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but God's word never airs. We considered sola gratia, by
grace alone. It is not by faith that we have
God's grace, but it is by God's grace that we have faith. And
then last week we continued faith itself, sola fide, by faith alone. Specifically that blessed gospel
doctrine that we are justified by faith alone in Christ alone
and not by our works. So today we come to that doctrine
that in Latin is called solus Christus. In Christ alone, all
of our theology must be focused on Christ because no one comes
to the Father but by him. Christ alone reconciles us to
God. Christ alone saves us from our
sins. Christ alone will defeat our
enemies and bring us into his eternal kingdom forever. As we
have already sung this morning, in Christ alone, my hope is found. Last week I quoted John 3 16
for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son
that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting
life. We focused on that believe part
of the verse last week. Today we look at the in him part
of the verse. About John 3.16, Charles Spurgeon
said the following. It is not written, he that believeth
on Jesus nine parts out of ten and on himself for the other
tenth. No, whosoever believes on him
in Christ alone, Jesus will never be a part savior. We must not
rest in part upon what hope we have for the future, nor in part
upon the efficacy of an outward ceremony. No, the faith must
be on him and on Christ alone. So as we come to our text this
morning, let's look at Colossians chapter one, beginning in verse
15, and in honor of the word of the king, would you please
stand? This is Colossians chapter one, reading from the English
standard version, beginning in verse 15, hear the word of the
Lord. He is the image of the invisible
God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created
in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones
or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through
Him and for Him. And He is before all things. And in Him all things hold together. and he is the head of the body,
the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn
from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in
him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. And through
him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in
heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. You may be seated
as we pray. Heavenly Father, as we come to
this text this morning, I pray that you will show us Jesus,
that we will see Christ, that we will see our Savior, the gloriousness
of who he is, and the incredibleness of the work that he has done
on our behalf. But more than just giving mental
assent to these things, as if we sit and listen to a lecture
and so be convinced that Jesus is the Christ, but we would also
love him and we would listen to him and obey him and worship
him. For he alone is worthy. He alone is worthy of our worship
and our praise, our adoration, For it is he who has made the
way for man to be reconciled to God through the person and
work of Jesus Christ. Make Christ big to us today.
We ask in his name. Amen. My outline today is as
follows. We're going to look at ways in
which the church in Rome had added to Christ. And we'll come
back to our text and look at other places in scripture as
well where we may see in Christ alone And then we'll consider
some other ways in other religions and popular culture and even
within Christianity, within our own hearts perhaps, that we may
add to Christ what is not Christ. In July of this year, Pope Francis
approved the canonization of Carlo Acutis, the Italian boy
who died on October 12th, 2006 at the age of 15. His canonization
will take place sometime next year during the church's Jubilee
year, and this will make Carlo the first of the millennial generation
to be canonized a saint. He died very unexpectedly of
leukemia. In the same week that it was
discovered that he had leukemia, he passed away. And then the
way for Carlo to be canonized began six years later on the
anniversary of his death on October 12, 2012. The Archdiocese of
Milan opened the cause for canonization and submitted Carlo's name to
the Dicastery of the Causes of the Saints, which oversees the
complex process that leads to a saint's canonization. The process
for Carlo has gone rather quickly. Carlo's name went through the
steps of declaring heroic virtues that could be attributed to Carlo.
Months later, Carlo was issued a nihil abstat, meaning that
there was nothing preventing his canonization from moving
forward. He was named a servant of God, clearing the first stage
of the path to sainthood. First, the candidate must be
beatified, which means that the church officially recognized
that Carlo was not in purgatory, but had entered into heaven and
was able to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in his
name. In order for this to happen,
there must be two verifiable miracles credited to Carlo. The
first was reported in November of 2019 when a boy in Brazil
prayed to Carlo for his stomach to feel better, and it happened.
He went from a liquid diet to now being able to eat solid foods.
The next one happened in July of 2022, when a young woman had
fallen off her bicycle and suffered a severe head trauma. Doctors
gave her a low chance of survival, so her mother made a pilgrimage
to Carlo's tomb and prayed for her daughter's healing. That
same day, the young woman was able to breathe on her own without
the assistance of a ventilator. She wasn't healed. She still
had to go through rehab, but she was awake and recovering.
