Turn your Bibles to 2 Peter chapter 1, verses 16 to 21. Second Peter chapter one, verse 16 to the end. And following the reading of scripture, we will sing together the Gloria Patri. Please stand together for the reading of God's holy word. We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the majestic glory saying, this is my son whom I love, with him I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain. And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you do well to pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Amen. On this particular Sunday of the year, we take time to reflect on our heritage, the inheritance we've been given, And as you know, our normal practice is to work our way through a passage of scripture. But on this Sunday, for many, many years, I've taken liberty to depart from that pattern and to do a biographical sketch on someone that was a father or mother in the faith. the heritage that we've received from them. And so we're going to do that today as well. Why have that kind of a sermon? Because it's very important for us to know that we don't live in a vacuum, that Christianity didn't begin with us. or someone in the 20th century, but that we stand on the head and shoulders of those godly men and women who have gone on before to hand down to us the treasures of faith. We have this wonderful heritage, and in a sense, a key description of it is in that insert in your bulletin, the five solas. Scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, to God alone be the glory. Or in their Latin form, sola scriptura, sola gratia, sola fide, sola Christus, and sola de gloria. Luther's battle cry for the Reformation was justification by faith, though he taught broadly beyond that. But what I'd like to direct your thoughts to this morning is something that Ryan expanded on a little bit earlier in the service, but the teaching of sola scriptura, that scripture alone And even though we've looked at this before, what I want to do is to have us consider the doctrine of sola scriptura, and then give you three vignettes from godly men who've gone on before and gave their lives in defense of that truth. So sola scriptura is essentially the doctrine statement, the affirmation that the Bible alone is our authority, the Bible alone is our sufficient guide to our lives. And the paragraph there on your insert is helpful. Sola Scriptura, scripture alone, this principle asserts the supreme sufficiency of God's written word. No other words are adequate, and no other words are divine. Popes, creeds, councils, and tradition have no authority when they contradict the Holy Scriptures. Mystical impressions, emotions, and sensations coming from the heart of man are never authoritative. The Bible is complete, and the canon is closed. No further revelation is given. In these last days, God has spoken to us in his son, Hebrews 1-2. Jesus Christ has spoken all that is necessary through his apostles in the Bible. The Bible alone is sufficient. And as we think about sola scriptura, it's good to think about the scriptures in general. There are four perfections or attributes of scripture that are generally considered. Ryan, in our officer training, gave us a little catchy way to remember the four. It's the word naps. So if in my preaching you feel like taking a nap, let that remind you of the scripture. And what that stands for is necessity, authority, perspicuity, clarity, and sufficiency. And then in theological works, you'll sometimes have added to it inspiration, self-authentication, and finality. But the two thoughts to undergird sola scriptura that I want to take you through for a few moments is the idea of authority and the idea of sufficiency as clear teachings. And these both come out very clearly in the text Ryan read earlier. And if you want to turn there in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, these two attributes or perfections are clearly taught. We have all scripture is God breathed. Now it's not merely a statement of how we got scripture, that God breathed out the scripture, he gave it to us through the divine writers that he authorized to do that. But it's the basis of the authority of scripture. Why does Scripture have its authority? It's not because some man affirmed something about it, it's not because a church said something about it, but the authority of Scripture is based on the fact that it comes from whom it comes. That it comes from the mouth and the voice of Almighty God. And the authority of Scripture is based not on anything in this world, but it's based on Him. In our Westminster Confession, and I commend to you at some point for you to read through the first chapter of our Westminster Confession. It's a wonderful, clear statement of all the characteristics of Scripture. And in one paragraph, it talks about the authority. It says, the authority of the Holy Scripture for which it ought to be believed and obeyed dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but holy upon God who is truth itself, the author thereof. And therefore it is to be received because it is the word of God. God is sovereign and he has spoken. And his voice is the authority. And you and I are to bow the