Reformed and Always Reforming

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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Today we have the great joy of celebrating two very special occasions, one in the life of this local church and one in the life of the universal church that is abroad.

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Today we get to welcome a group, the first group of members into this new and young church, something that we've been looking forward to quite literally for years, even though the church was only born this spring.

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And today we get to celebrate, as I was asking the kids this afternoon what day it was today, we get to celebrate

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Reformation Day. And so we get to welcome new members into the church and that on Reformation Day of all days.

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And you've heard us talk about Reformation Day already this afternoon, and some of you might be thinking, perhaps, what is

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Reformation Day? I don't know, children, if you've thought that. What is Reformation Day?

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What does this all mean? And what we do when we celebrate Reformation Day is this, we acknowledge, we recognize that today was in many ways the dawning of the

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Protestant Reformation. And if you can picture this in your minds, the release of the gospel, as it were, from imprisonment in the doctrinal dungeons of the

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Roman Catholic Church. So on October 31st, 1517, 504 years ago today, on this very day, a 33 -year -old

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German monk by the name of Martin Luther approached these looming, imposing doors on the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany.

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And he was fed up with the Catholic practice of selling indulgences, this practice of selling a certificate of deliverance from purgatory, all of this to fund the construction of St.

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Peter's Basilica in Rome. And being fed up with this and fed up with the doctrinal abuses of the

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Pope and the Catholic Magisterium, Martin Luther prepared what we call the 95

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Theses, 95 propositions that he wanted to bring forward for public debate, 95 concerns that Luther felt needed to be immediately addressed by the

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Roman Catholic Church. And so on this 31st day of October, the day before All Saints Day, which is

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November 1st, when the church would have been bustling on the 1st with busy parishioners going about their saintly duties,

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Luther went to the castle church and with papers in one hand and a hammer in the other, he nailed the 95

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Theses to the castle church door, and that for all to see.

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And if we were a crowd, if we were in that crowd of onlookers who had a chance to read these propositions before they were taken down, we would have immediately gotten a sense of Luther's great concern and his great concern for the

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Catholic Church and for the gospel in this particular moment in history. One of Luther's greatest concerns was the

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Catholic obstruction of the gospel message. And so if we were to look at the 95

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Theses hanging on that door, this is what we would read. I don't know if anyone has ever looked at these before, but Theses number 27 in that list.

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He said this, they preach, speaking about the Catholic Church, that as soon as the penny jingles in the money box, the soul flies out of purgatory.

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Here, Martin Luther is referencing one of his opponents, Johann Tetzel, who would say in a sing -song kind of way, as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.

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Luther detested the sale of indulgences because it made a mockery of God and because it deceived the common people into thinking that heaven could somehow be bought with silver or with gold.

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In Theses 32, he said, without holding any punches, they will be condemned eternally, together with their teachers, who believe themselves sure of their salvation because they have letters of pardon.

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Referring to these certificates of pardon. In Theses 55, stick with me, he says, it must be the intention of the

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Pope that if pardons, which are a very small thing, are celebrated with one bell, the ringing of one bell, with single processions and ceremonies, then the gospel, which is the very greatest thing, should be preached with a hundred bells, with a hundred processions, with a hundred ceremonies.

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In the 62nd Theses of his 95, he said, the true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and the grace of God.

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And so, taking up the cause of the gospel and undermining the sale of these indulgences,

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Luther published his 95 Theses on that castle church door with hammer and with nail.

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And it said, church historians have said, that the blows of the hammer echoed throughout

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Europe and into the farthest corners of the world. And so this was, in many ways, the day that the

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Protestant Reformation really and truly began. And so that's why we celebrate the

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Protestant Reformation. It was the Protestant Reformation, think about this for a moment, that began to hold the

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Roman Catholic Church to account for obfuscating the gospel and keeping the common people in darkness, unable to see the glories of Christ and the goodness of the gospel for centuries, unable to help themselves or others.