So, these two occasions were granted by Pope Francis as genuine
miracles because someone prayed to Carlo for healing and it happened. Carlo will formally be granted
sainthood sometime next year. What does any of this have to
do with Christ? Nothing. Not a thing. Over the centuries prior to the
Protestant Reformation, the church in Rome had developed this elaborate
system of works that had obscured the person and work of Christ. In the century since the Reformation,
this problem has only gotten worse. It's not like Roman Catholicism
has gotten better. It's just added more and more
doctrine since. The dispute that the Reformers
had against Rome was not concerning the Church's doctrine on the
person of Christ. Together, they all affirmed the
historic creeds, including the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed,
and the Athanasian Creed, which we read all of this morning.
So the Church's teaching on the person of Christ was not the
problem, but rather the Church's teaching on the work of Christ
was the problem. The reformers argued that the
papacy which is the office and authority of the Pope, had usurped
Christ from his mediatorial roles and positioned itself in those
roles instead. Rome had constructed this extra-biblical
system in which God's grace was mediated to people through an
elaborate sacramental system which controlled a Christian's
entire life from the cradle to the grave and even beyond the
grave. There's infant baptism to undo original sin and bring
the infant into the presence of Christ. And only Rome has
the true baptism. You can only get that baptism
through a priest in a Roman Catholic church. Then as you got older,
you go through confirmation to be sealed with the Holy Spirit.
You receive Rome's communion to truly be in Christ. And if
you don't partake in Rome's Eucharist, you will not inherit the kingdom
of God. Then there's almsgiving, confession, penances, adherences
to the laws and traditions of the church to maintain your state
of grace, and so on. And then at death, there's last
rites and extreme unction. Then after death, no one can
directly enter heaven because you must first go through purgatory.
And Rome has the authority to add or subtract to a person's
purgatory sentence, which is always an arbitrary number, by
the way. Any number of Catholic priests
and theologians will tell you no one really knows how purgatory
works or how long it is. After that, it is Rome who verifies
whether or not a person has achieved sainthood. All of this obscures
Christ, who alone is our mediator. As we read just a few months
ago in 1 Timothy 2.5, for there is one God, and there is one
mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave
himself as a ransom for all. No declaration of any pope or
priest can forgive you of your sins. Your sin is forgiven by
the grace of God alone through faith alone in Christ alone. And we're going to look at some
other ways that Rome has obscured Christ and even the pantheon
of idols that they've raised up in his place. We're also going
to consider some other ways evangelicalism as we know it has obscured Christ. But let's first come back to
our text in Colossians chapter 1 beginning in verse 15. Look
with me again at Colossians 1 15. Paul begins this description
of Christ this way, that he is the image of the invisible God
and the firstborn of all creation. In the verses right before that,
Paul said that he delivered us from the domain of darkness and
transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son in whom we
have redemption. the forgiveness of sins. So when
Paul begins this verse 15 by saying he, it is specifically
the son, Jesus Christ that he is talking about. He is the image
of the invisible God, a little backstory behind Colossians.