knee to him. We are to do, as Paul says, to make every thought captive to that word. Whatever thinking we're doing, it needs to be captive to the word of God. And even in the Old Testament, this truth is affirmed. When Isaiah was dealing with the problem of mediums and spiritists and false messages that came from these other sources, he made the statement, to the law and to the testimony, if they do not speak according to this word, they have no light in them. He as well was challenging people to adhere to and listen to the word of God. And so the teaching of Sola Scriptura, a wonderful gift and blessing to us, is a reminder that the authority of scripture is based on God and God alone. But the second element, the second perfection to think about along with this is the perfection of sufficiency. It's not only that the Bible is authority, but it's sufficient. This is where people sometimes go grievously astray. The Bible is all we need. It is everything we need to know to follow the right doctrine, the right knowledge of God, and to follow the right path of obedience. That's where Paul continues to go on. All scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete Thoroughly furnished unto every good work. The Bible is sufficient for us. It teaches us doctrine. What are we to believe? It corrects us, tells us when we're walking the wrong path. Doctrine, correction, reproof. Through reproof it brings us back into the right path. Instruction and righteousness. It's directing us in the way that we should go. And the Bible alone is sufficient to do all of those things so we might be complete. Thoroughly furnished for every good work. The Bible is what we need. It's sufficient. And the confession lays that out for us as well. It says the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life is either expressly set down in scripture or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture unto which nothing at any time is to be added whether by new revelations of the spirit or traditions of men. And those last two phrases bring us to what are some of the obstacles, what are some of the enemies to sola scriptura, to the sufficiency of scripture, to the authority of scripture. Well, turn in your Bibles to Revelation 22. Revelation 22, 18 and 19. As John's bringing his prophetic book to an end, he gives us a sober warning. So Revelation 22, verse 18, he says, I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes away, takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book. So there are two ways that we sometimes undermine the sufficiency of scripture as well as the authority. One is that we subtract from it. Part of the issue of liberal theology in the late 1800s and 1900s was that they were taking things away from the word. They were denying the supernatural. They were saying some parts of the Bible were myths. And so they were subtracting from scripture what they didn't like. Even in our own day, people don't like certain teachings in the Bible, and what they'll say is, well, it's culturally conditioned. It applied in Paul's day, but it doesn't apply in our day. They're taking away. the things from Scripture, eliminating the parts that they don't like, and therefore the Bible loses its authority and its efficiency. The other way to detract from the Word is to add to Scripture. You deny the sufficiency of scripture when you add something else to it, a document, a belief, a system, a tradition that takes authority over the word and tells us what the word ought to be saying. And this whole issue of tradition was something that was part of the debate during the time of the Reformation. the reformers, what they were trying to do was to affirm the scripture as authority. And the Roman Catholic Church would say, no, our tradition takes precedent over that. Even in Jesus' own day, the Pharisees did this. He said to them, you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you've handed down. And so they were placing this other document, this other bad bit of information as the authority over the Word of God. Now it's important for us to realize that we can't avoid tradition. We can't avoid some statement of faith, confession, creed. The issue isn't whether we have those things, and if they're helpful to us, and sometimes they are very helpful to us. The issue isn't if we have those things, it's what do we do with those things? Do they become the authority? Or do we test those things according to the word of God? You and I have, or our church has a Westminster Confession of Faith and catechisms. And it stands as an authority for us, as a help to us. It's a statement of faith that we hold to that those who become elders and deacons have to vow to uphold. Well, are we nullifying the word of God by having this tradition? Well, the answer to that is gonna be no, because the confession puts itself under the Word of God. The confession says, the supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men and private spirits are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture. So the Westminster Confession is saying the way you judge if what we're saying is accurate is what's in the Bible. And if the Bible says what we're saying