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This was the day that began the end of that darkness. It was this Reformation that brought us the

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Bible in our own languages. Look at the Bible on your lap. Look at the

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Bible on your phone. That Bible owes its existence to the

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Protestant Reformation. It was through the Reformation that the Bible, the word of God, was translated into English and German and Spanish and French and a thousand other languages.

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And it was this Protestant Reformation that brought back to the forefront the very best news in all the world, that man can be justified by God, saved forever, eternally, by nothing more and nothing less than God's grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the

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Scriptures alone, to the glory of God alone. And so this is why we celebrate

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Reformation Day. It has nothing to do with Protestant tribes. It has nothing to do with human divisions.

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It has nothing to do with sects or anything else, but rather it has everything to do with the knowledge of the glory of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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And so when we celebrate Reformation Day, we rightly celebrate the liberation of the free and glorious gospel for the world.

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So it seems fitting then, as we wrap up our series on church membership and as we welcome new members into the church, that we give our attention to the crowning jewel of the

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Reformation, the centerpiece, as it were, of the church and the

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Reformed church. And namely, that is God and His gospel.

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God and His gospel. And as we do that, what we're going to look at, if you're curious what this is going to look like, we're going to look at the five solas of the

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Reformation. So if you look in your bulletin, you'll see those listed out. And I'll be honest up front, this is a theological sermon, as we look at the five solas.

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And so if you have a pen, take out your bulletin, write some notes, track with me. I'm going to bring in lots of examples, lots of quotes from church history, but it is going to be a deep theological view of the five solas, or what we could call in English the five alones of the

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Protestant Reformation. And you could say that for today's purposes, we're going to look at what it means to be a people and a church who are committed to.

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You're becoming a church member today, perhaps. You're a believer today. Whatever the case is, what it means to be committed to believing, teaching, and defending the biblical gospel.

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If we are to be faithful believers, faithful church members, if we're to be a faithful and true church, we must be committed to proclaiming and preserving the gospel on these terms.

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And we call these terms the five solas. So we're going to get right into it.

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Let's look then at the first sola. And as I do, I want you to know I'm not here just to feed you

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Reformation doctrine, but I'm here to feed you the Bible. And so with every sola, I will bring text to bear on this.

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If we don't have text to bear, we don't have a point to preach. And so the first sola is this, sola scriptura.

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That means scripture alone. At the onset, we need to understand this, that Martin Luther and the

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Reformers lived in a day when the Bible was almost completely inaccessible to the common man.

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Not only was literacy a massive barrier. Are there any kids in this room that can't read, I wonder?

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I think you guys can all read, can't you? Well, there were many adults at the time of the

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Protestant Reformation that could not read. But not only could a lot of people not read, but those who could read were blocked from access to the word of God because the

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Bible, the official translation of the Roman Catholic Church, was the Latin Vulgate. And so even when the priests would read the

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Bible in the public meeting of the church, it was always in Latin. The Bible, the word of God, the sacred scriptures of God were completely obscured in a dead language.

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And then while the Bible was treated with some reverence in the church, at least outwardly, it was hardly seen as the supreme authority of the church.

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The Roman Catholic Church to this day teaches that it is not the Bible alone that has final authority in the

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Christian life, but they say it is the canon of scripture and it is the canon of church tradition.

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And those two hold final authority in the terms of faith and life and practice in the church.

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But as the reformers, as Martin Luther and other men and women like him read and studied their

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Bibles, they discovered that this was not what God had revealed in His word.

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This was not God's plan. To the contrary, they discovered that it was God's word and God's word alone that was authoritative for every doctrine, every practice, every aspect of the

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Christian life. It was sola scriptura, God's word alone, the

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Bible alone that God had ordained to reveal Himself and His gospel to man.

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So let's open our Bibles to 2 Timothy 3, verse 16.

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This was one of the texts that the reformers looked to, leaned on, were informed by as the

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Reformation began. 2 Timothy 3, verse 16, it reads this, All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

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They learned that the man of God, as they read these texts, the man of God was not dependent on papal decrees.

