Well, this morning we want to continue in our study on the doctrine of the Reformation and the importance of the Reformation. I told you last Sunday that it would be practically impossible for me to cover the entire Reformation thought in one message. So I've considered to try to do it in two. And after doing that, I've considered it will take three. You know, when you talk about grace and you talk about the exclusivity of Christ in the gospel, it's very difficult to just summarize that in just a couple of verses. So I have a difficult time with that because as I'm studying these things and I'm reminded of these things, my mind just is flooded with scripture after scripture after scripture of these great truths that really are the central thought of what you and I believe. They are what we stand for and they are the eternal truth of the gospel that give us, no doubt, the clear picture of what God expects of us for salvation. So with that thought in mind, I'd like you to turn again to Romans chapter three, and we're just using this passage as a launching pad to begin this study as we'll go through a number of other passages this morning and consider what the Reformation taught that was central to the gospel of Christ. Romans chapter three and looking at verse 19 and following, we find some great words that tell us in great detail what really the gospel is all about. Romans chapter three, verse 19. Listen to these words. He says, now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law that every mouth may be stopped and that all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God apart from the law was revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and upon all who believe, for there is no difference. For all have sinned and fallen 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, demonstrate his righteousness because in his forbearance, God has passed over the sins that were previously committed to demonstrate at this present time, his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus Christ. The word Bible comes from a word papyrus plant, biblios, since the leaves of that plant were used to make the paper upon which the Bible was written. Ancient Bibles were sometimes written on parchment from sheep and goat skins. It could require as much as an entire flock of sheep to provide the material for a fourth century New Testament. The cost of the Bible in the 13th century could require the entire salary of one year for a priest. By 400 A.D., the Bible had been translated into 500 languages. By 500 A.D., the Bible had been reduced to one language, Latin. That was the language considered to be of the educated people, not the common people. The church then was cast into what we know historically as the dark ages. And it wasn't until the Reformation that the church was reacquainted and returned to the truth of the gospel. Now last week, whenever we began to look at this whole topic of the importance of the Reformation, we saw just the beginning things that led Martin Luther to conclude that there was a need for Reformation or the need for truth to be reconsidered in scripture. In our last study we looked at, we consider that Martin Luther finally had a chance to make a pilgrimage to Rome. What Luther saw in Rome disillusioned him. As he watched the incompetent, flippant, cynical lit clergy performing their holy duties, he began to experience doubts about what the Catholic church taught. He wrote in his own words of his journey, they had gone with onions and he returned with garlic. And those doubts, of course, began to grow as he studied the epistles of Paul and studied the letters of Paul, specifically Romans and the book of Galatians. And he began to learn and began to see that the Bible taught that forgiveness came through crucifixion of Christ alone, that it was not through the holy orders of the Roman Catholic church or the sacraments of the church or the priest or the Pope. Luther's understanding of Paul's theology led him to view skeptically that the Catholic Church's reliance upon the practice of selling indulgences was in fact something that was not true. You remember what indulgences were? They were basically those things that they would sell for the forgiveness of sin. You could pay money to the Roman Catholic Church, and in that money being paid to the Roman Catholic Church, you could receive what they believed to be forgiveness of sins. Luther argued that the forgiveness of sins came from within, from Christ alone, and not through the priest, and not through the pope, and not through confession, and not through penitence, and not through the selling of indulgences. Luther, of course, as we learned last week in an angry response to the indulgences being sold, he prepared in Latin a placard and he placed it on the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. It was called the 95 Theses. It was basically 95 arguments against the Roman Catholic practices of indulgences and the authority of the Pope and what the Roman Catholic Church taught. He taught, in fact, or rather he wrote in those 95 theses, he asked this, he says, if the Pope does have the power to release anyone from purgatory, then why in the name and the love of God does he not abolish purgatory and let everyone go? Luther complained also went to the church's topic and teaching that justification for promoting contributions. He complained about the revenues of all Christendom being sucked into this insatiable basilica church when there was much more greater needs, including the living temples and actual local churches. When a copy of Luther's 95 theses finally reached Rome, the Pope, according to some accounts, said Luther is a drunken German. And he'll finally sober up and he'll change his mind. Well, that didn't happen because what happened is Luther's reception began to grow and the public began to embrace what he had to say because those 95 theses were taken from his door on the church at Wittenberg by his students and copied by this newly invented device called the Gutenberg Press. And it was distributed all throughout Germany. And so as a result, now the Pope began to understand that Luther was more of a threat than he first thought. One of the cardinals was finally sent to interview Luther on three occasions in October 12th through the 14th in 1518. The cardinal told him that he must recant his views on the indulgences and papal infallibility and Luther refused. On the issue of papal infallibility, Luther said, I deny that he is above scripture. Frederick the Wise, who was in charge, and you could say, quote, president of the University of Wittenberg, where he, of course, really loved Luther and believed Luther was his best and greatest professor and teacher and doctor. He actually subpoenaed, if you could say, the Roman church and said, we ought to at least give him an opportunity to have a hearing here at the university to see whether or not he truly is a heretic