Please rise now for the reading of God's Word and turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 15. Give all your attention now to the reading of God's revealed truth. After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward. But Abram said, Lord God, what will you give me, seeing I go childless on the heir of my house as Eleazar of Damascus? Then Abram said, look, you have given me no offspring. Indeed, one born in my house is my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him saying, this one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir. Then he brought him outside and said, look now toward heaven. and count the stars if you are able to number them. And he said to him, so shall your descendants be. And he believed in the Lord and he accounted it to him for righteousness. And now turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter three, starting at verse 21. We won't be quite reading all the way through 425. make a jump, but I'll tell you that once we get to that point in chapter four. But here again, the revealed truth of our God. But now the righteousness of God, apart from the law, is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace. through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Where is boasting, then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. Or is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not. On the contrary, we establish the law. What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace, but as debt. But to him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness. Just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin. Then dropping down to verse 13, for the promise that he would be the heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void and a promise made of no effect, because the law brings about wrath. For where there is no law, there is no transgression. Therefore, it is of faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. As it is written, I have made you a father of many nations, in the presence of him whom he believed, God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did, who contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken, So shall your descendants be. And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb. He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what he had promised He was able to perform, and therefore it was accounted to him for righteousness. This ends the reading of God's word, and let us remember that all flesh is like grass, all of its glory is like the flower of the grass. The grass withers, the flower falls, but the word of the Lord abides forever. And all of God's people said, Amen. Please be seated. And let us pray once again. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word revealed to us and this truth about the gospel of Jesus Christ, that it is by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone, to you alone be the glory. We pray that you would guide and direct us now, teach us, feed us in the faith, strengthen us in this truth. Because we know that the idea that we need to work, we need to contribute something of our own to our salvation, to our justification, is ever present with us, and the devil tries to tempt us always in that way. But we pray that you'd help us to stand fast in the truth of the gospel of Christ, in whose name we now pray, amen. Well, at the end of this month, we will celebrate the 505th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. There are many today that would say that the Protestant Reformation was a tragedy, a colossal mistake, and they would suggest that we forget about it and return to Rome, and there shall be one great world church. Well, 62 years ago, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones gave an address in Edinburgh, Scotland called Remembering the Reformation. He suggested that the church truly moves forward only by constantly going back. The Protestant reformers went back to the New Testament through Augustine. When Jones gave this address in 1960, he said, there is an obvious tendency to return to the pre-Reformation position. Ceremonies and ritual are increasing, and the word of God is being preached less and less. Sermons are becoming shorter. There is an indifference to true doctrine, a loss of authority, and a consequent declension or shrinkage of the church. Now that was 60 years ago. What would Jones say about the state of affairs today? What would he say about the current state of truth in the churches today, the gospel and the solas of the Reformation? I'm sure he would be appalled. I'm sure he would identify our time as part of the great apostasy, the great falling away from the faith. As I mentioned last week, our time might be called post-lux tenebras, after-light darkness, instead of that Latin phrase that described the Reformation, post-tenebras lux, after-darkness light. The great spiritual darkness that surrounds us and its accompanying gross immorality is monolithic, gigantic in its dimensions. As Reformed Christian believers, we must be constantly going back. As Isaiah 51.1 declares, listen to me, you who follow after righteousness, you who seek the Lord, look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the hole of the pit from which you were dug. This is a figurative way of saying, look to your origins. Hence this series on the solas of the Reformation, the alones of the gospel, scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, and to God alone be the glory. Last week I began with the formal cause of the Reformation, scripture alone. This is the fountainhead from which all of the others flow. And we considered eight characteristics of the scriptures using the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 1. The necessity, identity, authority, sufficiency, clarity, transmission and preservation, its interpretation, and lastly, the finality of the