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They weren't dependent on church traditions, but had everything, everything that they needed for life and godliness within God's inspired and infallible word.

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They read the words of Christ in Matthew 15, verse 6 -9, where He said, For the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God, you hypocrites.

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Well did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

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In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commands of men.

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They understood that the Bible alone, Has anyone ever, I'll ask this, has anyone ever studied the characteristics of Scripture that we find, the self -attesting characteristics of Scripture?

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Does that ring a bell? No. Maybe a little bit. Okay, they found this. I'm not going to give a proof text for each of these, but they found that the

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Bible was inerrant. I like to use the acronym ISCAN when

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I think about this doctrine, but the Bible was inerrant. It was without error in the original writings.

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They found that the Bible was sufficient, that everything they needed was in the word of God.

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If I had to come up with a doctrine that came from anywhere else other than the Bible, it must be wrong because the

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Bible is sufficient. They found that the word of God was clear, meaning that we didn't need priests, we didn't need papal decrees to interpret the

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Scriptures, but God has given us His Spirit to illuminate our minds, to understand the word of God.

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They saw that the Bible was authoritative, that what God said mattered, and to disobey the word of God was to disobey

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God Himself. And they found that the word of God was necessary.

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It wasn't enough to learn about God in nature. You'll remember a couple weeks ago, I was talking about my dental hygienist who went to the wilderness to find

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God. The Reformers and the Bible itself would say that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

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The Bible is necessary. And so they understood that it was the

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Bible that was the word of God and it was the Bible that was the foundation of all of life.

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They read passages like 2 Peter 1, 21, where it says, For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men, hear this, spoke from God as they were carried along by the

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Holy Spirit. And so Martin Luther, as he spoke about the doctrine of Scripture, said this, he said,

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The man who would hear God speak, how often do you see people at conferences saying,

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Lord, speak to us. And they lay there in a trance or remain there waiting to hear an audible word from God.

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When people go out into the middle of nowhere and say, God, speak to me, and they leave their

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Bibles at home. Luther said the man who would hear God speak should read the

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Scriptures. In another place he wrote, The peasant with only one Bible verse possesses more authority than even the

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Pope. The peasant with one Bible verse possesses more authority than the head of this church, the leader of this church, the leaders of this church, if we are without Scripture.

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And so church historians have rightly pointed out that it was the rediscovery of sola scriptura, the

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Scriptures alone that laid the groundwork for the rest of the Protestant Reformation.

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Now we might ask, 500 years later, what application does sola scriptura have in our lives, in the life of this church, and in the lives of us church members here at Grace Fellowship Church?

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The first thing we need to understand is this, we are spoiled today. How many copies of the

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Bible do you have on your bookshelf at home? I think about all the various translations that I have on this phone in my back pocket, literally hundreds, thousands of pages of Scripture readily available like that.

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And so in many ways we stand on the shoulders of giants and rest in their labors.

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But brothers and sisters, I want you to recognize this, that we must be as committed today and tomorrow to the doctrine of sola scriptura as anyone ever has in all of human history.

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The battle for the Bible is not over. It is not won. And even though we are a new church, we're a young church,

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Nicole and I were recounting, we think probably the oldest active part of this church is 39 years old.

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We are a young church, and yet we need to think like 500 -year -olds.

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We need to think like reformers. We need to be like William Tyndale, the martyred

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Bible translator who lived and when necessary died for the

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Bible. We need to have the 3 ,000 -year -old mindset of King David who wrote this in Psalm 119, 160 -162, he said,

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The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.

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Princes persecute me without cause, but my heart stands in awe of your words.

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We need to be in awe of God's word, so much so that if the authorities come for us because we have the word, we're ready to deal with it.

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We're ready to go. We're ready to fight the fight. We need to rejoice at the word of God.

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We must be a people. I love these Latin phrases of the reformers. We must be a people whose motto in life is sola scriptura and tota scriptura, meaning the word of God alone and all of the word of God, the whole counsel of God.