This was a letter written to a church that Paul had never
actually visited. He didn't know these Christians
to every other church. that we have a letter from Paul
in the New Testament. He had been to that church, save
the church in Rome. He was about to come to them
and was sending a letter ahead of his visit to the church in
Rome. Colossians, though, he had never met these folks. This
was not a church that Paul had planted, but it was somebody
who heard Paul preach the gospel and then took that gospel back
to their city, Colossae, and preached it there, and so the
church was planted. But Paul had been told about
all kinds of different false doctrines that were going on
there in Colossae that were attempting to try to pull the church away
from the true gospel that they had heard. Now, Paul had some
things to get to regarding that, and when you get to chapter 2,
you see some of those specific false teachings Paul will begin
to address. You get to chapter 3, and he
talks to the church about how we in Christ are to behave and
act with one another and even in the world. But first of all,
before he gets to any of that, He wants to make Christ big in
the eyes of these Christians in Colossae. It's Colossae. That word itself means big. At one point, it was a big city,
but because Rome had rerouted their roads, Colossae was actually
a languishing town by this particular time. And Paul didn't want these
Colossian Christians to feel forgotten. And so the introduction
to the letter is filled with all manner of, hey, we love you. We think about you. We pray with
you. And you are partners with us
in this mission that we are doing to spread the gospel of Christ
in the world. But then as Paul begins to expound upon the preeminence
of Christ, making Christ big in their eyes, we have here in
Colossians 1, 15 to 20, certain language that Paul uses to describe
Jesus in this letter that's even higher and more lofty than language
that he uses in any of his other letters. So first of all, to
describe Jesus to them as the image of the invisible God, do
you want to know God? Look at Christ. He who put on flesh and dwelt
among us, as Chris read this morning from John 1. He shows
us the Father. And we know God himself when
we look at Jesus. What would God, the creator of
us all, the one who brought the universe into existence by the
speaking of a word, what does he expect of us? What would he
want us to do? Look at Christ and listen to
his word for he is the image. He is the picture. He is our
view of a God who is otherwise invisible. And why is God invisible? The very plain and simple answer
to that is because he is holy and we are not. There was a time,
and you can read about it in the book of Genesis, when God
walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. And they could
be in his presence because they were not yet sinful. Sin had
not yet come into the world and separated man from God. But once
Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the fruit which God told
them, not to eat, man was separated from God. The worst part about
the curse that happened there in the Garden of Eden, when God
cast them out of the garden, the worst part of that is that
man is now separated from God. And part of the curse, my friends,
is that God is difficult to see. Whenever you have found yourself
in a place where you've been praying to God and asking Him,
God, I can't see you. Where are you in the midst of
this circumstance, in the midst of this situation? I need to
see you. I need something to know that
you are there. And when we've prayed such things,
what we're feeling in our spirits are the results of that curse,
that we've had to be separated from God because of our sin.
And because God is so holy and we are not, he can dwell in a
place that is so far and above where we are. But praise God,
he didn't leave us or abandon us. Jesus even says to his own
disciples, I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. And how did God come to us? If
God were to have come down in all of his glory, my friends,
we would not be able to stand it. He would incinerate us with
his presence because he is so holy and we are not. In Isaiah
6, Isaiah is just given a vision of God in his holy temple. And yet Isaiah looks at this
and goes, I'm undone. I can't handle this. I'm going to perish here because
I am a man of unclean lips who dwells among a people of unclean
lips and I have seen God in his glory. And what God does is he
causes an angel to take a coal off of the altar in heaven and
bring it down and touch the lips of Isaiah so that he is now purified
and can speak to God and God will speak to him. But even through
that vision we have just a small glimpse of the fact that we can't
stand in the presence of God. As God said to Moses, no one
can see my face and live. So how does God come to us in
a way that we can stand it and actually commune with God, though
we have not yet been transformed to be in his presence? And he
has done this by sending his son in the likeness of sinful
flesh, as said in Romans, and that son is Jesus Christ. And to see God, we look at Christ. He is the image of the invisible
God. Look at the next part. He is
the firstborn of all creation. Now, I want to clarify that carefully
because as we have recited even this morning from the Athanasian
Creed, firstborn of all creation does not mean that he is created.
Jesus is eternal with the father though in his humanity there
was certainly a starting point and that was the baby was born
in Bethlehem 2000 years ago to the Virgin Mary. So in his humanity
and what we call the incarnation of Christ there was a beginning
to that. But Christ himself the son is eternal with the father.
There is no beginning to the son. There is no end to him either. He is eternal with the Father
and with the Spirit. So what does it mean, therefore,
to say that he is the firstborn of all creation? It simply means
this, that God has given to Christ all of the rights of the firstborn. Jews and Greeks understood exactly
what Paul meant when he said this, that he is the firstborn
of all creation. It simply means everything belongs
to him. It's all his. The father has
given to the son everything that belonged to the father. And so,
being the image of the invisible God and the firstborn of all
creation, it therefore all belongs to Him. In no way is Paul communicating
that Jesus has a beginning or that the Son of God has an origin. For look at the next verse, verse
16, for by Him all things were created. in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers
or authorities, all things were created through him and for him."
So if he himself was created, then he could not be the one
who created all things because he himself had to be created.