scriptures. As I mentioned, that scripture alone being the formal cause of the Reformation, the Reformers returned to the scriptures as the only revelation from God against the idea of the Roman Catholic Church and its tradition and councils and all of that. And this light broke through that thousand-year darkness that had covered Europe and the world at that time. And today we must be committed to Scripture alone if we are not going to succumb to the growing darkness around us in our day. Now this morning we shall consider the next two solas of the Reformation, Grace Alone and Faith Alone, and then Lord willing, next week we shall do the last two solas of Christ Alone and To God Alone Be the Glory on Reformation Sunday. Now, these solas of the Reformation are not separate, detached truths that have nothing to do with each other. Rather, they form, if you will, if I may speak metaphorically, like your hand, a thumb, and four fingers. They are all essential and intertwined with each other. As we consider one of them, let's say you consider your thumb, the other fingers are very close by and near, and you can't help but see them as well. It's hard not to see the other fingers or thumb if you're considering one of them on your own hand. So last week, in a sense, we looked at the thumb, scripture alone, and now we'll be looking at the next finger to it, grace alone, and then faith alone, and so on. The solas answer the ultimate question a human being can ask, not temporal questions like, what vocation should I choose? Whom shall I marry? Where shall I live? Rather, they answer the question, how can I, a sinner, be made right with a holy God? This question is of eternal consequence. The answer is by the Scriptures alone we know that we are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, and to God alone. Be the glory. So again this morning we're examining by grace alone through faith alone and using our text in Romans 4.16a which states, therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace so that the promise might be sure to all the seed. Now this question has to do with our justification before God. This truth of justification Luther called the article of a standing or falling church. John Calvin called it the hinge upon which everything else turns. So what is justification? I'll use the Westminster Confession Shorter Catechism question 33 as it gives a nice definition of this. What is justification? It says, justification is an act of God's free grace wherein he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone. So let's unpack that a bit. It's an act of God's free grace. We're gonna consider grace in just a moment. He pardons all of our sins, that's the negative side of it. All of the ways that we have broken God's law in words, thoughts, deeds, and desires, all of the ways that we have failed to love him and our neighbor, past, present, and future, are all forgiven. Now there are those who will stop at that point and think that's all there is to justification, but there's more. He also accepts us as righteous. Now the forgiveness of our sins is kind of the negative side of things, but now the positive side, God views us as having kept the whole law. Word, thought, deed, desire, loving God and our neighbor perfectly. How could that happen? only for the sake of Christ's righteousness. His active and passive obedience in life and in death, which then is imputed to us, reckoned to us, accounted to us, credited to us by declaration in the courtroom of heaven, not by infusion, as Rome suggested, but rather by a legal forensic declaration by God. And all of that received by faith alone, which again we shall consider in a few minutes. Regarding justification, Paul Eliot says, Protestants claim the following three qualities for justification. Certainty, equality, and the impossibility of ever losing it. Diametrically opposed to these qualities are those defended by the Council of Trent, which is the council that Rome convened after the Reformation to address the Reformation. Their qualities of justification are, first of all, uncertainty. No one can be sure that he is justified. Secondly, inequality. Some are more justified than others. And lastly, a missibility in that justification can be lost. This is because saving grace in the Catholic false teaching is not the free gift of God. It is something which the sinner must work for. So in considering, then, grace alone, first of all, in our text, therefore, it is of faith that it might be according to grace so that the promise might be sure, certain to all the seed. So again, let's look at that phrase, by grace alone, and define these terms. First of all, the word by. If you remember back to your English class in school, by is a preposition indicating a relation between a noun, which is a person, place, or thing, to a verb, an adjective, or another noun. And other prepositions that could be used are through, of, for, in, or with. Now, all of this shows, again, a relationship of grace to justification, that it is by grace or through grace. And this word alone, the dictionary says, means excluding anything else, with nothing further, only this and nothing else. I like that phrase, I think, the best. This and nothing else. And nothing, as Luther said, is not a little something. You know, we always want to smuggle in some little something to the nothing of the gospel of these solas, these alones. Now, what is grace? Well, Rome defined grace as a sort of spiritual substance that we get from the sacraments that are kind of poured into our soul. and then it kind of leaks out because of our sins, and we have to be constantly going to the sacraments and getting refilled with that grace because we're like a leaky bucket, you know, with many holes. It doesn't hold much very fast, and so we have to keep going back, keep going back. But the Reformers denied that. They, by the way, used the