is wrong, then it's wrong. But the problem is some people take tradition, doctrines, books, and they make them become the authority. The Book of Mormon, the writings of Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science and other false faiths. They take these books and they make them authority and either push the word out or they make them supreme over the authority. And the problem is that is undermining the authority and the sufficiency of scripture. And that's not what we were handed down by our forefathers. So the scripture, even sadly, some Christians today are wanting extra biblical revelation. They want God to speak to them, not through the word, but outside the word. And while many well-meaning, They're putting themselves on the precipice of walking down the cliff and undermining the sufficiency of scripture. We need to say the Bible is enough. Christ speaking through the word, we need to say Jesus Christ is enough. and we need to see him speaking to us through the word, which the Holy Spirit will do. He'll open the word to us and apply the word to us. So the heritage that we've been given is the Sola Scriptura, and it's a great benefit and protection to us in our lives. And there are three men I want to direct your thoughts to that were great and courageous men defending Sola Scriptura. And the first one I want to direct you to is John Wycliffe. He lived roughly 200 years before the Reformation. He is sometimes called the Morning Star of the Reformation. He lived from 1324 to 1384, the bulk of the 14th century. He died 100 years before Luther was born. And he began to have real problems with many of the current teachings of the church and opposed them. And he became convinced that it's the work of God, it's the Holy Scriptures that needs to direct our path. He said, where the Bible and the church do not agree, we must obey the Bible. And one of the demonstrations of his commitment to scripture was that he, in his work, provided the first English translation of the scripture to put the word of God in the hands of the common people. He was also leader of a sort of an itinerant preaching group, the Lawlords, and they took the word of God throughout Europe. It had a tremendous impact on many people. Well, some years later in the middle 1400s roughly, the church had developed such a hatred for John Wycliffe that in the Council of Constance, they declared him a heretic and directed that his bones be dug up and burned and then the ashes thrown in the river. They, were opposed to his advocacy of sola scriptura. Well, the person that was very much influenced by John Wycliffe was born 12 years before Wycliffe died, so toward the latter end of the 14th century into the 15th century, or, get my centuries mixed up there. He was born in 1372, 12 years before Wycliffe died, and his name is John Huss. And the Council of Constance is gonna play a big role in his life too. But he was very taken with the writings of John Wycliffe, and he became convinced that the word of God needed to be preached. And he was a poor man, but he spoke clearly, plainly, and forcefully the gospel he preached in Bethlehem Chapel in Prague to thousands of people. and his emphasis was on the authority of scripture, on the Bible alone. He said, I humbly accord faith to the Holy Scriptures, desiring to hold and believe and assert whatever is contained in them, as long as I have breath in me. Well, he drew the ire of the Roman Catholic Church as well. And they promised him, the emperor promised him a safe conduct to go to the Council of Constance to defend his views. And he went there, but they never did allow him to defend his views. They condemned him and ultimately would put him to death at the stake. We're going to see similarities in Luther's situation. He was brought to account. He was not allowed to defend his views. And a friend had asked John Huss, have you recanted? And he says, no, but I would if I was persuaded by my error out of the scriptures. Now one thing about John Huss that's interesting at least, John Huss was born in the town of Husseneck and Husseneck means goose town. And John Huss's name means John Goose. And in fact, in Luther's time, his friends warning him not to go to the Diet of Worms reminded him of the goose that was cooked in Bohemia. The Bohemian goose that was cooked in, which they mean, meant John Huss. I don't know whether that's where we get the phrase, your goose is cooked, Hus and his friends had a lot of fun with his name, but he had been called to account. He was brought up on charges at the Council of Constance, and they declared him a heretic, and he was burned at the stake in July of 1415, basically 100 years before Luther. And tradition says that as he's being led away to the stake, that he says, they will roast a goose now, but after 100 years they will hear a swan sing, and him they cannot burn. Now there's some debate on whether he actually said those things, but we do know for sure that Luther quoted him in his writings and said that Huss said those things. So we have John Wycliffe flowing into John Huss, and then we have coming up 100 years after Huss, the arrival of Martin Luther. And what's a very interesting