So don't mistake Paul's statement that he is the firstborn of all
creation to say something like the Mormons believe or the Jehovah's
Witnesses believe that he was therefore also a created being. Untrue. And this was the heresy
of Arius as well. Arianism from back in the fourth
century proclaiming that Jesus was a created son of God rather
than the eternal son. So once again we read in verse
16, by Him all things were created. And so when you go back to Genesis
1 and you read, in the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth, and you read that he spoke into the void and he said, let
there be light, and there was light, when we see the first
quote of God at the beginning of the Bible, we can know by
what is said about him in Colossians 1, in John 1, and in Hebrews
1, that it was specifically the word of Jesus that was spoken
at the very beginning that brought all things into existence. It
was through the Son that all things were made. By Him all
things were created, in heaven and on earth. Those things that
are visible and invisible. So the things that we exist in
now, the earth as we know it, and then also the eternal state,
the spiritual realm, that place that we can't enter into yet,
but we will upon our death. That was also created by him,
visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers
or authorities. And this statement is not talking
about earthly thrones or dominions. It's talking about spiritual
thrones and dominions. For even this earthly realm is
governed by things that are spiritual that we cannot see. And Christ
is yet over all of that. So there is nothing that is higher
than he. This is what Paul is establishing
here as he's laying this all out for the Colossians. All things
were created through him and for him. So if you're ever asking
yourself, what's the meaning of life? What is my purpose? Why am I here? The answer's right
there. You were created by him and for
him. Our main purpose in life is to
glorify God. That's why we have been made.
But what all of us have done instead, we talked about this
when we were in Ephesians chapter two, we took that mind that God
gave us, the breath that he put in our lungs, the bodies that
he fashioned for us, we took that and instead of glorifying
God with it, we proclaimed our own glory and glorified ourselves
instead. And that is the great blasphemy
of the universe. It is, as R.C. Sproul described
it, the great treason against the high throne of the king of
heaven. That we would proclaim our own
glory, that we would go our own way, that we would sin with that
which God created in his image and point the finger at God as
though to say, my ways are better than your ways. I know what's
better for me than you know what's good for me. and we sinned, and
we've all fallen short of the glory of God, as we've read in
Romans chapter 3. But we were made for him, and
so that our sins would be forgiven, and we would be restored to a
state of glorifying God. So God gave his son to die on
the cross as an atoning sacrifice for our sins, so that whoever
believes in him, our sins are forgiven. and we have a right
relationship with God again. Let's continue on to verse 17.
He is before all things. And I love this, in him all things
hold together. What is keeping your atoms from
flying apart right now? Because Christ is holding it
all together. The deists believe that God just
created everything. The deist will believe there
is a God and he created all things, but they will believe that he
just set it all in motion. And so everything is existing
now as it exists and everything is continuing on as God intended
it to, but he's not actually interacting with his creation.
He just set it and let it go and there it is. But what we
understand from this with Christ holding all things together is
he is actually here now. He is with us now. He does interact
with his creation and he does care about us. As I've heard
James White say, if you want to see the wrath of God, look
at the cross. If you want to see the love of
God, look at the cross. For the Father sent his Son to
die on the cross for our sins. There is the Father's love for
us, to not leave us alone, to not leave us in a state in which
we would come to judgment if not for the sacrifice of Christ.
We see that God loves us when we look at Jesus. He came, he
cares, he died, he rose again. And even as he sits enthroned
on high at the right hand of the Father, even there, he is
holding all things together. It's a great mystery to even
think about the fact that when Jesus was a baby in Bethlehem,
even there, he was still holding all things together. And he is therefore the head
of the body, the church. The Pope is not the head. Christ
is the head. You can't position yourself as
the head. Christ is the head of the church.
And he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, which
is beautiful in the way that Paul words that because it implies
there are others who are going to rise from the dead. If he
is the firstborn of the dead, there are others who are going
to come from the dead as well. That in everything, Paul says,
he might be preeminent. In the Greek, this is the word
protouon. So it begins with that prefix
proto. which you've probably heard in
front of words like prototype meaning first. So this proto
you on in all things he might be preeminent means that Christ
is top. He is the highest and above him
there is nothing else. He is. He is everything. Once
we have gained Christ we have all. And Paul establishes this
because, as he's going to get here in a moment to confronting
some false teachings and stuff like that that are going on in
Colossae, well, first, if you have seen that Christ is everything,
and He is sufficient, and if you have Christ and you have
all you need, then everything else that the world will try
to offer you will never amount to what Christ gives. Because
you have Christ. We live in a very commercialized
culture. Very materialistic. You're bombarded
with ads all the time, and these ads are trying to sell you on
how to have the good life, right? Because you don't just see in
a commercial advertisement a woman using a Swiffer on her hardwood
floor. Oh, she's dancing and smiling and having the time of
her life. And you can have the time of your life too if you
buy our product. It will make your life better.