word infused. Grace is infused into the person, kind of like jelly into a donut. You know, you infuse that jelly into that donut. That's how Rome viewed grace. But the Reformers completely denied that version or that definition and said rather that grace is defined as God's unmerited favor. It is objective and outside of us. It is not something internal in us. It is an attribute of God and His favorable attitude towards us. And it is completely unmerited. It flows out of His mercy. We don't deserve it because if we deserved it, then it's not grace. Then it's your due. It's your wages. So justification is by grace alone. It comes from God's unmerited favor towards us. Romans 11.6 says, if by grace, it can no longer be by works. Otherwise, grace is no longer grace. And works, of course, are our effort, what we contribute, resulting in wages and merited due. Continuing on in Romans 11.6, it says, but if it is of works, it is no longer grace. Otherwise, work is no longer work. Grace is a gift, undeserved, unmerited favor or blessing from God, whereas work is our labor, effort, and deserves a reward. It's meritorious. So these two things are, grace and works, are completely antithetical to one another. So therefore, if justification, our right standing with God, in any way is the result of our work, our effort, our labor, then in that ratio, we deserve and merit our right standing before God. God is then obligated to us, to pay us our due. This is the way of thinking that Paul so vigorously opposed in Galatians and harshly rebuked them for believing it. As he says in Galatians 2.21, I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain. If our being accepted by God is based on any way on what we do, then Christ died needlessly. This is blasphemy against God's wisdom and knowledge, suggesting that his plan wasn't sufficient enough for us and that we have to add to it. This is blasphemy against God's power, that if we have to add our labors to his to complete it. And this is blasphemy against God's righteousness and holiness. that we dare to come to God in the filthy rags of our own righteousness, which is so tainted with sin that just our good works alone would condemn us to hell, let alone our outright sins. Calvin said that if all the good works of all human beings would be piled in a great heap, they could not atone for one sin. So why must justification be by grace alone? I encourage you to open up the Heidelberg Catechism, since you've got that there, to question 60. It says, how are you righteous before God? In other words, how are you justified before God? And the answer is, only by true faith in Jesus Christ, that is, although my conscience accuses me that I have grievously sinned against all the commandments of God and have never kept any of them, and am still prone always to all evil, yet God, without any merit of mine, of mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never committed nor had any sins, and had myself accomplished all the obedience which Christ has fulfilled for me, if only I receive such benefit with a believing heart." And then one page over it says, in question 61, why do you say that you are righteous by faith only? Not that I'm acceptable to God on account of the worthiness of my faith, but because only the satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ is my righteousness before God, and I can receive the same and make it my own in no other way than by faith only. See, in order to stand before the blazing fire of God's holiness, We can only stand in the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ. And then the next question, 62, but why cannot our good works be the whole or part of our righteousness before God? You see, Rome didn't suggest that our good works were going to be the whole of our righteousness. You know, they recognized grace and faith and Christ. But it was this addition, it was this mongrel mix, if you will, of God's work and our work, even if we're just contributing a little. But this answer says, because the righteousness which can stand before the judgment seat of God must be perfect throughout and entirely conformable to the divine law, but even our best works in this life are all imperfect and defiled with sin. So all of our righteousnesses, as Isaiah says in Isaiah 64.6, are as filthy rags, fit only for the burning, not to add to Christ's works. But the question might be raised, well, what are good works? Just so I'm clear about that in question 91, those only which proceed from true faith and are done according to the law of God, unto his glory, and not such as rest on our own opinion or the commandments of men. Does any of us, anyone, do that perfectly? Has anyone performed a perfect good work? Except Christ, of course. But anyone else? Even just one. Even just that one that you point to, oh yeah, back about 10 years ago, I did this one perfect work. It was perfect. Really? And you're proud about that, aren't you? Oops. There the merit goes out the window, right? Now, if we could perform one perfect work before God, what would that enable us to do? To boast. To boast before God. We could say, remember that one thing I did back there 10 years ago? There it is. Aren't you proud of me? Aren't you, you know? No. Paul says, for by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast, in Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. And then he says in Corinthians, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord, not in anything that we could ever do. God gets all the glory. He alone is worthy of the glory. If we can do something, if we can contribute, then we share bragging rights with God. The Bible says no. The Bible says hands off. Don't you dare touch the glory of God. If you do, you will be struck down like Uzzah when he thought he could contribute a steadying hand to the Ark of the Covenant when the oxen stumbled and the Ark tottered and almost