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Not like Thomas Jefferson who took a razor blade to his Bible and cut out verses that he did not like.

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No, we must be a people of the whole counsel of God. Our pursuits for holiness must be informed by and empowered by the sanctifying truth of the word.

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Our evangelism should not be crafty and manipulative, but it must be dependent on the power of the gospel,

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God's word, the word about Christ. In our homes, we must be recounting the wondrous deeds of God in the

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Scriptures, bringing our children up in the discipline and the instruction of the word of God.

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Whenever we stand behind this pulpit in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead, we must preach the word of God.

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If we're to persevere in honoring Christ, the word of God cannot be a matter of convenience in this church, in your life.

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It must be a matter of conviction. I love hearing this story. If anyone's heard of Martin Luther's counsel, his trial at the

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Diet of Worms, as some people call the Diet of Worms, he stood there before the council and they gave him an opportunity to repent.

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And for Martin Luther, much was at stake. He was going to, if he would not recant, lose it all.

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His work, his calling as he saw it, his students.

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And this is what Martin Luther said. He said, unless I am convinced by Scripture and by plain reason and not by popes and not by councils who have so often contradicted themselves, my conscience is captive to the word of God.

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To go against conscience is neither right nor safe. I cannot and will not recant.

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Here I stand. I can do no other. God, help me. Not a matter of convenience, but of conviction.

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And it was the faithfulness of the word of God that brought success later in Martin Luther's life.

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I love this. Just picture. If you know anything of Martin Luther's character, I've never heard his voice, but I can almost read tone into it.

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He says, I simply taught, preached God's word, wrote

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God's word, otherwise I did nothing. And then while I slept and drank

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Wittenberg beer with my Philip of Amsdorf, the word so greatly weakened the papacy that never a prince or emperor did such damage to it.

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I did nothing. The word did it all. And so we need to be a people of the word of God.

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The next sola that we're going to look at is this sola gratia, grace alone.

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So not only did the reformers trust that God was going to accomplish his purposes by his word, but they knew that if a man was ever to be saved from his sin, it would be by God's grace and God's grace alone.

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The reformers understood that it is not man who takes initiative to be right with God, but it is

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God who initiates salvation. It is God's work from beginning to end.

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The work of salvation is a work of God and an unmerited work at that.

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If God did not graciously draw men to himself, no one would be saved.

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The reformers looked at text like Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 for by grace you have been saved through faith.

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And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast.

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They took Christ at his word when he said in John 6, 44, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day.

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Unlike the Catholic contemporaries of his day, they saw that the only thing these reformers saw, the only thing that man can contribute to his salvation is neediness, it's open hands, it's brokenness, it's deadness.

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Every man who comes to God is drawn by God and he comes with what theologians have called empty hands of faith, empty hands of faith.

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The best way that I could think of articulating these empty hands of faith is in the hymn

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Rock of Ages by Augustus Toplady. He wrote this in the 18th century.

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You might remember this line, nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross

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I cling, naked come to thee for dress, helpless look to thee for grace.

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Foul I to the fountain fly, dirty, filthy, foul I to the fountain fly, wash me,

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Savior, or I die. And so to understand salvation by grace alone is to understand that man brings nothing positive to the equation.

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Man brings spiritual death and to that God responds with eternal life.

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Man brings enslavement to sin. God brings his perfect righteousness.

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Man brings enmity and strife. God brings peace and reconciliation.

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Man brings damnation by his own depravity. God brings justification and that by grace alone.

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In Titus 3, we've looked at a lot of these here over the last couple of weeks and so my apologies if you've been looking at the statement of faith with us, but Titus 3 and verse 3,

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Paul writes to Titus there, for we ourselves, ask yourself, does this describe you?

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If you say no, I'm sorry, you're wrong. But Titus 3, 3 says, for we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

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There's a word for that. It's called total depravity. But when the goodness and the loving kindness of God our

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Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the

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Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace, we might be heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

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So this doctrine of sola gratia set the scene for Christ's propitiatory work on the cross.