How many times have you known somebody who comes in with an
extra kick in his step and you ask him, hey, you look pretty
happy today. What's going on? He says, well,
I feel like a brand new man. I just bought a new truck. I'm
a new person. No, you're not a new person.
You're the same person with debt. And pretty soon that's going
to sink in and you're not going to feel so happy about that truck
anymore. But our culture is constantly trying to sell us on things that
it will claim will make our life better. And not just products,
but ideas and philosophies as well. If you just follow my philosophy,
you can unlock the secrets of the universe. If you just live
your life in this way, you will have all the happiness and joy
that you can stand. And you will look at other people,
and you will see what they have, and you will think that they're
happier than you are, and you begin to covet. And you begin
to think, somebody else has something that I don't have, and if I could
just have that thing. And then when you have all the
things, there's still more things that you think that you need
to get in order to obtain happiness. You can listen to any of the
interviews with any of the celebrities, any of the superstars, rock stars,
movie stars, whoever they are, they will all tell you they are
not happy. all the fame and fortune that
they could gather for themselves, more than you and I will probably
see in a lifetime. And if you do happen to see that
fortune, remember we have a building project going on. So, remember
this church. But you listen to their testimonies
and they will tell you all the stuff of the world has never
brought them any joy and any satisfaction. And so this is
why Paul, for this people, for this church, in this once lavish,
thriving city of Rome, Paul wants them to see Christ is everything.
And when you know Christ is everything, nothing else will satisfy. The
Colossians even had experience in recognizing even the most
powerful cities in Rome don't last. Christ lasts. He is the one from whom all things
have come. He is the one holding all things
together. He is the one through whom we have life after death. He is preeminent. The only place in the Bible that
word appears right here in Colossians 1 18. Verse 19, for in him all
the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Reminding them once
again, he's the image of the invisible God. Whatever you want
to know about God, you see in Christ. And through him, verse
20, to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in
heaven. As we talked about once again,
the curse that is upon all of creation because of man's sin
against God. Sin is a big deal, folks. And
we should not ever look at any one of our sins and go, eh, well,
you know, it is what it is, or just have some laissez-faire
attitude about it. Sin is the reason we die. Sin is the reason we have been
separated from God. But Jesus Christ, in coming and
living a perfect life, and dying the death that he died, shedding
his blood on the cross for our sins, and even rising again from
the dead, has reconciled us to God. And I love that word reconcile,
because I think in the definition of reconcile, there's even deep
theological meaning. To reconcile means to accept
that which was not previously desired. When we were in our
sin, God did not desire us in that state. And furthermore,
when we were in our sin, we did not desire God because we thought our ways were
better than his. But through Christ, we've been reconciled.
We've talked about the transformation that happens in the heart when
we were talking about by grace alone. And that transformation
means that now when we look at God, we desire God. And when God looks at us, he
desires us because we're not clothed in our sin any longer.
In Christ Jesus, we have been clothed in his righteousness. We desire him. He desires us. We've been reconciled to God
through Christ. And so whether on earth or in
heaven, God is reconciling all things to himself through the
person and work of Christ. That last phrase in verse 20,
making peace by the blood of his cross. The cross of Christ
is the pivotal point of all of human and cosmic history. Everything created revolves around
that event at Calvary 2,000 years ago when Christ died for us. All of the Old Testament points
toward it. All of the New Testament looks
back at it. Even our calendar system, 2024. 2024 since when? Since Christ came into the world.
Everything surrounds Christ. And God is making peace in the
world. through the cross of Christ.