and give him an opportunity to defend what he says is correct. The fame of Luther, however, continued to spread. He wrote a number of books in that time. From the time of that cardinal coming to him and interviewing him to 1520, Luther wrote the books called The Sermon of Good Works, The Papacy in Rome, The Babylonian Captivity, The Freedom of Christian Men. The Babylonian Captivity was especially a controversial book because it, of course, questioned all but two of the seven sacraments in the Roman Catholic Church. Rome, however, had not forgotten Martin Luther. On June 15th, 1520, Pope Leo X sent a papal bull out that basically said that Martin Luther was going to be excommunicated if he did not recant 41 of the 95 theses. Luther himself describes the scene the next day whenever he was brought to be questioned, and I quote, at four in the afternoon, the imperial chamberlain, And the herald who had accompanied him from Wittenberg came to him at his inn at the court of Germany and conducted him to the town hall along the byways in order to avoid the crowds which had assembled in the leading streets. Because you understand Luther was very popular at this time and they were very interested in what was going to happen when Martin Luther defended his faith and what he believed. The archbishop named John Eck was actually brought there that day to question him. And upon looking at the pile of books that were placed there at the Diet of Worms there, he said to Martin Luther, are these books yours? And Martin Luther said, I think those books are mine. And then he asked him again, are you sure? Are these books yours? And he said, yes, the books are mine. He said, will you recant the doctrines that are in it? And Luther answered cautiously saying, I would not want to be rash. It's dangerous for me to reply to such a question until I have had time to meditate upon these things in silence and in retreat, lest I incur the anger of our Lord. And while expressing surprise, the professor of theology could not answer the question immediately granted Luther's request to give him time to think it over. Well, the next day at six o'clock, Luther entered the large hall that was filled to overflowing at this time and demanded, explain yourself now. Will you defend all your writings or will you recant them now? Luther saw an opportunity to give a speech and a preacher would always do that. He was not going to answer yes or no. So he said, well, first of all, consider that my writings do not all treat of the same matter. Some of them are perceptive, destined for the edification of the faithful and for the advancement of piety. And Luther then described the second class of writings, those in which I attack the papacy and the belief of the papist, the monstrosities involved in the ruin of sound doctrine in men's souls, He brashly asserted that the Pope's decrees have often brought utter disorder to Christianity, have surprised, imprisoned, and tortured the faith of the faithful contrary to the gospel. And if he were to retract these writings, Luther said, he would then lend additional strength to the audacity of the Roman tyranny and open the floodgates to this torrent of impiety, making it to be a breach by which all would rush in and overwhelm the Christian world. Finally, Luther said, there's a third class of works here in my books, and they are those that I attack my theological adversaries. For these writings, Luther offered a small apology. He said, and I quote, I have no hesitation in admitting that in these I have shown greater violence than befitted a man of my calling. I do not set up for a sane. I do not say that my conduct has been above reproach. Nonetheless, Luther refused to disavow and to recant these writings as well. as he knew that that would of course cause Rome to make use of his disavowal and to extend his kingdom or their kingdom upon those men and oppress their souls. Luther would not back down. Only if he could be convinced, he said, of his errors on the basis of scripture and scripture alone, might he be willing to offer a retraction. And he said he would even throw his own books into the fire himself. Well, Eck found Luther's answer invasive. He said again, Martin, answer candidly and without horns. Do you or do you not recant your books and the errors which it contains? And Luther replied, since your imperial majesty and lordships demand a simple answer, I will give you one without teeth and without horns. Unless I am convinced of error by the testimony of scripture or by manifest evidence, I cannot and will not recant. For we must never act contrary to conscience. Here I stand. God help me. Amen. Now last time we looked at that, we considered actually the first of five solas that the Reformation taught. Now this is not something necessarily that Martin Luther penned himself, but these are really summations of what the Reformation taught about the gospel. Martin Luther was dealing with a lot of the theology of the Roman Catholic Church and a lot of the things of indulgences and papal authority, but through it all emerged out of that debate and out of that thrust of the Reformation a really crystallized understanding of what the gospel is, and a crystallized understanding of what you and I are expected by God to do, if you want to say it like that, to receive salvation. Out of those came what we know as the solas, solas Latin for alone, and they are five solas. The first is sola scriptura, which means that it is the scripture alone by which we have the truth of heaven and hell and God and Christ and salvation. The second is sola Christos, which means that it is Christ alone that saves. And then the third is sola gratia, which means it is grace alone that saves. And sola fide is the fourth one that means it is by faith alone by which you receive the salvation offered in Christ alone. And then the last and concluding one is sola deo gloria, which basically means that it is all for the glory of God alone and not the church and not man. Now the first one we looked at was Sola Scriptura. We won't go into that in great detail again because it basically summarizes all that we believe here and that we understand that the Bible teaches that it is the sole authority for anything considering faith and practice. In other words, if you want to know anything about what the Bible says about heaven or hell or sin or judgment or salvation. It is the scripture. It is not the church. It is not a pope. It is not some other hierarchy of religious order that has the authority to tell you how you are to get to heaven. All you have to do is go back to the word of God and it is the sole authority. What it says has the final authority on what a man is required of to get to heaven. As we've been reading and looking at in this Cambridge Declaration that was compiled by R.C. Sproul and James Boyce and Michael Horton, they were reaffirming what we all know the Bible teaches in the Sola