connection between Luther and Hus, among some other things, is Luther's the swan, and he was studying at the monastery, the Augustinian Monastery of Erfurt. And what's interesting is that the person who was the antagonist to Hus at the Council of Constance was a man by the name of Johannes Zacharias. And when he died and he was buried, his tomb was in the chapel of the monastery of Erfurt. And so when Martin Luther was being ordained into the priesthood, He would have been spread arms over the grave of Zacharias as he was being anointed for the priesthood, and the swan would begin to sing. Because it was at Erfurt that he studied the word of God and became convinced of its truth. And understanding that, and would stand for the authority of God's word, just like Wycliffe and just like Huss. Now we think on this day of Luther's nailing the 95 theses on the Wittenberg door on October 31st, 1517. That wasn't really the crisis moment. That wasn't really the key moment in Luther's life. He hadn't been totally convinced yet of all the Reformation doctrines. He was making the movement, but what he was troubled by was the practice of indulgences and thought it was an abuse of God's people. And so when he nailed those theses on the castle door, they were in Latin, which meant it was just for the scholars. And it was a call to debate. It wasn't saying we are justified by faith. It was saying, hey, we've got a problem in the Church. We need to talk about it. But a few years later, the development of his theology became the crisis moment. It was in April of 1521, four years later almost, that Luther was called to appear before the Diet of Worms to defend his views. And he was given a promise by the emperor of safe conduct to come to that Diet, that council. And he would remember that 100 years earlier, Hus had been given a promise by the emperor of safe conduct to that council and they didn't keep their word. And Luther himself and some of his friends would have tried to discourage him and reminded him of that. But he arrives at the Diet and he's made to wait outside for a couple hours and they finally let him in. And here he's thinking he's going to have the opportunity to defend his views. And Dr. Eck asked him two questions. Are these your books and do you recant? And he was taken aback by that. He thought he was being brought there to be able to discuss his views. Just as Huss had thought he was being brought there to discuss his views, that wasn't what he was being brought there. He was being brought there to be condemned. And he was taken aback by what he was asked, and so he said, well, yes, they're my books, but can I have 24 hours to answer? And he went back to his room, and his friends, they spent the night in prayer asking God to help him have a right answer. And so the next day, he went back, same two questions, are these your books, do you recant? And Luther, in his boldness, tried to work in a little bit of a speech. You know, he started by, well, but some of these things are devotions, and everybody, no, no, and they wouldn't let him talk. they would say, they told him, just quit beating around the bush, answer the question. And so Luther's answer, this is the famous answer we're familiar with, unless I am refuted and convicted by the testimony of the Scriptures, or by clear arguments, since I believe neither the Pope or councils alone, it being evident that they have often erred and contradicted themselves, I am conquered by the holy scriptures quoted by me, and my conscience is bound to the word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything since it is unsafe and dangerous to do anything against conscience. And his friends just, groaned, and as the drama of the story seems to go, he turns to them and said, well, here I stand. I can do no otherwise. God help me. Amen. So Luther himself stood squarely upon the word of God. It's the word of God that's the authority. It's the word of God that's sufficient. And as we, as heirs of this wonderful truth, have to be challenged ourselves with the thought, are we willing to stand for scripture alone as our authority, as our sufficiency? But there's another little interesting thing. In the 16th century, an artist painted a picture. And in this picture, it had these three men, Wycliffe, Huss, and Luther. And part of the picture, it had Wycliffe kind of kneeling down and striking against the Flintstone, creating some sparks. The other part of the picture was Hus, who was taking those sparks and fanning them into a flame. And then the third part of the picture was Luther holding high the torch. That's the heritage of faith that you and I have been recipients of. And so the challenge for you and me is to remember these courageous believers and to hold fast the authority and sufficiency of God's word that hopefully maybe in our day God could bring a reformation. Amen. Let us pray. We thank you, Father, very much for the wonder and truthfulness of your word, and we ask, O Lord, for you to just confirm in our own hearts our own commitment to love your truth, to see its authority and see its sufficiency in our lives. And may you work that out for your glory and honor, in Jesus' name, amen.