As chaotic as your life may feel, may seem, there is a peace that
is happening in Christ. And if you know Christ, you know
exactly what I'm talking about. You know that peace. Paul describes
it in Philippians 4 as a peace that surpasses all understanding. And the reason why it surpasses
all understanding is because it's better than just a lack
of conflict. It's peace with God. And we know
that in Christ, the judgment of God is no longer upon us. But in Christ, we are forgiven
and we are saved. And we are loved by God and just
knowing that gives us a peace that the world
simply cannot imitate. And yet there are so many different
things in the world that are trying to replace Christ or trying
to position themselves in the place of Christ. or trying to
tell you that you need this. Some of those might even say,
oh, you can have Jesus, that's fine, but you also need this
thing in order to feel complete. But we have come to know, and
as Paul proclaims to the Colossians here, that our salvation and
our sufficiency, everything that we need is found only in Christ
alone. As we confess in Chapter 8, Paragraph
1 of our Confession of Faith, it pleased God in His eternal
purpose to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus Christ, His only
begotten Son, according to the covenant made between them both,
to be the mediator between God and man. the prophet, priest,
and king, head and savior of the church, the heir of all things
and judge of the world, unto whom he did from all eternity
give a people to be his seed and to be by him in time redeemed,
called, justified, sanctified, and glorified. And we receive
this only in Christ. Huldrych Zwingli was a leader
of the Reformation in Switzerland in 1523. Defending himself against
the charge of heresy, Zwingli wrote his 67 articles, said to
be the second most important work of the Reformation after
Luther's 95 theses. In article 54, Zwingli said,
quote, Christ has borne all our pain and travail. Hence, whoever
attributes to works of penance what is Christ alone airs and
blasphemes God." And perhaps one of the worst and most common
ways that you will see man go against this doctrine of Christ
alone is this belief that we can somehow attain salvation
by our works. that there's something that we
have to do. And you might even believe, oh, God has done most
of the work, but I still have to do something. And even among
Reformed brethren, I've encountered this, folks. Just because we're
Reformed Baptists doesn't protect us from falling into this false
doctrine at times. Yeah, I know that God loves me.
I know that he saved me through Christ, but surely I have to
do something. And so there's still something
else that you think that you have to do. And once I've achieved
this work, well, now I feel a little bit better about my chances. But our salvation is only in
Christ. The Roman system had replaced Christ with all manner
of mediators. In what other ways, other than
some of those that we've already considered, does Rome hide Christ? Well, they claim that Christ
is the focus of the mass. But the transformation of the
Eucharist into the actual flesh of Christ and the transformation
of the wine into his actual blood, all of that is at the behest
of a priest. Without an ordained Roman Catholic
priest, the bread and wine simply remain the bread and wine. So
the authority of Rome and all of its extra biblical doctrines
and works are still prevailing in the rule of the mass. It's
not really that Christ is the focus of the mass. When it comes
to confession, according to Roman Catholicism, you never have to
appeal to God. You could pray to other departed
saints to pray on your behalf, whereas you yourself don't have
to pray to God directly. You could pray to Mary to pray
to Jesus for you. After all, Mary's Jesus' mom. She's got that soft mothering
touch. So maybe she has a way to persuade God a little bit
better than you have a way to persuade God. It's that mentality
that made praying to Mary instead of God so appealing. You could
pray to John, the beloved disciple. You could pray to Peter, who
was the first disciple. Rome had erected this pantheon
of idols that were just like the idols that the pagans worshipped.
Pagans have an idol for everything. I had a friend that went to Nepal
a few years ago, and he said that the people that he was ministering
to, they had a god for everything. There's a god in this rock. There's
a god in this blade of grass. There's a god in the wind. There
may even be a god in each individual cloud. And you're surely familiar
with the Greek and Roman and Norse gods and goddesses. Zeus
or Thor or Jupiter, who are all gods of thunder. Poseidon or
Neptune, who's the god of the sea, and on and on it goes. All
the different gods they have for different things. Well, the
same is true in Roman Catholicism. There are different patron saints
that you could pray to who specialize in the prayers of a particular
people. Are you a nurse? Well, then you could pray to
Agatha of Sicily, the patron saint of nurses. Are you a poor
student? Then you pray to Joseph of Cupertino,
the patron saint of poor students. Are you in the army? Well, you
could pray to Barbara, the patron saint of artillery men. That's
right, the patron saint of artillery men is a woman. Are you an Italian
prison officer? You could pray to Basilides,
the patron saint of all prison officers in Italy, but only Italian
prison officers. So John, you would be all right.