fell. And Uzzah just thought, with probably the best of intentions, I'm just going to steady that Ark hold it in place so it doesn't fall off of the cart. And in doing so, he was struck dead because he broke God's law. He violated, he wasn't allowed to touch that. He broke the law of God and received his just reward. It seemed so like, really? I mean, he was just trying to help, right? And that's the way people can be in the way of works. I'm just trying to help, just trying to add to what Christ has done, just to make sure. And that's why there is no certainty in that system. And Luther went through that awful agony of wondering if he had done enough And was it perfect? Did he, you know, do it with enough love and intention to God's glory and so on? And it made him miserable until the gospel light broke into his soul and he realized that it's by grace alone through faith alone. Another aspect of this issue of contributing acceptable works to God was again addressed by Luther in his book, The Bondage of the Will. which was a refutation of Erasmus' book, The Freedom of the Will. And in that book, Luther shows that man is totally unable to will anything toward God when he is dead in sin. That salvation comes monergistically, one working, God working alone. As Jonah said, salvation is of the Lord. This means that salvation is not synergistic, meaning we cooperate and work with God and contribute to our right standing before him. So how then do we receive this gift of God? How do we appropriate this justification before God? And that, of course, leads us to the next sola. through faith alone or by faith alone is the Bible's answer. Not faith plus works, which is Rome's system, but faith alone. So what is faith? What does it mean to believe something? Well, Augustine said it means to think with assent, meaning you agree of a proposition or statement that it is true. And this implies, of course, that there must be content for us to believe. I've mentioned this before, you know, you'll see this wall hanging over at Hobby Lobby and other places that you can get, and it'll just say, believe, or just believe. Well, your question should be, what? Believe what? That has to follow. If it doesn't follow, then their thinking is that faith is just, or belief is just, not really sure what they think and maybe that's the point they're not thinking because it doesn't have a content it doesn't have an object it's just yeah I believe what the catechism in question 21 says what is true faith And it said true faith is not only a sure knowledge, you see there's an object, there's content, true knowledge, whereby I hold for truth, there's that ascent. to the truthfulness of that statement. I agree that that statement is true. I believe that statement is true. But also it says, a hearty trust, which the Holy Ghost works in me by the gospel that not only to others, but to me also, the forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness and salvation are freely given by God, merely of grace and only for the sake of Christ's merit. So that in true saving faith, it becomes more personal in the sense that we are believing the gospel statements, but we're believing them for ourselves. You know, we don't just believe kind of up in the air, you know, like, yes, I believe the gospel of Christ, but it's up there. But we believe it for me, that not only to others, but to me also. My sins are forgiven. I've been given that everlasting righteousness imputed to me and all of that. As Paul says in our text, therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace. Faith and grace are opposed to works. Faith and grace are not antithetical to one another. They are both antithetical to works. If it is of grace, it is all of God. We contribute nothing. So God presents to us his glorious way of salvation, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and he says, do you believe it? Do you believe this to be true? And of course, God commands everyone everywhere to repent and believe the gospel of Christ. And we can only believe it as God gives us the faith to believe it. which I mentioned in Ephesians 2, 8, 9, that it is a gift from God, it is the work of the Holy Spirit upon regeneration to create faith, belief in the soul of that newly regenerated person. But now the question is now, do all have the ability to believe? Well, in a general sense, I would say yes, because all human beings every day believe something. I mean, if you were to just try to count up all the things that throughout your day you're believing to be true, you spend all your day doing that. But we all believe statements that come to us from persons in our own household. Hey, did you take the garbage out? Yes, I did, Dad. Okay, I believe you. I might verify that, but I believe what you said. You took the garbage out, so I don't have to worry about it. I'm going to work. Or, you know, I'm planning a picnic for this weekend, maybe not this weekend in October, but back in July, planning a weekend picnic. You might consult the weather. Meteorologists are saying it's going to be a little rainy in the morning and then beautiful in the afternoon. Do you believe it? Well, you know what, I better take a raincoat in the morning and bring my sunscreen with us for the afternoon. So again, we all believe statements all the time in a general sense, but the question is, does everybody have the ability to believe the gospel, the gospel preached and proclaimed? Rome says yes. The Arminian system says yes. Everybody has that ability. to believe the gospel propositions, the gospel statements, and then exercise that hearty trust. Everybody has that ability, and it's all up to you to choose to do that. But as Reformed believers who believe the Bible teaches that that's not correct, we say no to that. We say no. Now, is that true biblically? Well, let's look at John 12. You'll turn in your Bibles for a moment. to John