stand against the ecumenism that's rampant in our society and that we do not tolerate

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Rome's lies, the lies of the Church of Rome. And considering that.

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It was I am happy to report that on October 28th, which is the the

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Roman Catholic feast day for St. Jude, Judas Thaddeus, who was one of the apostles, a local

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Catholic church. They had the same celebration and procession and they had the big idol marching out onto the streets and all of that stuff.

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And so I decided to go ahead and get up there and start preaching at them for over two hours, basically about two hours.

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And I'm very grateful that I got the opportunity to do that because people were literally standing up and turning around and listening to what

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I was saying. So that's what we want to be as a church. I mean, we want to be salt and light and to find these opportunities of outreach and to preach the truth and the gospel and to share the truth and love.

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I applied some of the lessons that I learned from last year to this this time and to not try to be as, how do you say, aggressive,

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I guess. Not that I was being aggressive with that to show people love that this is because we love them and because we want them to know the truth and to come out of the lies of the beast of Rome.

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And so it was a blessing to to have the privilege to do that again.

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Of course, they called the cops on me again. And the police basically asked me to step down from the wall because we weren't sure if it was public or private property.

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I said, OK, fine. So I got up on my big old white bus and started preaching from there.

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And people still got a chance to hear the gospel for, like I said, almost two hours. So praise

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God for that. And it was a blessing. It was a privilege to be able to do that.

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And several people also typed, they came up to me, a lot of them try to stop me.

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And it was funny because one older lady said, you look really bad. You look bad doing that.

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And it's like, that's OK. May I look bad, but may Jesus look good. May I look bad, but may

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Jesus be glorified in what I am doing, because what I am doing is to share the truth in love.

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And when people are going to try to stop, people just wanted me to stop doing it because obviously I was going against what they were doing.

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And so we need to be salt and light.

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That's what being salt and light is all about. And especially during this time of Reformation and honoring the

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Reformation. And so I also had the privilege of visiting with Brother Aaron and those brothers and his dad,

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Pastor Aaron, in that Spanish Reformed Baptist Church whom we have much in common with.

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I do ask that you lift him up in prayer and that we also got a chance to evangelize downtown, did some open air with Brother Aaron.

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He was on the megaphone preaching in Spanish and I was across the street preaching in English for a little bit.

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It was that was a blessing as well. So it was just an awesome opportunity to once again be salt and light and to share the truth in love, but still saying what needs to be said, that no other

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Jesus saves. Amen. No other Jesus can save, not the Jesus or God of Islam, not the

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God of the Mormons, not the God of Jehovah's Witnesses, not the God of any of the false teachers that call themselves

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Protestants even, which we will talk about more later on. There is only one

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Jesus that saves and it is the Jesus of Scripture of the Protestant Bible that saves first and foremost and only the one and only.

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And that is the Jesus that we must uphold as a church. So and not the

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Jesus of Rome, of course, not the God of Rome either. That Jesus doesn't save. So.

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We just got to commemorate one of the most important, most significant days in the history of not only the church, but the entire world.

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And that is Reformation Day. What happened on that momentous day when

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Luther nailed his 95 theses and by God's grace, we also got a chance to celebrate this at Pastor Frank and Pastor Dave's, the church, the

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Santa Teresa Baptist Church. Very grateful that they got they invited us over there. My family and I, we got a chance to go and to and to celebrate the

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Reformation with them. It was a blessing. They had a lot of fun activities for the little ones.

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And we got to talk about the Reformation and have a little trivia about the

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Reformation. And one really neat thing that they did was they we had a fire and roasted sausages outside and we got a chance to sing some hymns, the

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Reformation hymns, like a mighty fortress and all of that. And we were celebrating or commemorating one thing known as known as the affair of the sausages.

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This is a really powerful event in history, in Switzerland, actually, in 1522, which was very shortly after Luther nailed his 95 theses in 1517.

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This event sparked the Reformation in Zurich, Switzerland. And it was led by Holdrich Zwingli.

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He was one of the reformers there in Switzerland. He spearheaded the event by publicly preaching in favor of eating sausage during the

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Lenten fast, because as you might know, during Lent, you are supposed to abstain from eating meat on Friday, Fridays.

