John 14, 1. Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way where I'm going, to where I'm going. Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you have known me, you have known my Father also. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. You may be seated. As we are walking through the five solas, the Reformation, once a month, we now find ourselves touching on Solus Christus, which is Christ alone. Another way people have rendered it in the Latin, solo Christo, which is in Christ alone or by Christ alone. I wanted to use this passage because this passage, the Upper Room Discourse in its whole from chapters 14 through 17, has been a source of comfort and strength. for God's people. This is what Jesus was saying in His final discourse, really, before His crucifixion, when He's telling them, I'm going away from you, I'm going to be leaving you for a while, but don't fret, don't worry, be strong, take courage, for I'm still going to take care of you. I'm going to send you My Spirit, and the Father's going to look after you. He's going to prune you and make you bear fruit, and He's going to help you persevere to the end. and everything that I have told you, He's going to bring back to your remembrance. So be strong and take courage and be of good comfort and be at peace. And so He was showing them that He is a sure way to the Father, that He's going there, He's going to prepare a place for them and that He is a sure way to get there. And so He has given them great strength and saying, I'm going to take care of you all the way there, for I am the way. The truths, as I said, spoken here have been a great source not only to those disciples, a great source of strength and comfort, but also to God's Church, to Christ's Church all throughout history. And that's why we see Solus Christus, Christ alone, as one of the great themes of the Protestant Reformation. It was a time when people were rediscovering the Gospel. And I'm not sure we really understand how dark of a time it was for the Church of Christ. how dark and how bleak, how hopeless both her power and her mission seemed to be on this earth. The Word of Christ, the Word of God was collecting dust in a foreign language. The services were even held in an unknown tongue. The people didn't even know what they were hearing when they'd go to church. They didn't know what they were doing, and when they were told in their own language, they were told to call out in prayer to saints and to Mary, and they were told that Mary and the saints had this abundance of merit that was treasured up along with Christ's merit in heaven, and that they could tap into it by all these unbiblical means, such as indulgences or confessions or certain things. And sacramentalism replaced raw faith in the gospel. And sacerdotalism put a priest between the people and their God, and saying, if you want to connect with God, you have to connect through these means. And someone was standing in the place of God, and in the place of Christ on earth, calling himself the father of his people, and the vicar of their God. And so, in so many ways, people were to trust in so many other things, in so many other places, and their connection, every connection they could have with God, through His Word, that was cut off, they couldn't understand it. Through prayer, no, you go to these other people instead. Through forgiveness, no, these other people will forgive you of your sins. You don't need to go to God for those things, come to us and we will administer those things on His behalf. And so the people were cut off from God, and so this truth that Christ alone saves and In Christ alone you find your salvation. Broke forth like light. After darkness there is much light and it turned the world upside down. Just as that truth did in the first century. Turned the world upside down. You don't need to go to Abraham, that's not your connection with God. Your connection with God is not Moses, your connection is Christ alone. So they went around Judea in Samaria, to the ends of the earth, preaching Christ and Christ crucified, and it turned the world upside down. And I pray that this truth, that Christ is the sole author, the author and finisher of our faith, author and finisher of our salvation, would always turn our worlds upside down, turn my world upside down, and turn your world upside down. May we hold fast to this truth, that in Christ alone is our justification, in Christ alone is our salvation. May we keep this pillar of truth standing in a culture of pluralism and subjective truth. You see, we have a great opportunity in our day. We have a great responsibility in our day. in a world around us where reality and truth is so fluid and confused and obscured and foggy and everything seems to be always shifting. There's no integrity to anybody's way of thinking. If we have this one beacon of hope to give to people, there is a place where you can stand on solid ground. There is a rock of refuge you can actually go to for your soul, your heart and your mind. And there is an absolute truth that you can bank on, it will be the same today and tomorrow, as it was the same yesterday, and that is Christ, and Christ alone. And if we can keep this pillar standing, what hope we can bring to this world around us, and how many worlds can be turned upside down by this doctrine. Christ alone. There is no hope for humanity outside of Jesus Christ. So the doctrine of Solus Christus really came out of this question that the Reformers, it's really the question of the ages, the question of Pentecost, the day of Pentecost, the question that we should be asking ourselves