Yeah. Are you a funeral director? You could pray to Joseph of Arimathea,
the patron saint of all funeral directors. Do you enjoy chess? Well, you could appeal to Teresa
of Avila, the patron saint of all chess players. Why? Why all of this trying to get
around Christ, to find some way to pray to someone other than
God? There is one mediator between
God and man, who is Christ, as we read earlier from 1 Timothy
2.5. And in John 14.6, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth,
and the life. No one gets to the Father but
by me. But even beyond Rome, we find
many other ways that people, even among professing Christians,
will try to find ways of walking around Jesus to get into heaven.
Wherever you find a false doctrine that is elevated to that place
of saying you must do this in order to be saved, and that doctrine
is something other than believe in Jesus, that is a doctrine
that professes salvation can be obtained another way than
in Christ alone. Like I said, the most common
way is for any of us to think that we can be saved by our works,
or there's something that we do in order to attain salvation.
And there is many prevailing within the culture will say there's
many ways to God. Years ago, Oprah infamously declared
that there are millions of ways to God. In a televised interview
a few years ago with a pastor from Hillsong Church, she asked
him, is Jesus the only way to God? And the pastor replied,
I don't think so. When Jesus said, I am the way,
what he meant was, I'm a road marker. I don't even know what
that means. Folks, he is the way. He is the
gate through which we enter. He's the one who stands at the
door and knocks. He's the one standing on the
other side who welcomes you in and says, well done, good and
faithful servant. Jesus is the way. The Mormons do not believe
that Jesus is the way, but that Jesus made a way for us to get
to heaven. By the way, Jesus, they believe,
isn't even the Jesus of the Bible. He is a created being, the literal
offspring of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother, and the
literal spirit brother of Satan. Yes, Jesus and Satan are actually
brothers, according to Mormon cosmology. The Jehovah's Witnesses,
likewise, believe in a different Jesus. They believe Jesus is
actually the Archangel Michael. Islam believes in Jesus. His
name comes up in the Quran over a hundred times. But they believe
Jesus was just a prophet, not the divine son of God. The writing
at the top of the Dome of the Rock, their Islamic shrine, contains
these words, God has no son. Muslims are so emphatic about
it in their religion that Jesus is not the son of God that they
will inscribe it on their most sacred relics. Every other major
religion in the world acknowledges Jesus in some aspect, but usually
just as a wise man or as a prophet. Even among professing Christians,
this heresy exists. Madeline L. Engel, who wrote
the famous children's book, A Wrinkle in Time, proclaimed in her book
for kids that Jesus was just a great man like Buddha, Gandhi,
or Louis Pasteur. When a preacher will stand up
before his congregation or her group of people. I've heard women
preachers do this too. He or she will say, God told
me. And then what proceeds from their
mouth is some special revelation that they've personally received.
Well, they're preaching as authoritative words that are not Christ's words. And this again is reverting back
to Rome. It's as if these preachers can be their own popes endowed
with special revelation. And if you deny this special
revelation that God gave me, well, it's as if you've denied
God yourself. Folks, if I ever stand up in
front of you and say, God told me what comes out of my mouth
after that, better be a verse from the Bible. And if not, well,
you have permission to call me out, because I'm speaking falsely.
Stephen Furtick is notorious for this. I've even seen some
who have called out his false teaching refer to him as Pope
Furtick, because he does this on such a regular basis. I think
he begins every sermon by saying, God told me, and then he reveals
to his congregation something that he claims God specifically
revealed to him. One of the most common idols
that people raise up in the place of Christ is personal experiences. The feels, a thrill, the goosebumps. I know I'm saved because I got
a tingle. And that's the kind of church
that I want to go to. Not a church that preaches Christ
or his gospel or is faithful to his word. I want a church
that makes me feel something. And I want a church that preaches
the Jesus that will give me all the things I want. And from there a person will
reason. I can divorce my spouse and marry this person instead
because why? God just wants me to be happy.
Or I can sleep around with as many people as I want and God
is not going to judge me because he loves me. A young man will
reason that he can become a woman because God made me this way.