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And so Zwingli defended this action in a sermon called Regarding the Choice and Freedom of Foods, in which he argued from the basis of Scripture alone.

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That Christians are free to fast or not to fast because the Bible does not prohibit the eating of meat during Lent.

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So praise God for that momentous event. Zwingli took a stand against Rome and defied them and in defiance to Rome, roast encouraged the roasting and eating of meat that day.

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And that's why we roasted some sausage on the 31st with our brothers and sisters over there in that church.

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And that was a great blessing. So semper reformanda, which means to always be reforming, reformed and always reforming according to God's word.

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And remember also that whatever we participate in, we need to know the intent or the spirit, the purpose behind it.

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What are its origins? And that's why history is so important. History is extremely important.

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And we need to, and this, of course, it requires us to know and to study church history and apologetics as well, which is the defense of the faith in order to discern what is true and what is false, what is right and what is wrong.

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And in an effort to do this, I'm also going to be drawing from my article, when Protestants air on the side of Rome, John Piper, final salvation in the decline and fall of sola fide at the last day.

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And so, uh, it is the sad state in our society that many, including

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Christians, including so -called Protestants, so -called evangelicals, so -called Baptists, like John Piper himself.

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They have either no idea what the reformation is about or claim to be in favor of it, but then utterly defied and denied by their false teaching and false practices.

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So we need to know what the reformation means and why it matters even in our day.

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And there is a song that goes like this in 1517,

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Martin Luther began the Protestant reformation, but this is not accurate, right?

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Luther did not begin the reformation. We need to know our history because there were many forerunners to the reformation, uh, stemming all the way back from Augustine, John Wycliffe, John Huss, and others, even

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God's shock from the middle, from the middle ages. There were many who preached the truth of God's word.

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And in many cases were stamped out by the Roman church, by the medieval church of Rome.

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And so we need to be aware of these things and understand the importance of what these men taught because we hold to these very precious truths that they handed down to us.

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Luther and Calvin and many other reformers, Protestant reformers drew heavily from them, especially

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Augustine as well. They, they drew from Augustine in particular, and it is no wonder that Luther became an

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Augustinian monk. That is no accident. That is no accident. And, um,

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I have a remix for this popular song. My remix goes on 1517,

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Martin Luther kindled the Protestant reformation. He kindled it.

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It's more reflective of what Luther actually did. He, uh, agitated or fomented the reformation.

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And the fire of the Protestant reformation was kindled by the protest of indulgences that Luther in a very real sense led and the pagan superstitious beliefs about purgatory that were celebrated on all hallows

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Eve on the 31st of October. And so, um, this is also similar to what

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Zwingli was doing in Switzerland. They were operating on similar convictions in real time, in a, in a sense.

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And, uh, so this things were happening and, uh, powerful things were happening in those days in Europe.

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So we, one of the Protestant reformation mottos is a

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Latin phrase called post -Tenebrous looks, which means after darkness, light, after darkness, light.

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And this is similar to the Spanish word. Tenebrous is similar to the Spanish word. So darkness, this is because the light of the gospel burst forth during the reformation and completely exposed the darkness and the ignorance of pagan superstition and of the, and of the

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Roman Catholic church, it changed the entire world, the very gospel that redeemed sinners from Satan's grip and the savior who will crush him under his feet, according to his word.

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Now, my thesis is to give an overview of what provoked a major confluence of the

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Protestant reformation and of Martin Luther's life and his embodiment of both internal, the internal struggle of finding true peace of God with God and the external conflict with the

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Pope and the church of Rome, as well as other key figures that were involved during this time of the reformation.

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Now, this brings me to a very important public service announcement that truth can be highly polarizing.

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The truth is often very polarizing, sometimes highly controversial, sometimes highly contentious and disruptive, especially when it confronts falsehoods and lies, falsehoods and lies.

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And that's what the reformation really was all about. And especially when there is a famine in the land, not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, but rather for hearing the words of Yahweh, of God, according to Amos 8 11, and that is the state that we find our society in, in many cases, even in Protestant churches who claim to be

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Protestant, who claim to hold to these truths, but don't, they deny them.