Scriptura and the other Solas of the Reformation. And they were reaffirming this because there has been a constant attack in the last few years on the very doctrines that we hold to that are central to the gospel of Christ. It has been over the last few years eroded away. I am thankful to God that there is a resurgent of reformed churches throughout America, particularly reformed Baptist churches, because I believe that they are coming back, but there is a fight that has been ensued as a result of this resurgent of reformed doctrine. There are many out there that are denying these truths. There are many out there that are saying simply by default that they don't really matter. But they are central and they are important and you and I must affirm them and without them we will lose our way. We will not know what the gospel is. So the first thesis of Sola Scriptura according to the Cambridge Declaration was, and I quote, we reaffirm the inerrant scripture to be the sole source of written divine revelation, which alone can bind the conscience. The Bible alone teaches all that is necessary for our salvation from sin and is the standard by which all Christian behavior must be measured. We deny that any creed, council, or individual may bind the Christian conscience, that the Holy Spirit speaks independently or contrary to what is set forth in the Bible. or that personal spiritual experience can ever be a vehicle for revelation. Did you get what it meant? Did you understand what they're saying? In other words, it doesn't matter what you think. It doesn't matter what I think. It doesn't matter what a group of theologians think. What matters is what the Word of God says. It doesn't matter if a church claims to have authority. It doesn't matter if a group of men claim to have an authority. It doesn't matter if you and I have some special spiritual experience and we claim that some angel came and told us something unique about the gospel. The only thing that has authority in our lives on these matters of faith and practice is the word of God. Now the second one I want to consider this morning as we pick up where we left off, and that is Sola Christos, and that is a reference to the fact that Jesus Christ is the only means by which someone is saved. Or you could say it like this, that Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and man. There is no need to go to a priest and confess your sin to another man. There is no need to go to some hierarchy of religious order and say, you know what, I've got to come to you and expect you to help me get to heaven. You, by yourself, can go to God through Jesus Christ alone. You do not need any other religious order or any other church. In fact, I'll go as far as to say, even though I am a strong supporter of corporate assembly of the church, that you do not have to have a church to be saved. You can be out in the middle of some land somewhere far away and you can be brought to the gospel through the works of a missionary effort or something like that and you could hear the gospel and you could come to Christ apart from any organized local assembly. You do not need any of that. Sola Christos, according to the Cambridge Declaration, when they were talking about the erosion of our Christ-centered faith, says this, and I quote, as evangelical faith becomes secularized, its interests have become blurred with those of the culture. The result is the loss of absolute values, permissive individualism, and the substitution of wholeness for holiness, recovery for repentance, intuition for truth, feeling for belief, chance for providence, and immediate gratification for enduring hope. Christ and His cross have moved from the center of our vision, and I am in 100% agreement with that because you see it in the churches. More of it now today is, what can I do to make sure that I feel good whenever I come to church? What is it that I can do to help the culture come into my church so I dumb down my theology, I dumb down my beliefs, I dumb down my approach to worship so that the world will be willing to come and to sit at the feet of the gospel? Well, the problem is with that we have decentralized Christ. We have removed Christ from the center of our worship. We have removed Christ from the center of the truth of the gospel. The Reformation called the church back to faith in Jesus Christ alone as the sole mediator between God and man. The Roman church tried, of course, to teach that there was a place called purgatory and that souls could be detained there and helped there by intercessions of the faithful and that saints were to be venerated and invoked and that the relics of the church were to be venerated and invoked. And the reformers taught that salvation was by Christ alone and through Christ alone and all. That's it. That's all you get. You don't need the church. You don't need the relics. You don't need purgatory. John Calvin said in his Institutes of Christian Religion, and I quote, Christ stepped in, took the punishment upon himself, and bore the judgment due to sinners. Jesus Christ stepped in. He's the one who took our place. He's the one who indeed is the one who gives us salvation alone. This is also taught, or has been said that it is, to be the exclusivity of Christ or the doctrine of the exclusivity of Christ. Now that sounds rather harsh when you hear that word because often we talk about the gospel being for everyone and that everyone should have an opportunity to hear the gospel and we send out missionaries and we support missionaries to go and spread the gospel to the whole world and then how do we believe this doctrine called the exclusivity of Christ? And what we're simply saying is that we believe that the gospel teaches that Jesus Christ exclusively is the only one that saves. So that means that we cannot agree and that we do not agree with other religions that teach that Jesus Christ does not alone save. And that if you embrace any other gospel that says anything else other than that Jesus Christ alone saves, then you are not teaching the true gospel and you are in error and in fact you are teaching heresy. The Bible teaches clearly that Jesus Christ is exclusively the only way. That's why it is absolutely important. It is absolutely important that you and I understand the necessity of evangelism and the necessity of missions. May I go as far as to say, as we'll talk about a little bit later in BE, that we need to understand the necessity of praying for those who are involved in missions and evangelism. Because what they are sharing is the number one and the only exclusive message out there that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven. In other words, listen to it like this, if they don't get that message, If they don't get that Jesus Christ is the only way, and if they don't believe that Jesus alone is the one who provides salvation for their souls, they will miss heaven altogether. They will not go to heaven. That's