A man will marry another man or a woman will marry another
woman because Jesus didn't say that this was wrong. And they'll
find churches that encourage this, flying rainbow flags and
worshiping at an altar of a false Christ. Friends, I meet people
all the time who say they love Jesus, but don't know him. It's actually very rare that
I will encounter a person that says that they don't believe
in Jesus. Then I will encounter a person who says, that they
do believe in Jesus but more often than not the Jesus that
they believe in is a Jesus of their own making not the Christ
of the Bible. They will claim his name but
they do not know him. And it's as if a bride could
walk down the aisle and stand at the altar next to another
man than the one who proposed to her and still claim she's
really marrying the man to whom she first said, yes, I will marry
you. Meanwhile, everyone just watched
her pledge love and commitment to a man that was not the guy
in the invitation or in all of her engagement photos. That's
what we do. when our salvation or even assurance
of our salvation is dependent upon something other than Christ
alone. Worse than those who don't really
know Jesus is that Jesus doesn't really know them. In Matthew
7, 21 through 23, Jesus says the following, not everyone who
says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.
but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven.
On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy
in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty
works in your name? And I will declare to them, I
never knew you. I never knew you. Not, I knew you once upon a time.
We used to be buds. We used to hang out together.
Whatever happened to that? Where did you go? Now, the person
who proclaims Christ for a time, but then leaves Christ, just
simply had a passing opinion. They didn't really know him,
and he never knew them. And he will say to them, I never
knew you. Depart from me, you workers of
lawlessness. Some of the scariest words in
the Bible that you could have in your life at one point proclaim
Christ but then at the end stand before him in judgment and hear
him say I never knew you. We could go on and on with these
examples ways in which people think their works will save them
or their church will save them or a politician will save them.
This next election will save us all. Oh please. My friends,
whoever wins this next election is a sinner and will not save
America. But Christ is on his throne,
and the gospel of Christ is what people need to hear. It is only
by faith in Jesus that we are saved, only in him alone. In
his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin said the
following, quote, Christ stepped in, took the punishment upon
himself, and bore the judgment due to sinners. With his own
blood, he expiated the sins which made them enemies of God and
thereby satisfied him. We look to Christ alone for divine
favor and fatherly love. Hence, Christ is called King
of Peace, Isaiah 9, 6, and Our Peace, Ephesians 2, 14, because
he quiets all agitations of conscience. If we ask the means, we must
come to the sacrifice by which God has been appeased. For anyone
unconvinced that God is appeased by that one atonement in which
Christ endured His wrath will never cease to tremble. In short,
we must seek peace for ourselves solely in the anguish of Christ,
our Redeemer. He who suffered and died on our
behalf so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have
eternal life in Christ alone. My friends as a preacher I have
no other mission for you but that you would know Christ and
him crucified for our sins. That is my greatest passion and
desire for anyone that would ever hear me preach. you would
know Christ. I am not saved because of my
good works. I am not saved because I'm a
Reformed Baptist. I am not saved because of the
church that I go to. I'm not saved because of the
words that I say or the deeds that I do or the people that
I hang out with or the political party that I pledge affiliation
with. The TV shows that I watch, the movies that I don't watch,
the music lyrics that I know, the music lyrics that I think
are bad. None of these things are salvific. They don't save
me. Christ saves me. And it is only by him that our
sins have been forgiven. We have been reconciled to God. Avoid all the other man-made
systems. Avoid you thinking to yourself
that you can do something to get there. Christ has brought
us there. Believe in Jesus. We come to this table every Sunday
to remember the sacrifice of Christ. As I talked about with
regard to that, Roman doctrine of transubstantiation this idea
that the bread changes into the flesh of Christ or the cup Transforms
into his blood. It's make-believe for them. It's
not real. It doesn't happen. It's a false
doctrine But God gave us these things to us that we would remember
The body that Christ sacrificed in the blood that he spilled
for the forgiveness of sins. This is not Jesus it points us
to Jesus and And we eat and drink in remembrance of Him. He is
here. He is present with us at this
table. And what a delight that we fellowship with God. And even
this becomes a taste of a greater feast that we will all partake
in. It's talked about in the book of Revelation, the wedding
feast of the Lamb. We will all sit down together
in that kingdom of God with our Savior at the head of the table,
and what a joy it will be to be with Christ forever. Let us
take a moment to pray.
Sola Christo (In Christ Alone)
Series The 5 Solas
| Sermon ID | 1027241549362841 |
| Duration | 53:27 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Colossians 1:15-19 |
| Language | English |
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