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They ignore them. They neglect them. They don't teach them. They don't preach them. They don't live them.

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That is what we find ourselves in today. It is no wonder then that God commands us to contend, to fight for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints and, you know, with, of course, not with physical weaponry, but with spiritual weapons and armor.

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With sound doctrine and apologetics and truth. And it is no wonder that there must be factions.

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There must be schisms. There must be divisions among you in order that those who are genuine may be recognized according to first Corinthians 11, 18 through 19.

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There must be, we must draw the line as God's church, as God's people who, who are the pillar and buttress of the truth that requires us sometimes to draw the line and say, this is the truth.

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And on the other side of the lies, whether they be the lies of Rome or the lies of so -called

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Protestant churches, teaching falsehoods that echo Rome, that is what we are called to do as God's people in society and in the church.

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And that is what the Protestant reformation was all about. And it was all about answering life's most important question for us as individuals, as humans, based on scripture alone, as opposed to whatever the

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Pope said or prelate said or priest said, or the tainted traditions of Rome, of false religion.

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That question is how then can man be righteous before God, or how can he be pure who is born of a woman?

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Job 25, four, how does man get into heaven? What must

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I do to be saved? And the rallying cry of the reformation was justification is by faith and faith alone to believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And you will be saved you and your household.

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Like the book of Acts chapter 16, 29 through 31 says it is faith alone that saves sinners to understand and agree with the gospel without any merit of mine, any merit of mine.

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That's the phrase from the Heidelberg catechism. And despite their differences, the

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Protestant reformers rightly understood and unanimously affirmed this most precious doctrine, a truth which all the leaders of the reformation in Germany, Switzerland, France, Britain, and all the confessions which they sponsored were at one in highlighting and which they all saw as the point on which the church would stand or fall.

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It is a primary issue, a primary doctrine. And this is the heart, the lifeblood of the gospel and of the church.

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As the apostle Paul explains in Galatians 2, 14 through 16, if you turn back with me there, which

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Pastor David read earlier, Galatians 2, 14 through 16 here.

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In this passage, we discover something very important that faith alone is what the gospel teaches, where Paul says, but when

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I saw that they, the Judaizers, and including

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Peter as well, they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all, if you being a

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Jew live in the manner of the Gentiles and not as the Jews, why do you compel Gentiles to live as Jews?

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We who are Jews by nature and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law for by the works of the law, no flesh shall be justified.

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This is a great opportunity as well to invite every one of us to read Luther's commentary on Galatians.

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That commentary was a powerful thunder cry against the lies of Rome, and it is a great commentary to study and to read, to understand why the reformation is so important as well, and this was one of the central issues of the reformation and beyond, even to our very day, even to our very day, because you have men, you have pastors who claim to be

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Protestant, claim to be Christian, claim to be reformed even, and they fail to be straightforward about the truth of the gospel.

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The gospel requires us to be explicit about what it teaches and to be explicit to refute those who go against it.

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That is a fundamental reality, according to the Bible, Titus 1, 9.

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We must be grounded in the truth of sound doctrine and also to refute those who contradict sound doctrine, who contradict the gospel and the truth of God's word.

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We must do both. It's not enough to simply preach the true gospel. We conflate and confuse the gospel and and and and create confusion when we do not also preach against and teach against and refute the lies of those who preach and teach otherwise.

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So this was one of the central issues of the reformation. Even the

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Roman Catholic Church herself acknowledges this to some extent in what's known as the

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Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. That document says that the doctrine of justification was of central importance of the

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Lutheran reformation of the 16th century, of all reformations, not just the

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Lutheran one. It was held to be the first and chief article and at the same time, the ruler and judge over all other

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Christian doctrines. The doctrine of justification was particularly asserted and defended in its reformation shape and special valuation over over and against the

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Roman Catholic Church and theology of that time, as if it has it hasn't changed. This has not changed.

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Rome has not changed. She has changed in a sense. She has gotten worse.

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But. Which, in turn, asserted and defended the doctrine of justification of a different character.