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Christ did not come to help weakened men. He came to rescue dead men.

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That is sola gratia. And this was Martin Luther's way of life.

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I love this story I once heard of Martin Luther on his deathbed, counting down his last days until he would enter into eternity.

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And Martin Luther had, I don't know if anyone ever keeps little scraps of paper in your pocket with notes to remind you of something, an old grocery list or something like that.

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Martin Luther himself had a little scrap of paper in his pocket. And what it read on that piece of paper, that little strip of paper, was this.

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We are beggars. It is true. We are beggars.

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Humbled by his coming death, he knew that his only hope was not himself, not his own merit, but by the grace of God.

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And so if we are to live well, if we are to die well like Martin Luther, we would do well to remember that salvation is by grace and grace alone.

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So sola gratia. Sorry, sola scriptura. Sola gratia. Number three, sola fide.

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What does sola fide mean? I'm going to become interactive here a bit so I don't lose you guys.

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What is sola fide? Yes, miss. Faith alone. That's exactly right.

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Salvation, justification by faith alone. And so, while it's true that sola scriptura, this idea of the

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Word of God, the doctrine of the Word of God, serves as the foundation upon which all other doctrines rest, the watershed moment in the

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Reformation, if you want to know what really kicked it all off, the watershed moment of the

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Protestant Reformation was Martin Luther's discovery of justification by faith alone.

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By faith alone. Prior to this discovery, if anyone has heard about Martin Luther's life, he was a man that was haunted by the knowledge of his own sins.

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Martin Luther's dad really wanted him to become a lawyer and so after he finished his master's degree, he went to law school.

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And one day, while he was traveling home, or sorry, traveling to law school, from home, he was caught in a massive thunderstorm and as lightning and thunder crashed around him, he called out to his favorite saint,

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Saint Anne, and he clung to a rock in this storm and he said, Saint Anne, if you will help me,

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I will become a monk. Kids, have you ever been in trouble and prayed to God, God, if you will just help me,

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I promise you, I will be a monk forever. I don't know, maybe.

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Probably not. But that was Martin Luther's prayer. Already weighed down by sin, he knew, he expected, he thought that this was

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God's judgment upon him and if he could just appease that holy God, God would save him.

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But he couldn't even approach God himself. He had to come to Saint Anne. Well, God spared

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Luther in keeping with his vow. Luther promptly went back to law school. He gave away his school textbooks.

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He gave away his law hat. They threw a party for him and then he went to the monastery in Erfurt, Germany.

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And this in and of itself, now becoming a monk, having dropped out of law school and disappointed his father, this too was not enough to appease his conscience.

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And R .C. Sproul tells us about one aspect of this life, this monastery life of Martin Luther and the guilt that he bore.

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R .C. Sproul says this, His confession was a regular part of monastic life.

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The other brothers came regularly to their confessors and said, Father, I have sinned. Last night

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I stayed up after lights out and read my Bible with a candle or yesterday at lunchtime,

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I coveted Philip's potato salad. The father confessor would hear the confession, grant priestly absolution and assign a small penance to be performed.

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That was it. The whole transaction took but a few minutes. But for Martin Luther, this was not so.

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He was driving his father confessor to distraction. Luther was not satisfied with a brief recitation of his sins.

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He wanted to make sure that no sin in his life was left unconfessed. He entered the confessional and stayed for hours every single day confessing his sin.

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And then when Luther had just finished confessing his sin and had left this time of confession, he would remember another transgression that he had not shared during that time and immediately he would be weighed down with guilt again.

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But one day in his studies, Martin Luther was reading his Bible and God opened his mind and opened his heart to see and to understand the text that our brother

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PJ read just a few minutes ago. One day he was reading Romans 1, 16 and 17.

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For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the

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Jew first and also the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed.

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How? How was the righteousness of God revealed? He read, from faith for faith, or the righteousness of God is revealed by faith from beginning to end.