is, how does a sinful humanity become right with a holy and just God? How does a sinful humanity become right with God? How can the just Lord of creation look into my heart and not destroy me? Look into what I have thought and said and done just this past week and not annihilate me. How can that be? How can I become right with Him? The work of redemption is absolutely necessary. We are all under the wrath of God. We were all born in bondage to our sin and we sin because that is what our nature is. We are enemies of God, enmity with Him. We have poisoned His beautiful creation. with what spills out from our mouths and our lives. We are under a curse from God, we are rightly condemned to death and condemned to hell, and we are under the bondage of Satan, the prince of the power of the Seer, and we cannot get out from underneath his yoke. And so we are born, all of us born into a very ominous situation, a very dangerous predicament. And we have proved over and over again, not only ourselves, but humanity as a whole, that we can't undo this. That we can't get ourselves out of this mess. And so the answer to our question then, how does a man become right with the Holy God? The answer must be found in the being of God. It must be found in the work of God. And He is saving men from Himself, and He alone is going to do it. And so He does it solely, as we see in the scriptures, through the person of Jesus Christ and through the work of Jesus Christ. Christ alone can save sinners and reconcile us back to God. Christ alone, His death alone, atoned for our sin. And He alone bore the punishment of the wrath of Almighty God for our sin. And His life and His merits alone will get us into abundant favor with the Father, with the Creator. And so we're going to go through a few different things in this sermon, but just two main themes that we can come out with this doctrine of Solus Christus. One is the exclusivity of Jesus Christ. Salvation is found in no other. He alone is the access to God. He alone is the way to God. And He alone is the mediator between God and man. Exclusivity of Christ and also the sufficiency of Christ. His work of redemption, His merits of righteousness are sufficient in and of themselves to justify us and make us right with God. I just want to give a couple qualifiers, though. When we say Christ alone, we don't mean that the Father and the Spirit are not involved with our salvation. The Father elects us. He's the one who predestines us. He's the one who sent forth the Son into this world. He's the one who prunes us, as we find in John 15. And the Spirit is the one who regenerates us, the Spirit is the one who sanctifies us, who gives us faith, who gives us this love for Christ. And as J.C. Ryle, a 19th century preacher and theologian said, just as the triune Godhead said at the beginning, let us create, He also said the Triune God had the whole Trinity said, let us redeem and let us save. So when we say Christ alone, we don't mean apart from the Father and the Son. When we say Christ alone, we mean that the Son of God was specifically tasked to come and take on humanity in order to save us, to do that work of reconciliation, the work of redemption. He alone was sent to bear a punishment, to bear a sin, and to start forth a whole new humanity. So if we look at our text now, Jesus says, believe in God. And verse 1, believe also in me. And so Jesus is taking his disciples now in this upper room discourse, this very intimate sighting and says, now I want you to focus your attention, your hope, all your faith in me. You believed in God. And I am God, so believe also in Me. You want to see the Father? You are looking at Him, so believe in Me. Fix your sights, fix the hope of your soul upon Me. He's telling the people, He's telling us to look to Him. You remember Moses? When God called out to Moses in the burning bush, Moses wanted to know, who should I say is sending me? Who should I say you are? And God gives him this name, Yahweh. Tell the people that Yahweh is sent. Fix your attention on this name, Yahweh. And he says, and when I bring you out, and when God brought him out through this great deliverance, He had this pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire, and he says, you are going to follow these things. This pillar, and I'm going to be in the midst, bringing you out. He says, follow this. And in the same way Christ is saying now, just as Moses and just as the people of Israel were following Yahweh in this pillar and that pillar, he says, now you are to look to me and follow me. Fix your attention on me. I am the way. Follow after me. Believe in me. The Lord Jesus Christ must be the object of our confidence, must be the object of our hope, must be the object of our faith. He says, believe in me, look to me. He says, no one comes to the Father except through me. And the reason why no one comes to the Father except through Jesus, because Jesus says, I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. This is an absolute negative. Not a single person will come to God apart from Jesus Christ. It just won't happen. And it just cannot happen. Not one person will ever have access to God apart from Christ. He's not saying here that I am the preferred way to the Father, or that I'm the best way to the Father, or this is the most fulfilling way to get to God is through me. He's not saying that. He's not saying, for Christians, I'm the way to the Father. For Christians, I'm the way to salvation. No, he's saying not one person in Islam is ever going to get to the Father. Not one person in Mormonism is ever going to come to the Father. It doesn't happen. It simply will not happen, ever. Elijah and the prophets of Baal would be like what we would see as our, how we should view us versus other religions. Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18, that's what we should see as an ecumenical type of church service. There is darkness and there is light. There is everything else and there is Jesus Christ. If anybody in any of those religions wants to come to the Father, they must leave and come to Christ. He is the only way. These must leave their religions, leave their hope, leave everything they've banked on and follow Jesus, and follow Jesus alone. God has established one way back to Himself. God has established one way back to Himself, and not to be obstinate about it, not to be stubborn or difficult about it, but because if He didn't do it, we would never get there. Because we cannot otherwise get back to Him if He didn't establish this way, nor would we ever get back to Him. If he doesn't do it, it won't happen, so that's why he had to come here and do something about it. That's why he had to come here in the person of Christ to make this way for us to get back to him. And He wouldn't have come down here, and He wouldn't have reconciled the world to Himself if we were already able to reconcile ourselves back to Him. If there was a way back to God, He wouldn't have needed to come down here and spend all that energy, and spend all that pain, and spend all that patience, and spend all His life and all His blood in order to get us back to Him, if there was a way back to Him already. Christ would have died in vain. Jesus would have come in vain. 2 Corinthians 5.19, we know that in Christ God was reconciling the world back to Himself, which means that we were not yet reconciled to Him. There was no other way back there. There was no other way to God, there was no other paths to the Father, no other paths to Heaven and all its bliss and to the God of Heaven. So Jesus says here, I am the way. I am the way. Notice when He does not say to His disciples, He does not say, I will show you the way, or I will tell you the way. He says, I am the way. I am the way. Jesus doesn't offer to us or offer to the world a set of rules for us to follow in order to get to glory. He does not offer a set of rituals that we must partake in in order to get to glory. He doesn't lay out a way of enlightenment for us to utilize in order for us to get back to Him. He offers Himself, come to me, He said, come to me and I will give you life, give you life abundantly. You remember the story of, I'm assuming it's a fake story, but it's a good analogy. of a guy who was out in the frozen river in a boat, and the boat capsized, and he couldn't get back onto the boat. So he's hanging onto the boat, he couldn't get the boat flipped back over, and the village people saw this happen. And they knew that further down the river, there's this waterfall, a very dangerous waterfall, no one's ever survived tumbling over it. And so they know that there's a bridge a mile down the river that they can use that's the last hope for this man who is in the river, in this freezing river. And so they run in and they grab a rope. They lower the rope down to him and they figure, if we can get this rope down to him, he can grab on and we'll all pull him up and pull him to shore. And so they drop down the rope, but by the time the rope dropped down to him, his hands were frozen and he couldn't grab on. And so he tumbled over the waterfalls and perished. The village people realized in their sorrow that they should have lowered a man and not a rope. God saw our situation. He knew we couldn't get ourselves back to Him. So He lowered Himself as a man to get us. There is one way back to God and it is through Him. Through Him. Paul said himself to know nothing in his missionary preaching but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He didn't go out preaching the Law and Moses. He didn't go out preaching indulgences, penance, and all kinds of rituals, confessions, and masses. He didn't go out not even preaching church membership and almsgiving as ways of salvation. Paul said, I didn't even go out to baptize. I went out and preached this gospel, Christ. I preached Christ and Christ crucified. The reason that Jesus is the Messiah with all the people in the synagogues day in and day out, I told them of Messiah Christ. Justification is not found in rituals. It's not found in your conduct. It's not found in any kind of ideology or giving or any kind of morality you can come up with. It's not even found in the sincerity of your prayers, your tears of repentance. does not merit your salvation. Your passion does not merit salvation. Your only hope of being in right standing with God does not lie in you, it lies in God. Your confidence should be found in God, in God alone and not you. It lies, your right standing with God lies in Jesus Christ and what he has accomplished. That's why we sing. Could my zeal no respite? No. Could I have passion that never ends and never fails? Could my zeal no rest? No. Could my tears of repentance forever flow? No. These for sin could not atone. Thou must save and thou alone. Christ alone must be our hope, must be our confidence of having any kind of right standing with God. If you turn to the next book of the Bible, Acts, in chapter 4, in verse 8, Peter preaching to the rulers and the elders and the scribes and the high priest and Caiaphas and everyone else. Peter filled with the Holy Spirit said to them, rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning this one good deed, concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to