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OK, Rome taught and asserted a doctrine of justification of a different character from that of the

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Protestant reformers, from that of the Protestant Church. That's serious business.

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That is serious business. And this raises the question, then, what exactly does

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Rome teach about justification? We need to know this as Protestants, especially when engaging

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Roman Catholics. And we live in a city that is predominantly Roman Catholic.

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We need to know these things. Session six of the Council of Trent, one of the one of the councils of the

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Roman Church, which was a response to the reformers and the Protestants, was there's a there's a session six was on justification itself.

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Now, Canon nine says, if anyone sayeth that by faith alone, the impious is justified in such wise as to mean that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to the obtaining of the grace of justification and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will.

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Let him be anathema. Let him be condemned. So this, this

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Canon number nine, according to the Roman Catholic Church, the official

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Roman Catholic magisterium of Rome, this is official Roman Catholic teaching, they are utterly contradicting the doctrine of justification by faith alone and have therefore condemned themselves as a false church and as a false institution, because the

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Bible says that justification is by faith apart from anything else that we do by faith alone, apart from works of the law.

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Canon 11 similarly says, if anyone sayeth that men are justified either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ or by the sole remission of sins to the exclusion of the grace and charity, which is poured forth in their hearts by the

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Holy spirit, in other words, by their good works and is inherent in them, or even that the grace whereby we are justified is only the favor of God, as opposed to what we also do, let him be anathema.

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This fundamentally contradicts Christ, the, the sola Christos against Christ alone, grace alone, and redefines grace itself.

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The grace of God is something that we do not deserve. It is given to us by God without any merit of ours.

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Yet Rome corrupts and perverts grace. And they say that this grace is also living and active in us and, um, is inherent in us.

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So it's a perversion of God's grace and of Christ and his work. Now, Canon 32 also similarly says, if anyone say it, that the good works of one that is justified are in such manner, the gifts of God, as that they are not also good merits, the good merits of him that is justified or that the

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J the said justified by the good works, which he performs through the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ, whose living member he is, does not truly merit or earn increase of grace through these good works, eternal life, and the attainment of that eternal life, if so be however, that he depart in grace and also increase of glory, let him be anathema.

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This is an utter denial of the biblical gospel.

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And this is what Rome herself teaches. It is utter false gospel.

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Okay. It is not anything that we have done or can do that earns our position, our attainment of heaven or eternal life, nothing at all.

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And this raises another question. Now, do faith and works then contribute to our justification?

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Because according to Rome, the answer is yes. But according to the Bible, according to the reformers, according to historic

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Protestantism, the answer is a huge resounding, no, it is not faith and works do not contribute whatsoever to our justification, to our right.

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Standing before God, Martin Luther said it very well.

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He said, beware of trusting in your own contrition or attributing remission of sins to your own sorrow.

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It is not because of these that God looks on the with favor, which is what

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Rome says, which is what I just read. But because of the faith, which thou has to be, has believed his threatenings and promises and which has wrought sorrow in the from which these things follow, in other words, like sorrow and holiness and good works.

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That is where, you know, we must be as believers in the gospel, the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

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And after Jesus fed the five thousand by multiplying bread and fish, the people saw him again, but Jesus tells him most assuredly,

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I say to you, you seek me not because you saw the signs for the food, which, uh, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled, do not labor for the food, which parishes, but for the food, which endures to everlasting life, which the son of man will give you because God, the father has set his seal on him.

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According to John chapter six, verses 26 to 27. Now Jesus audience apparently misunderstood him because they then ask, what shall we do that we may work the works of God and Jesus answers.

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This is the work of God that you believe in him whom he, the father has sent.

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Verse 29, Christ, in other words, gave an ad hominem reply to his audience because they did not understand what he was saying, and this was in order to contrast faith and works, not to conflate them like Rome does and many other false teachers who call themselves

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Protestant as well do later. He also reveals what the will of him who sent me is.

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What is it that everyone who sees the son and believes in him may have everlasting life and I will raise him up at the last day, according to verse 40.

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So if it's not a work and it's not about works, then how does faith justify a center in the side of God?