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As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

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And immediately, it's as if the doors of Martin Luther's mind opened to understand the

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Gospel. He recounts his experience when he read this verse some 500 years ago.

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He said, There I began to understand the righteousness of God. Up until this point,

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Luther wrote that he had grown to hate the righteousness of God. The thought that God was a righteous

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God was so disturbing that he reviled it. And there he says, I began to understand the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives is by a gift of God, namely by faith.

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And this is the meaning. The righteousness of God is revealed by the

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Gospel, namely the passive righteousness with which the merciful

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God justifies us by faith. Listen to these words.

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He said, Here I felt that I was altogether born again and the very gates of paradise opened up before me.

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It was in Romans 1 .17 that Martin Luther was born again after having been a monk for how many years?

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He came to find the righteousness of God, forgiveness, eternal life, things that he could never earn by his own merit, but found that they were free gifts of God that were to be received by faith with the empty hands of faith.

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And then he came to understand the Roman Catholic doctrines. Think about this if you lived during that time.

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The Roman Catholic doctrines concerning justification were actually steering generations of people.

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It's the opposite of evangelism, steering generations of people into utter darkness, a world without hope, without God, without the

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Gospel, away from the true Gospel. People were not justified before God and reconciled to God by works and faith as the

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Catholic teachings had it, but they were justified by grace alone, through faith alone.

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This is the lynchpin. This is the hinge of the Protestant Reformation.

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This was the glorious, the gracious, the free Gospel that had been hidden away for centuries and that Luther had now rediscovered.

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Justification is not something as the Catholics taught it that is imparted to people, that it becomes infused with you, and so you, along with Christ, work together for your justification, but it was something that was imputed to you, this idea of double imputation, that on the cross, my sin was imputed to Christ and His righteousness by faith is imputed to me.

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It's what Luther described as alien righteousness, not that it's righteousness from another world, but that it's a righteousness that is foreign to us.

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It comes from outside of us, and that when God sees us, He does not see the righteousness of Shane or Nicole or Lowell or Harsin, but He sees the righteousness of Christ when you have placed your faith in Him.

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Brothers and sisters, that needs to warm our hearts, that needs to grab our attention that when

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God sees us by faith in Christ, He does not see us as the wretched worms that we are, but He sees us as His very sons and daughters with the righteousness of God.

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Paul wrote to the Philippian church in Philippians 3, 8 and 9, Indeed, I count everything as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing

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Christ Jesus my Lord. The Apostle Paul was a Pharisee, a

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Pharisee of Pharisees. It's funny that Martin Luther once said that if anyone could be saved by monkery, by being a monk, it would be him.

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And the same could be said about Paul. If anyone could be saved by being a Pharisee, by being a law keeper, it would be the

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Apostle Paul. And yet Paul says, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing

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Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I might gain

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Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

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Take stock for a moment in yourselves. I know I'm talking lots, talking fast.

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There are a lot of words, but just let's stop for a second and take stock. When you look at your own life, is it characterized by faith?

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And not just a faith. So often, I remember the church that my wife and I came from, everyone would always talk about faith in God.

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Oh, we believe in God. We believe in God. God, God, God. Yes, God is good and God is real and we ought to believe in God.

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Yes. But is your life characterized not only by belief in God, but by faith in Christ?

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Christ, the Savior of the world, His person and His work.

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Do you wake up in the morning and do you feel that you can approach

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God without hindrance, with confidence because of Christ and what He has done and because you have placed your faith in Him and that you are justified, made just, perfect, righteous, at least positionally, externally, forensically, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone?

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Or do you find yourself falling into sin, struggling with sin, tarrying, as it were, with sin and continually trying to earn merit and acceptance with God through your own works, by putting yourself in the penalty box?

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Brothers and sisters, I know that we believe this, many of us do, but we need to be reminded of it every day that your justification, your standing before God is by grace alone, through faith alone.