you and to all. To all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else. There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." Notice what he says, there is salvation not in anywhere else, not in nothing else, but in no one else. There is salvation in no one else. Salvation is not found in any other name. There is no other name on earth that's going to have any sway in the realm of glory. In the ancient times, people would have the seal of the king, and the king's name, as they would go out and do their errands, they would come in the name of the king. And they would say, this king has the authority to do whatever I am tasked to do. And so the king's name would have sway in all the land. And if we go to heaven, there's going to be no name that's going to have sway on our behalf except for Jesus. That's why we pray in the name of Jesus. That's why we call out to Jesus. And that's why His name is the only name by which we will be saved. Your salvation, your access to the Creator will not be found in any other name. It's not going to be found in the name of Abraham. You cannot say to God, but I am of Abraham's seed. I am of Abraham's offspring. I'm a child of Abraham. He's going to say, no, that won't do. Your access to God is not going to be through Moses. The name of Moses is saying all these laws and all these commandments I have kept as a child, He's going to say, no, that's not going to do. You can't say to God, you know, the Pope and his bishops, I followed them and they have given me access to you through their means. And he's going to say, no, that's not going to do. Not even a connection to some great creature of the past or present. Following his rules and teachings, that's not going to do in the sight of God. Muhammad in Islam is not going to get you there. Joseph Smith in Mormonism is not going to get you there. And yourself, yourself is definitely not going to get you there. It is only through this one name of Jesus Christ. People all over the New Testament, all over the Book of Acts are exhorted to what? to call upon the name of Jesus. Call upon Him. God has given us a name. God has given us His name to call upon for salvation. We are not to call upon anyone else, any saint dead or alive. We are to call directly upon Christ. You go straight to the one who is sitting on the throne of grace if you want to be saved. Go straight to Him and call out to Him. He's the only one who can do anything about your soul. You might be saying, yes, I know that. Yes, I know I'm not supposed to pray to Mary and Saint so-and-so. But have you actually called upon his name to be saved? Have you actually cried out to Christ to be saved? You might know you're supposed to, but have you done it? Have you done it in the secret places of your room, cried out, oh, Jesus, have mercy upon me, a sinner? Are you still crying out to Him, God keep me saved, don't let me fail, don't let me stumble, keep purifying me, I pray. To know these things is one thing, but actually do them. It's the difference between life and death. Have you actually called upon Him to be saved? Have you made use of this one name given unto us, given to men, in order to be saved? Have you made use of it? Have you cried out to Him? First Timothy chapter two, verses five and six. Paul says, 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, which is the testimony given at the proper time. There is one God, and there are no sub-gods. There is one mediator, and there are no sub-mediators. In the same way there is only one God, there is only one mediator between God and man, the man, Jesus Christ. And if you think of what does a mediator do, what is a mediator? A mediator helps appease the tension between two opposing people, two opposing parties, so we have God and we have us at enmity with one another. Not because of what God has done, but because of what we have done. And so there's this tension, there's this enmity. And we have to be made one again, so Jesus comes fully God, so he can represent God on God's behalf. Fully man, fully human, so he can represent us on the human side. And he comes and he makes that tension go away. He comes and He reconciles us back so that we are at one again. We are at peace again with each other. That's what a mediator does. That's what Christ has done. And who can mediate between a holy God and sinful man except for Christ? Except for Christ. We walk through the book of Hebrews and we see that He is the one priest that does anything effectual for our salvation. Jesus is the great high priest who has become one of us, so he can sympathize, he can deal gently with us, because he knows what it's like to be human and to walk in this place. No one can say to him, Jesus, you don't know what it's like to be in my shoes, you don't know what it's like to walk down, and he says, yes I do, because I have walked that road. I can deal gently with you. And he does faithfully. He deals faithfully on our behalf. He alone can make atonement for our sin, and he alone is the atonement for our sin. Through Him alone we are taken behind the veil into the presence of the Blessed Almighty. He alone is interceding for us. He alone can present us clean and blameless before God. And He alone is saving to the uttermost those who are drawing near to God through Him. So God Himself is our mediator and He Himself is the dispenser of every grace given to us. God alone pardons our sins. God alone deals with that. You don't see anybody else distributing divine pardon in all the New Testament. Only God. So there, thus, is only one head of the Church. Only one head of the Church, and