what is so important about that. Jesus' own words in a few scriptures that remind us of this great truth of Sola Christos is found in John 14, 6. You know this very well. Jesus said to them, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Jesus wasn't saying that I'm one of many ways that I and the church can get you saved, that I and religion can get you saved. He says, I am the way he uses the definite article, the referring to the fact that he is the only exclusive way. He is the only exclusive truth. He is the only exclusive life there. There is no life apart from Christ. There is no truth apart from Christ. And there is no way apart from Christ. Jesus made it clear when he went on to say in verse 14 or chapter 14 verse 6 of John He says no one comes to the father except through me So you can say all day long that you believe some church says this or some person said that or some revel revelation revelation that you receive from so-and-so said this But listen, Jesus Christ says it clearly, no one comes to heaven to the Father, the same thing, apart from going through Him. He is the only mediator between God and man. Acts chapter 4 verse 12 says, Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. So whether it's Buddhism, Mormonism, Islam, Roman Catholicism, Jehovah Witnesses, Hinduism, all of these religions that we hear about and all of these false doctrines that are being pumped out throughout the world, we have to understand that when people adhere to those doctrines, they will not go to heaven. They will not make it there. We can rationalize it all we want. We can say, well, maybe they believe that Jesus is the way, but they also affirm this other doctrine. Listen, Jesus said this, if you do not believe that I am the only way, you will not get there. That's why we have to be so definitive about this doctrine. We have to be so clear about this doctrine of the fact that Jesus Christ is the only way, the sola Christos, that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven. Romans chapter five, verse one and two says, therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It comes through Him. Ephesians 2 verse 18, for through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father, through Jesus. Hebrews 7, 25, therefore He also is able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him. through Jesus. John 3 verse 16 through 18 says the familiar words to us, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him, right, should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. John 3, 36 says, he who believes in the son has everlasting life. And he who does not believe the son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. So you and I affirm, and we believe that the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ alone is the one who can bring a man to God. There is no other way. The church cannot bring you there. Religion cannot bring you there. Baptism cannot bring you there. Communion cannot bring you there. Only Jesus Christ can. And so the declaration, the Cambridge declaration affirms, we reaffirm that our salvation is accomplished by the mediatorial work of the historic Christ alone. His sinless life and substitutionary atonement alone are sufficient for our justification and the reconciliation to the father. There is no need for anything else. They go on to say, we deny that the gospel is preached if Christ's substitutionary work is not declared. In other words, you can't say you're preaching Jesus if you're not preaching Jesus is exclusively the way to heaven. You cannot say that you're preaching the gospel, the good news, if you're not saying, again, that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven. Now, I know that that does not settle well with our tolerant society that we have. I understand that people get offended at that. I know that whenever you say that certain religions and certain forms of religion are not necessarily true and that they're going to send people to hell, that makes people upset. But the problem is, folks, if we don't stand firm for these things, in 10 to 15 more years, we're going to find that the exclusivity of the gospel is lost. And before long, it's going to be, well, as long as you are sincere about what you believe, no matter what you believe, you're going to make it to heaven. That is not the case at all. So we affirm, not only the first Sola, the Sola Scriptura, that the Bible is the sole authority for faith and practice. That's how we learn that Jesus Christ is the only way. That's how we know that the way to heaven is through Christ alone. But also we learned the second soul of the Reformation, the soul of Christos, that Jesus Christ is the soul mediator between God and man. We do not need another man. I do not need to come to you to confess my sin. You do not need to come to me to confess your sin. You go directly to God through Jesus Christ and confess your sin to him. It is God to whom you will give an account, not to me. And then the third sola, which is a wonderful sola, the sola gratia, the fact that it is by grace alone. This hits at the very heart of the Reformation because you have to understand that the Roman Catholic Church taught that it was by works that you were saved. It was by the authority of the church that you were saved. It was through penance, it was through pilgrimages, it was through the selling of indulgences that you had the forgiveness of sins. It was through the effort of the person to find some sense of remediation between them and God and through their priest and so they could finally, perhaps maybe, figure out that they were only going to spend a few hundred thousand years in purgatory because of what they had bought through the Roman Catholic Church. But what we believe the Bible teaches and what the Reformation taught was sola gratia. It is through grace alone. Now, what do we mean by grace? We simply mean this. The basic definition is it is the unmerited favor of God, meaning that you did not do anything to receive it. You didn't acquire it because God looked at you and said, you know what? You're a great guy. I would love to have you in heaven. Look what you can offer to the kingdom. It isn't like that at all. What it is, is that God looks at all of humanity. And he sees all of humanity as sinners who have rebelled against the holy and righteous God. And that all of humanity is worthy of the death of eternal death. And that they're going to find themselves in hell forever. And instead of God sending us justly to eternal hell, he decides to give favor to some and to save some. That's not injustice. That's grace. It's grace. The Cambridge Declaration said this, unwarranted confidence in human ability is a product of the fallen human nature. Let me reread that again. Unwarranted confidence in human ability is a product of the fallen human nature. In other words, we so often think that we can add a little bit to what God has