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And this is question 73 of the Westminster larger catechism. Again, this is a catechism that came out of the reformation.

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Faith justifies a center in the side of God, not because of those other graces, which do always accompany it in the individual who believes or of the good works that are the fruits that result of it, of faith, nor as if the grace of faith or any act thereof were imputed to him for his justification.

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So faith itself does not justify it. Fias, in other words, but only as it is an instrument by which he receives and applies

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Christ and his righteousness. Amen. So our faith contributes nothing to our salvation.

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It is not a work, but merely the instrument, the instrumental cause of our justification, that bridge.

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It is a bridge that connects Christ and his redemptive work and his benefits to us as believers.

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It is simply a bridge. Now salvation, in other words, is entirely by God's grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, based on the ultimate soul, infallible, final authority of scripture alone.

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These are the five solas of the Protestant reformation, which summarize and encapsulate what the

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Bible teaches and what the Protestants affirm about salvation, all of which is

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God's gift to us. Good works do not contribute in any way to our salvation, to our justification, to our right standing with God, no matter how much these brazen heretics, these false teachers may claim even so -called

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Protestants. And false teachers like Doug Wilson and John Piper who preached this false gospel, who conflate these realities, these truths from the

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Bible and the church of Rome herself as well. Good works do not contribute to salvation, but result from it in our sanctification, which is why the

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Bible says to work out your salvation with fear and troubling, for it is

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God who works in you both to do and to will for his good pleasure, according to Philippians chapter two.

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Now, someone asked a great question on the church's YouTube channel.

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How do you get around having five alones? How do you do, how does that make any sense?

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Now, this is an excellent question because the five alones are not mutually exclusive to each other.

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And this is what people seem to sometimes misunderstand. The five solos of the reformation, the five alones are an extended doctrinal chain that make up the same, the only biblical gospel that all of salvation belongs to God in him alone.

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That is what these five solos represent. According to several, several passages in scripture, second

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Corinthians five, 18 Psalms three, eight revelation. 19 one Galatians one, each solo, each alone focuses on a particular doctrine and contrast against Romanism.

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Number one being the first being God's grace alone saves depraved sinners.

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It is grace alone of God alone that justifies us.

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Nothing else does or can, especially not our own works such as Ephesians two, five through nine and second

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Corinthians five, 18, not of works, not of works, but by grace alone.

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The second is that God's grace also gives us faith. And this faith alone justifies us as opposed to faith plus anything else.

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Whether it's works or any other thing, nothing else justifies us for by grace.

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You have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, not of circumcision, not of any of the other graces that follow in our sanctification.

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Like the larger catechism says, lest anyone should boast

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Ephesians two, eight through nine. Now, the third is that Christ's perfect life and propitiatory, propitiatory wrath, satisfying death alone and nothing else that we do or anyone else does such as the lies of Rome and her indulgences is sufficient to fully forgive and legally justify sinners as righteous in God's tribunal.

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And which we receive through faith alone in this gospel, by his grace alone.

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It is Christ alone, Christ alone that saves us. Romans three, 21 through 31, second

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Corinthians five, 27 through 21. We be, he became sin who knew no sin that we might become, we might become the righteousness of Christ of God in him.

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By Christ alone. The fourth is that because God's grace alone saves us through faith alone in Christ alone, then

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God alone gets all the glory. Amen to God alone. Get be the glory.

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No one else. Good does Romans three, 27, first Corinthians six, 20 Romans 11, 36, first Corinthians, first Chronicles 16, 29, several other passages.

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God alone demands the glory because he has a jealous God and he has jealous for his glory and he alone deserves it.

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Nobody else does. And the fifth is that the ultimate final infallible authority by which we know and believe the truth that we can be saved by God's grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone is scripture alone.

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No other man, no Pope and no nullifying traditions of men have this authority, but God and his word alone, the scriptures cannot be broken, beloved and Christ alone and the word of God alone has this authority of the truth to declare to us.

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Now, um, this is what, um, it means to be a true evangelical.

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To be a true Protestant, because to be an evangelical originally referred to one who affirms the material principle, which is justification by faith alone.