chapter 12, verse 37. But although he had done so many signs before them, they did not believe in him, that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spoke, Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Verse 39, therefore, they could not believe. Because Isaiah said again, he has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they should see with their eyes, lest they should understand with their hearts, and turn so that I should heal them. They did not believe because they could not believe, because God had not granted that to them, that gift. Now if you'll turn over to John chapter six, this is verse 28. John 6, then they said to him, what shall we do that we may work the works of God? And Jesus answered and said to them, this is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he sent. It's God's work that you believe in him, in Christ. In John 6.44, over on the same page there, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. No one can come. It's a question of ability. No one may come to Christ. It's not a question of just permission in a sense, but ability. And then John 6.65, and therefore I've said to you that no one can come to me unless it had been granted to him by my Father. Both the ability and the believing, you know, you cannot and you may not unless God has ordained that. So faith then is this instrument of reception. It's the empty hand which receives all that God has to offer, as how the reformers put it. Faith is neither the ground nor the substance of our justification, but simply the empty hand which receives the divine gift given to us in the gospel, wrote Pink. The hymn writer said, the best obedience of my hands dares not appear before thy throne, but faith can answer thy demands by pleading what my Lord has done. Faith is not a builder, but a beholder, not an agent, but an instrument. It has nothing to do, but all to believe, nothing to give, but all to receive, wrote Pink. Again, we must not see faith as a work that we do. And that's the way it's kind of viewed in the Roman and Arminian systems. If that were true, of course, we could boast of it. We could boast of our faith. How big it is, how long we've had it, and so on. But we must not see faith as a work, but rather as a gift from God enabling us to believe the gospel of Christ, the gospel of our salvation. Faith unites us then with Christ. Pink adds, justifying faith is a looking away from self, a renouncing of my own righteousness, a laying hold of Christ. Justifying faith consists first of a knowledge and belief of the truth revealed in Scripture, second, an abandonment of all pretense, claim, or confidence in my own righteousness, third, in a trust in and reliance upon the righteousness of Christ, laying hold of the blessing which He purchased for us. Many in our day might say, isn't this just a bunch of theological hair-splitting over dusty old doctrines? Can't we just set all this quarreling aside and just get along? That's the essence of the current ecumenical movement seeking to join evangelicals and Catholics together. And that is truly troubling, but there's even more serious situation brewing, not just in evangelical circles, but in supposedly reformed Presbyterian men, churches, seminaries, and denominations which are gradually a turning away from the gospel of Christ to another gospel which Paul says is no gospel and that I refer to the federal vision heresy of the last 20 plus years. The heart of the gospel is justification by faith alone. It was this doctrine believed and preached by the Christians of the first century that turned the world upside down. It was this doctrine of justification by faith alone that ended the dark millennium of Roman Catholic religious superstition in Europe in the 16th century, when God caused the Reformers to believe and preach it again. And it is this doctrine of justification by faith alone that will turn the world upside down again when God causes his people to believe it and preach it once more. Justification by faith alone is the heart of the gospel. and the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. If the world is to be saved in any sense, temporal or eternal, it will not be saved through our keeping of the law, but only through belief of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Quoted John Robbins, the gospel, the good news that we sinners can be made right with a holy God and become heirs of eternal life comes to us by that scripture alone, grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, to God alone be the glory. The question is, do you believe it? Do you believe it to be the truth? God commands all people everywhere to repent and believe. So repent, change your mind, and believe the gospel of Christ. Amen? Amen. Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, again, we thank you for the truth of your word, revealing to us the gospel of Jesus Christ. Apart from this scripture, we would not know how we ought to be saved, how we can be saved by the work of another. We would be floundering about in our own measly attempts to keep your law and failing miserably. But we thank you that you have revealed the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we thank you for the recovery of that truth in the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, of which we are the spiritual heirs, and we thank you for that. And we pray that you would help us to grow in our understanding of this truth and to treasure it, especially at this time of the year when we celebrate the Protestant Reformation. Help us to be bold witnesses and defenders of the faith before others. and especially those among the Christian family that would deny this and embrace really a gospel that is no gospel. Have mercy upon them and rescue them from that. Have mercy upon us and strengthen us in the faith and forgive us for our sins. And we ask all this in Jesus' name, amen.