already done. Instead of it being Jesus alone, we say Jesus plus. Right? Or we add in our little thing. It's Jesus plus my baptism. It's Jesus plus my work in the church. It's Jesus plus I'm a good person. It's Jesus plus because I never did this or never did that. And we do that because we believe in our fallen nature that we actually have something we can offer. That we are actually pretty good. Often whenever I find myself struggling with some of the great doctrines of Scripture, such as the sovereignty of God, unconditional election, the fact that God has had grace on some and not on others, and I find myself questioning that, I always go back to this, I am a person who is completely unacquainted with pure holiness. I do not understand what absolute holiness is. I do not understand what absolute purity and absolute justice is. So therefore, everything that I think, everything that I believe might not necessarily be, quote, fair, is tainted by the fact that I am a fallen human and I am affected by sin. The Cambridge Declaration goes on to say that this unwarranted confidence in human ability is a product of a fallen human nature. This false confidence now fills the evangelical world. It comes from self-esteem gospel to the health and wealth gospel. For those who have transformed the gospel into a product to be sold and sinners are now consumers that you want to buy your product. to others who treat the Christian faith as being true simply because it works. It gives me what I want. These, this kind of teaching, this kind of doctrine, this kind of belief silences the doctrine of justification, regardless of the official commitments of the churches. God's grace in Christ is not merely necessary, but is the sole efficient cause of salvation. Did you get that? God's grace in Christ is not merely necessary, but it is the sole efficient cause of salvation. In other words, no one would be saved if God did not act. Nobody. Nobody would come. You could have hundreds of invitations. You could have the greatest of preachers. You could have the greatest of orators and the greatest of arguments and the greatest of logic. You could have the greatest of presentations. You could get all the media that you could come up with and all the screens and all the digital stuff out there and you could just promote it all different ways, but I guarantee you if God's grace doesn't act, no one comes. No one responds. That's why he says it is the soul, not just one of many, but it is the soul efficient cause of salvation. It goes on in the Confession and the Declaration, it says this, we confess that the human beings are born spiritually dead and are incapable even of cooperating with regenerating grace. A central cry of the Reformation was salvation by grace. Through the Roman church, they taught that mass is a sacrifice. The actual mass of communion was a sacrifice. which was truly propitiatory. In other words, whenever you partake of communion in the Roman Catholic Church, they taught that you actually were receiving the propitiatory work of Christ on the cross. You were receiving salvation. You were receiving grace. They went on to teach that the grace of penitence or the gift of penitence remits our faults and even our enormous sins, the Reformers returned to the biblical doctrine of salvation by grace through faith. Our righteous standing before God is imputed to us by grace because of the work of Jesus Christ our Lord. In contrast to the doctrines of self-merit taught in Rome, sola gratia, and the accompanying doctrines of grace, total depravity, unconditional election, particular redemption, and perseverance of the saints were preached by the Reformers throughout the Protestant movement. As the Baptist Confession of 1689 says, and I quote, Christ, by His obedience and death, did fully discharge the debt of all those that are justified. Jesus Christ fully accomplished atonement on the cross and therefore fully discharged the debt that you and I owe. And it is only by grace that God would do such for all of us. Now, as we talk about grace for a moment this morning, I want to go through a few scriptures because I think these are important. When we think about sola gratia, where does that come from in scripture? What exactly are they meaning when they use the term sola gratia? Well, first of all, it speaks to our inability to save ourselves. That's important to understand. because the Roman Catholic Church taught that you could cooperate with grace, that you could do things to encourage grace, and that you could actually get saved because you were participating in the Roman theology of grace. And so whether it was penance, or indulgences, or pilgrimages, or anything like that, you could actually get grace through these things. And so the Bible teaches, though, that you are unable to save yourself, that you do not have any ability within yourself to save yourself. This is extraordinarily important when you think about salvation because, listen, if you believe just for one moment that you and I have the possibility of cooperating with grace and that all we need to do is encourage that part of us that cooperates with grace we are going to end up in a pragmatic theology that teaches that we have to do whatever we can to encourage the soul to come to Christ. And whether it comes down to an invitational system, or whether it comes down to a motivation of manipulation, or whether it comes down to handing out dollar bills on the pews to get people to come, or whether it comes down to dumbing down the theology so someone could actually get what we think we're teaching, Or whether we actually say, well, we're going to remove certain hymns because they're offensive, or we're not going to talk about sin because that's offensive, or we're going to make the gospel so appealing that people will just flock in because it's just this wonderful thing we want to have. You see what I'm saying? If you don't understand that men can't come, if we could just imagine just for a moment that as Jesus walked throughout the land of Galilee, that what he was walking among were dead corpses, that there were dead corpses everywhere. And unless Jesus Christ resurrected them from the dead, they would never respond to what he had to say. That's the same for us today, folks. Whenever people do not know Jesus Christ, they are spiritually dead. That's what the Bible teaches us. And when it uses the word dead, it means exactly what it says when it uses the word dead. Dead is dead. And it's not half alive. It isn't like, you know, well, the guy's dead, but he really can get up and move a little bit if we can just encourage him a little bit. If I have just the right words, he'll move. If that were the case, folks, I would be at the funeral home after this service. The Bible says it like this, Ephesians chapter two, verse one, and you who were dead in your trespasses and sins, you were dead in your sins. You were lifeless. You did