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It's not your performance. And so what that means is when you fall into sin, when a man stumbles into this besetting sin that's been dogging him and he's fighting it tooth and nail and you fall into it again, get up and look to Christ by faith in Him.

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Don't put yourself in the penalty box. Don't be like Martin Luther and flog yourself for hours, but immediately, shortly, quickly look to Christ.

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Is your life characterized by faith in Christ? As we think about church membership, as we think about the

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Christian life, as we think about what it means to be a faithful church in a hundred years from now, if God is willing, the defining characteristic of this church will be faith alone, grace alone, faith alone, and next, in Christ alone.

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Number four, Christ alone. Solus Christus. When Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the castle church door in Wittenberg, the idea that salvation was by Christ alone was largely an absent thing.

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I know we think about that today. What's the big deal with Christ alone? We all know that you need to believe in Christ.

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Well, the Catholic church taught this doctrine of whole Christ theology, that Christ was the head that the church was his body and that together, the whole

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Christ accomplished salvation. That's still taught today by the

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Catholic church, the whole Christ. But the reformers came along and said, no, no, not the whole

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Christ. I suppose the whole incarnate Christ 2 ,000 years ago, but Christ alone, the head alone.

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They argued from Scripture that it was not Christ and the church, but Christ in all and only

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Christ. Acts 4 .12, they looked at, and there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved other than Christ.

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They looked at 1 Timothy 2, 5 and 6, for there is one God and one mediator between God and men.

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Mary. No, not Mary. I'm trying to catch you guys.

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Not Mary. There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.

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They taught with Romans 8 .1 that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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Brothers and sisters, if you are in Christ, there is no condemnation. There is no judgment left now to fear.

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Quite literally and truly, though there might be momentary and light affliction between now and glory, it only gets better.

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It really does. It only gets better. How often do you wake up in the morning distressed, depressed, feeling down?

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And when you do, how often do you consider this, that it is but a moment, it's but a breath, it is but a vapor between now and eternity.

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And if you are living by faith alone in Christ alone, it's an eternity of glory, of joy, of happiness in the presence of God.

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And so every difficulty, tomorrow when you go back to work and I'm thinking about you,

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PJ, right? You slam your hand into the bottom of an engine or something, right? You dust up your knuckles, right?

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When you go to work tomorrow and the first thing your employer says, we'd like to talk to you, we're downsizing.

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Whatever the case might be, it is all momentary and light affliction producing in us an eternal weight of glory.

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There is no condemnation, really and truly, for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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And it's not the church, it's not sacraments, it's not a rigorous system of ethics, it's not spiritual disciplines.

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You can miss a day of reading your Bible. There is no condemnation for you in Christ Jesus.

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It's not social justice, but it is Christ alone that is the sole source of justification before God.

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I'm almost done. And you might be thinking all of this is obvious, right? Shane, you didn't have to preach this.

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We understand all of this. This is something that we need to bring into our remembrance every single day, really and truly.

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I'll illustrate this. By God's grace, I was saved. How many years ago would that have been?

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About 14 years ago, 15 years ago. But I was saved in a church that knew nothing of this, that knew nothing of what it meant to be justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

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And the reason why this happens is because when a church does not bring this to their remembrance, when a

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Christian does not bring this to their remembrance, the central truth of the gospel...

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Friends, we drift. We drift. We drift away from a Christ -based righteousness to a merit -based righteousness, to a performance -based righteousness.

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And what we lose is this. We drift away from the Scriptures. And then we drift away from sin.

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And then we drift away from justification. And then we drift away from Christ.

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I remember Nicole and I, like I said, by God's grace, He saved us in spite, not because of this church that we belong to.

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And we love these people. And I think about them often. I see them on my Facebook feed. But we went to this church, and I was so hungry, so earnest at that time, especially for fellowship, as a brand new believer.

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And our church did not have a Bible study, but they had a choir practice. So I thought, I'm joining the choir.

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If you've ever heard me sing alone, you know I can't sing. And I lead worship only out of necessity here.