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It is faith alone. So Lafitte and the formal principle of the reformation. So let's scriptura the final authority of scripture alone.

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Now this term sadly has been robbed of its meaning by ecumenical liberal and heretical trends in the church.

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It has nothing new for professing evangelicals like Bill Bright, like Pat Robertson, like Richard Moe, Jay Packer, Chuck Colson, uh,

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Chuck Colson, um, to sign and in Colson's case, to even coauthor evangelicals and Catholics together, which affirms that evangelicals and Catholics are brothers and sisters in Christ.

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Okay. This is a lie of Rome and of the devil. It's a lie.

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It is not true because we just read from their own official teaching. Rome rejects the biblical gospel of justification by faith alone.

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That is a lie. And anybody who signs and puts their name on this thing, these, these heretical documents, ecumenical documents are utterly denying the faith that they claim to profess.

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Okay. It is a lie. So beloved, let us think on these things as we continue to dwell and to delve and to dive into these matters, uh, next week as well.

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Um, we need to be properly informed of the reformation of NY still matters why we need to be discerning as believers, why we need to both understand the true gospel and to refute and to renounce and to denounce any other gospel, according to what scripture says, because like Galatians one says, once again, that powerful letter that Luther commented, wrote a commentary about because the

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Bible says very clearly any other gospel does not exist. And anyone else who preaches to you a different gospel than the one that has been delivered in the word of God, let him be anathema, let him be condemned.

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And that is why the church of Rome herself is condemned because it preaches and teaches a different gospel altogether.

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Okay. We need to be careful of these things and we need the truth of God's word to guide us and to be our light, to be our salt and our light in everything that we do in our doctrine, in our life, in our godliness and holiness in our vote.

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Right in our vote, the gospel means something and the gospel changes us.

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It regenerates us. It regenerates our faith in our life and it, and it teaches us to abstain true religion, which is to visit the orphans and the widows, but also to keep ourselves pure and undefiled from the world, from false teaching, from heresy and from the lies of Rome and from the lies of these politicians who have utterly committed, that were utterly corrupt and wish to destroy, steal and kill our nation.

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We don't vote for these people. Amen. We vote for those who have the decency of upholding law and order and who do not try to persecute those who wish to declare and uphold the truth of God's word, which is

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God, God's church, the pillar and buttress of the truth. And that is why we celebrate the reformation.

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And that is why we commemorate the reformation. And that is why we preach the doctrines of the reformation. And that is why we call ourselves

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Protestants of the reformation, because we protest anything and everything that goes against the truth of God's word.

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All of those primary issues of how we get right with God, how, who

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God is, who man is, and what salvation truly is and why we, um, ground ourselves in the word of God and the ultimate authority, which is

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God and his word alone. Amen. So with that said, let us go ahead and bow our heads in prayer.

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Our gracious heavenly father. We thank you so much, Lord, for the precious, amazing works of your history.

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Lord, we know that history is your story and you're a mighty works of providence in how you have governed all the entire world and your church as well.

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To be the public debate, the pillar and buttress of the truth. Father God, we ask that you help us to remember to help us to commemorate and to help us to be one in truth, to be one in your son and in your name.

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Father, we ask that you help us to commemorate, to remember the reformation, to, to appreciate the truths that came out of it and why it still matters today, father, to uphold it in our church and in our lives and to, to recognize that this, this ecumenism that is all over the place, and that is this, this mushy ness that of refusing to draw the lines where they need to be drawn father of truth and error and lies and falsehood.

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And the word of God, Lord, especially against the church of Rome and all who claim that, you know, who failed to denounce the lies of the devil in whatever form it may take.

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Father, we thank you, Lord. And we ask these things of Jesus precious in almighty name. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermons of thorn crown covenant

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Baptist church, where the Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety has applied to all of faith and life.

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We strive to be biblical reformed, historic, confessional, loving, discerning

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Christians who evangelize, stand firm in and earnestly contend for the Christian faith.

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If you're looking for a church in the El Paso, Texas area, or for more information about our church sermons and ministries, such as simple referendum on the radio and thorn crown network podcast, please contact us at thorn crown ministries .com