not have the ability to move, to respond, to hear, to listen, to follow. You were dead. In this deadness, it says in chapter two of Ephesians, verse one and following, you were walking according to the course of this world. He says, "...you were walking according to the prince and the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath." In other words, as a dead spiritual person, you are just living according to your flesh and what your flesh tells you to do, and based upon what Scripture says, the flesh cannot please God. The Bible says in Colossians 2, verse 13, and you being dead in your trespasses. I'm like this, you know whenever the Bible says something how many times does it have to say it before we believe it? Right just one times all we need Ephesians 4 17 says this I say therefore and testify in the Lord that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk in the futility of their mind having their understanding darkened being alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them in other words he says in this text he says their mind and their understanding is darkened and They're alienated from God the life of God. There's ignorance in them and they are blind in their heart So not only are we dead We're dark. We're alienated from the life of God. We're ignorant and we're blind That's pretty rough and that's pretty serious stuff well as a result of that as a result of us being dead blind ignorant apart from the life of God We're in a hopeless condition. We cannot do anything to save ourselves. We cannot merit anything before God. We have nothing to offer. John 6, 44 says it like this. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. Let me read it again. No one can come. Nobody. Nobody can come. So the point is, here's a dead sinner who needs life, who needs heaven, who needs to have his sins forgiven. But he can't come. He can't respond. And Jesus reaffirms the truth by saying, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up in the last day. Reaffirming this great, wonderful truth of the grace of God. But listen, unless God's grace exclusively acts, that soul that is dead in its sin cannot respond to God and cannot come. It gets even clearer because John 6.65 says this, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up in the last day. Then it says later in John 6.43, why do you not understand my speech? Because you are not able to understand my word. He's using the word over and over again. The word cannot, the word unable to. That word is used throughout scripture in another way. It's the word power, dunamis. In other words, what he's saying is that you and I do not have the power to respond. We don't have the power to come. We don't have the ability to come. We don't have the ability to come to Christ. Now, talking about this grace of Christ, we're talking about the inability of man to respond. He is unable to respond. Let me just refer to another passage just for a second in Romans chapter 5. I don't have this on my notes, but I thought it would be important just to bring out. In Romans chapter 5 and verse 6 and following, when it was talking about how Christ died for us and how he secured for us what we need in In him for salvation Verse 6 says this this is Romans 5 6 for when we were still without strength In that time in just the right time is the point of the passage Christ died for the ungodly For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, but yet perhaps for a good man, someone would even dare to die. Yet God then demonstrates his love toward us, even while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. So right at the very beginning of this text, he tells us we were without strength, we were ungodly, and we were enemies, and we were sinners. I was trying to bring sinners and enemies together. We were sinners and enemies. So the point of this passage is we were in a hopeless state, unable to respond completely without strength to respond. So his point of this passages is that even while we were in that condition, we were dead corpses, unable to respond to the grace of Christ. Jesus Christ came and died for us so that we would not die in our sins. Listen to this passage in John 12, Sobering sobering passage of the inability of man to respond chapter 12 verse 37 says this is John 12 37 But although he had done so many signs before them they did not believe in him now this is an important passage to remember because when we're talking about the inability of man to respond to the gospel and Here you have the greatest witness who has ever come in the entire history of the world, who shows up on scene. He's God in the flesh. He comes with profound theology. He comes with authoritative lectures as he gives them, as it indicates in Matthew 5-7. He not only does miracles, but he does profound miracles that are not even explainable by man. He raises the dead. He heals the sick. He heals the blind. He heals the deaf and the mute. He gives limbs to people who don't have arms and people who don't have feet. He gives them. He creates it on the spot. He creates fish and food on the spot. He does profound miracles. And it says, even though, it says in chapter 12 verse 37 of John, that He had done many signs before them, He had given them the best of preaching, the best of teaching, the best of miracles. And it says they did not believe. They didn't believe. It was a prophecy being fulfilled according to the text in verse 38 that the word of Isaiah might be fulfilled, which said, Lord, who has believed our report and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? In other words, this is a prophecy of what the old Testament said was going to happen whenever Jesus Christ came. that he was going to preach, he was going to teach, he was going to perform miracles, he was going to show himself completely and authoritatively that he was the son of God and instead of them saying, hey, the evidence is clear, no doubt I've got to believe this, it's right in front of my face. Instead of that, they did not believe. There's a reason. And the reason speaks to the inability of man. It does not say that Jesus Christ was not effective. It does not say that he did not have the right method. That maybe he should have used evangelism explosion instead of continuous witnessing training. Or maybe perhaps he wasn't skilled in how to talk to the soul of man. Maybe he needed to incorporate some psychology along the way. Or maybe his method was not right. Perhaps maybe he needed to have some more music that would move the soul and make people respond. So my point is this. Listen, before I go any further, I want to put a little footnote down here at the bottom. That does not mean we don't get trained in evangelism. That does not mean we don't have skill in that area. That does not mean that we don't have great worship together and so forth. But the point is that that does not save. That's not what saves them. Because in this text in verse 39, it says, therefore, they could not believe. Oh, wee. Woo. They couldn't believe. That means they didn't have the ability to believe. You say, well, wait a minute. Couldn't they think? Couldn't they rationalize? Couldn't they see? Couldn't they understand? According to the scripture, they couldn't. All people without the grace of God can't believe. Can't believe. Don't have the power to believe. Jeremiah 13 verse 23 says it like this. Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then he says, may you also do good, who are accustomed to doing evil. In other words, is it possible for us to change our nature? Is it possible for us to do that? Can we do that? Romans chapter eight, verse seven through eight says, because the carnal mind, the fleshly mind is enmity against God, for, listen to this, it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be." In other words, the fleshly mind, the lost unregenerate mind, that has been unaffected by the grace of God, cannot be subject to God. So then he says in verse 8 of Romans chapter 8, so then those who are in the flesh, another word would be lost, unregenerate, without Christ, so then those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Can't. It's impossible. John 3 verse 3 says, Jesus answered and said to him, most assuredly I say unto you, unless you are born again, you cannot even see the kingdom of God. So here you have this unregenerate dead person who needs to respond to the gospel. And the Bible says, unless God gives him life, he births him again. Unless he has the ability to have regenerating birth from heaven, he can't even see the kingdom of God. Romans chapter 3 verse 10 goes on and tells us like this, there's none righteous, no not one. There's none who understands. There's none who seek after God. I don't know how many verses we have to go through to reaffirm the fact that men are in, they're unable to respond to this gospel that we proclaim. The Bible teaches over and over and over again, apart from God's wonderful work of grace in the life of the soul, no one responds. No one. Grace, listen to this, grants what we don't have and gives us what we don't deserve. Ephesians 2 verse 4 and following says it like this even when I love this even when we were dead Even when we were blind even when we were ignorant even when we were enemies of God even when we cared nothing about the things of God it says he Made us alive together with Christ Then it puts this in quotations for by grace you have been saved and And He raises us up together, it says, and makes us to sit together in the heavenly places in Christ, that in the ages to come, He might show the exceeding riches of His grace and His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. And then the famous verse, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. You see, the thing is, what is so wonderful about this, whenever you and I get to heaven, there's nothing we will be able to give credit to ourselves for. Nothing. I mean, if you're dead and you're lying in the grave and someone like Jesus Christ shows up and resurrects you from the grave, can you say, you know what? I was halfway there. I'd climbed out. I was three more feet. No, nothing like that at all. You will not be able to say anything. You can't even say you had the faith because God says that's a gift. You can't even say you repented because God said he gave you that. Why in the world do we have a problem with that whenever we don't even boast about the fact that God gave us life at the very beginning? We had no choice in that, right? God gave us life at the very beginning. God gives life for salvation. He grants it by His grace. And this is where we go so woefully wrong whenever we move away from that and we think that God is doing something unfair if He doesn't save everybody. Here's the point, folks. It's all of grace. It's unmerited, meaning it's undeserved. In other words, when we look at all of these passages and we read these passages, we have to always keep in mind, as I've told the class we've been looking at on the 1689 Confession, is that we have to consider and not forget that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Therefore, all are destined for hell. and all are worthy of the eternal wrath of Almighty God. And since we're all worthy of the eternal wrath of God, then why in the world are we upset if God decides to be gracious and to save? All we can do is sit back and thank God that He was willing to be gracious toward us when we should be right now as Martin Luther so constantly reaffirmed in his own life. He was constantly just tortured by the reality that God was a God of justice and a God of wrath. And he felt that pressure, that immense pressure of God's wrath being poured out on his own soul. And he could find no sense of forgiveness and peace through the Roman Catholic Church. It wasn't until he finally embraced justification by faith alone in Christ alone, through grace alone, that he was able to finally get peace. It is through that and that alone that we receive our salvation. It is through that and that alone that we receive our life. By the grace of Almighty God. Romans 3 24 says this, we read it earlier that we are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Y'all, we need to set the clock back. We didn't set that one back. So it's 10 o'clock. So let's get, let's keep going. All right. Alright, let me just quickly finish up with a few more words here on this because this is so good. The passage we read earlier as we began this study this morning is found in Romans chapter 3 because this really sums it all up. This really sums up Sola Gratia right here. This is really the whole package in one passage. I've always loved this passage because it not only has clarity but it has great depth. As he clearly has taught us in the passage in chapter three, verse 19 and following that we all stand before God guilty, right? What are we guilty of? Well, we're guilty of violating the laws of God. Another way of saying that is we're guilty of sin. We're guilty of that. We have sinned and we not only have sinned once, we have sinned multiple times, hundreds of times, thousands of times. perhaps millions. But even in this text here, it goes on a little later on as he talks about the save ability of humanity. This is what is so good about this. I love this passage because after it has absolutely blanket at all of humanity and said, everybody's guilty and the guilt, according to Romans chapter six, verse 23 says, because you have sinned, right? The wages of sin is what death. God says, capital punishment for everybody. You're all gonna die. And you're not only gonna die physically, you're gonna die spiritually. And you're gonna spend the rest of your life, eternally, separated from God for all eternity in hell. So as a result of our sin, we are condemned and now we're all guilty, standing before this great courtroom of God. And what hope