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But I joined the choir. And Nicole, bless her heart, came with me just to accompany me.

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This was before we had kids, and we had free time. And so she came and joined me at choir practice.

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And the pastor approached us just as choir practice was about to begin. And he said to Nicole, you know, we're actually starting a

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Bible study tonight. Would you like to join us while Shane's at choir practice? And Nicole said, sure,

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I'll do that. And I was thinking, that's what I want. I want to quit the choir and join this

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Bible study. But I had already committed, and I kept my word. And so I went through with the choir practice.

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And at the end of the practice, Nicole and I were driving home and eager to gain some second -hand information from Nicole.

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I said, so what did you learn in the Bible study? She said, well, the pastor taught that Mary wasn't a virgin, that Christ may not have actually existed, but we still need to have faith.

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Beloved, we cannot be that church. I'll tell you what that church is. That is the kind of church that takes a lost man or woman by the hand and with a gentle smile leads them to hell.

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We cannot be that kind of church. And so we need to rehearse the gospel regularly.

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J. Gresham Machen said in his book Christianity and Liberalism, if Christ provides only a part of our salvation, leaving us to provide the rest, then we are still hopeless under the load of sin.

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For no matter how small the gap which must be bridged before salvation can be attained, the awakened conscience, the conscience that really knows the sinfulness of self and the holiness of God, the awakened conscience sees clearly that our wretched attempt at goodness is insufficient even to bridge that gap.

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If that gap were but an inch, if Christ were to do all but an inch, we would be hopelessly lost.

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But he says this, he said, Christ will do everything or he will do nothing.

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It must be by Christ alone. And then lastly,

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Glory to God alone. I love this story about John Calvin.

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John Calvin was actually kicked out of Geneva, Switzerland in 1538 for teaching

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Reformation theology. They put him not only out of the church but out of the city.

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Get out of here. And then about a year later, extended an olive branch, one cardinal of the

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Catholic Church, Cardinal Sadaletto, wrote a letter to John Calvin and said, we can join forces.

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If you will just come, we will join. We'll accept you back. You just have to stop teaching what it is that you're teaching.

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And Calvin, in no uncertain terms, rejected this offer wholesale. He wrote this crazy long letter about all the reasons why he would never join the

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Catholic Church again. And he said, It is not very sound theology to confine a man's thoughts so much to himself and not to set before him the prime motive of his existence.

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Zeal to illustrate the glory of God. Zeal to illustrate the glory of God.

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If your theology does not glorify God alone, I don't want it, Calvin said.

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The Reformers rejected it. They read passages like Isaiah 42 .8 where God said,

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I am the Lord. This is my name, my glory I give to no other.

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The chief end of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, is the glory of God alone.

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We see this in places like Ephesians. Ephesians 1, Romans 11.

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I won't go into it. I have them, but I won't go into it. But brothers and sisters, we need to live for the glory of God alone.

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That is why we have been saved. That is why God gave the Gospel. That's why God gave the

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Scriptures. That's why God made you. If you used to teach first aid

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CPR, if you put your hand on your wrist and find your pulse, we know how it beats.

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But most doctors, many doctors, don't know why it beats. That beat in your heart, that breath in your lungs, is for the glory of God and for Him alone.

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Abraham Kuyper said, Wherever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever may apply his hand, in agriculture, in commerce, and in industry, or his mind in the world of art and science, what is your career?

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What are your career ambitions? He says, He is, in whatever it may be, constantly standing before the face of God.

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He is employed in the service of his God. He has strictly to obey his

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God. And above all, he has to aim at the glory of his

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God. So, brothers and sisters, this Reformation Day, let's celebrate the liberation of the gospel by believing it anew, by looking to Christ anew, by being a church.

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You'll see in the back of our bulletin, I didn't get to it today, but by being a church that is both reformed and always reforming, or always being reformed.

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To be a church that looks to Christ alone and that at the end of the day is conformed to the image of Christ alone.