do we have? The hope that we have is found and wrapped up in that great word called grace. because in that word grace, it talks about the save ability of man. Look at it in this text because he says in verse 22, he says that that righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to listen to this to all and upon all who, what, who believe for there is no difference. In other words, the Jew or the Gentile, For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, so we're all in the same condition, all of us. All of us worthy of death, all of us worthy of capital punishment, all of us worthy of eternal hell. And God just in doing so to send us there, but by his grace, he steps in for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But then here comes this wonderful, magnificent grace of God. Verse 24 being justified freely by his grace. We were declared righteous. That's the word. It is a judicial term. It is a legal term. It is a courtroom term. It is there you are facing eternal death. You have been condemned. The jury has come in, if you will, and convicted you of all charges. You now face eternal separation from God for all eternity. But then God says, no, I have someone else who's already paid your penalty. He's already stepped in and paid the price for you. So therefore, because I want to, because I desire to, and because I want to show myself as a gracious and loving and merciful judge, I will justify you. I will declare you righteous, I will make you righteous, and I do it according to verse 24, I do it freely. Based upon his own pleasure, according to Ephesians chapter one, he does it freely, not constrained by you, not constrained by me, not constrained by any other thing other than his own sovereign will. He does it freely, and he says it comes through grace. Unmerited favor. It is in the redemption of Jesus Christ. Wonderful, wonderful text. He goes on and says that that redemption that we have in Christ, that payment that Jesus paid, on the cross, we get a little heavenly perspective for a moment as God looks down and sees what is going on on the cross with Jesus hanging there on the cross in verse 25. It says, whom God, that is referring to Jesus Christ, the whom there, whom God the Father, is the point, set forth as a propitiation through his blood. Jesus Christ hung on the cross satisfying the wrath of God so that you would not have to receive the wrath of God. And by the way, it was a real satisfaction. It wasn't a potential satisfaction. It was real. He literally satisfied what God demanded. He literally satisfied the wrath of God so that I would not have to receive the wrath of God. And in that, every sin I've ever committed in the past, every sin I have ever committed in the future, has already been atoned for. And the wrath has been satisfied. Goes on and tells us there's a bigger reason for all of this. A lot of people think that all this was for us. We have a great benefit, and I'm thankful for it. But there's a bigger reason. Look at it a little further on in verse 25. He says that God had put forth his own son to be that propitiation through his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness. And that's the point of the passage, to demonstrate his righteousness. The whole point of redemption, folks, is not to show our way to heaven, but to demonstrate that God's righteous. In other words, people ask the question, how can a just and righteous and holy and wrathful God save anybody? That was Martin Luther's problem. He couldn't figure that out. He couldn't make any heads or tails of that. How can God, who's a holy and righteous and just God, how can He save me, a sinner? How can He take me to heaven and not compromise His own character? How can He just say, I'll just forgive them all, bring them home? We would be all up in arms if we heard of something happening in a courtroom wherever a judge had a criminal brought before him who had committed capital murder and all the evidence was clear that he had committed the crime. And then the judge just says, you know what? I'm just a nice guy. We'll see you later. You're free to go. Oh my goodness. We'd be all upset. We'd be like, how in the world can a judge do such a thing? Well, the Bible tells us that the reason why God could be righteous and save anybody is because he paid the penalty through Christ. And that's the point of the passage, that even though he had passed over many sins, as indicated in verse 25, even though he should have acted in wrath, he passed over those sins because he knew that in the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross, those sins would be atoned for, the wrath of God would be satisfied. Verse 26 says that all of this was done to demonstrate at this present time his righteousness, that he might be just, and that he would be the justifier of those who come to faith in Jesus Christ. A couple other verses and I'll conclude. Acts 15 11 says this, whenever they were gathering together at the church at Jerusalem to consider whether Gentiles could be saved, they said, but we believe that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved in the same manner as they were. They get saved the same way. It doesn't matter if it's American, Islamic, Some other group of people far away who are in an unreached group, the same grace of God is needed to save them. The same gospel is needed to save them. The worst thing we could ever do is dumb down the gospel and leave out the elements that are clearly taught in scripture. You eliminate the message, you eliminate the truth, you eliminate the salvation. Romans chapter 11 verse 6 says it like this, as it concludes the great doctrine of salvation by grace alone. It says, and if it is by grace, then it's no longer of works. Otherwise, grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it's no longer grace. Otherwise, work is no longer work. Did you get that? They don't mix. They're oil and water. They don't mix. You can't say, hey, grace of God, I love the grace of God, but I'm going to add a little bit along the way. I'm going to do my part. No, you don't have a part. The part you have is God graciously saving you and giving you everything that comes to Christ. faith, repentance, confession, and all of it are a gracious gift of God. Now, the last statement of the Cambridge confession and declaration concerning sola gratia is this, and we will agree with them and say the same thing. We reaffirm that in salvation, we are rescued from God's wrath by grace alone. It is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that brings us to Christ by releasing us from our bondage to sin and raising us from spiritual death to spiritual life. We deny that salvation is in any sense a human work. Human methods, techniques, and strategies by themselves cannot accomplish the transformation. Faith is not produced by an unregenerate human nature. Faith is the gift of God. And that's our next topic. Sola Fide.