his name is Jesus Christ. Everything else is just body. One head, everything else is just body. So let no one usurp this honored position in your heart. The answer to one. We are his church that he died for. He says, I am building my church. He is our husband. And Christ alone will mediate for you. Christ alone will intercede for you. Let no one step between you and your only hope. No one else died for you. No one else is crushed under the wrath of God for you. No one else cares for you like He does. No one else is interceding for you in heaven like He is. Do not trust your soul in anyone else, but Him and Him alone. So Jesus is the way. I am the way. And briefly, I am the truth in the life. I am the truth. Scripture is about Christ. Scripture is about Christ. He is the Word made flesh. He embodies all wisdom and truth, as Mike has been showing us. He is the foundation of all reality. Scripture is not a bunch of proverbs and life lessons. It's not about Israel. It's not about you. It's not about me. It is ultimately about Jesus Christ and God redeeming mankind. The prophets of old, as we've learned from Peter, were on their tiptoes. They were on their tiptoes trying to see and look ahead to see this Christ, to see His sufferings and see the subsequent glories. They wanted to see what it's going to look like when God redeems Israel and all the world. They wanted to know what the salvation, they wanted to know this Christ, this person and His work. All truth and all history is about God manifesting His splendor. He is displaying His glory out to us. And the centerpiece of all of it is Him unilaterally saving sinful mankind through Christ. It shows Him unilaterally redeeming and justifying and cleansing sinful, rebellious creatures, liberating them from the domain of Satan, This is what the centerpiece of all this is about, is God doing this. So why would the Godhead so meticulously and so carefully and so wonderfully show forth this glory and this beautiful thing in His great heart and His greatness through the Son of God, only to then say, but, you know, other people have come up with other ways, so just be true to whichever way you want to choose. Now, God's setting out to show forth His glory, and it's done through Christ. There is a glorious truth and a wonderful reality that's only displayed in Jesus Christ. So Him alone is our truth and our salvation. And Jesus is the life. We are dead and we are dying. That's our state. We are dead spiritually, we are dying physically and going to be dying eternally. So we must have life and we know from science you can't get life from non-life. There must be a source with which we draw out this life. Moses and Allah will not give you life. No amount of rule keeping, no matter how lofty the precepts are, will not bring you life, will not bring forth a life from your dead heart. Jesus is the author and giver of life. You remember what happened when God created? He created all these creatures and what did He do? He breathed the breath of life into them. Numos, the spirit of life into them. What did Jesus do when He was raised? And He's going to send out His disciples and says, I'm going to give you my spirit. And what did He do? He breathed on them. Receive ye the Holy Spirit. God is breathed. Jesus is the author of new life, breathing into us life. He is the life and it's the life that we so desperately need. So through Christ alone, a person can find life, and find life eternal. If you want life, you must go to the Source. He alone is the Source of life for mankind. In Him was the light, and that light was the life, and that life was the light of men. Jesus is the way, Jesus is the truth, and Jesus is the life, and no one will come to the Father except through Him. If you're here today and you don't buy into that, the exclusivity of Christ, or the sufficiency of Christ, I would say you do not know who Jesus is then. You've heard Him by hearsay and rumor, but you've never met Him. You've never seen His royalty and His splendor. You've never seen the glory of His work. You've never actually listened to His words and hear what He actually said and declared. And at the same time, as I said before, Knowing that Jesus Christ alone saves does not help you. Just knowing it does not do you any good, unless you repent, unless you believe, unless you leave and cleave. Leave the old life, leave your sin and cleave to Christ with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. And cleave to Him alone. Find no hope and no confidence in anything that you can do, or anybody else can do, but only what He has done. And for us who are in Christ, who are in Him, we must always realize that He is enough. That Christ is enough. We as a fellowship, if we are truly mastered by Christ and Christ alone, and truly believe in the absolute sufficiency of Jesus for our salvation, and truly know everything He actually has done for us, and what He is doing for us, what He is preparing for us, if we know all these things, we will not need to turn to so many other things in order to fulfill us. Different programs, and different gimmicks, and different ceremonies, and all the noise that so much crowds out Christ in so many churches. If we just knew Christ alone, and just knew that He was enough, that would be enough for us. What we need more is Christ, and Christ alone. No extra biblical things on top of Him. No, they're not all wrong. But so often they tend to obscure him, distract from him. We always, we're prone to drift, drift back in the shadows and types and pictures, drift back in the forms and such things. We want tangible things. We want to walk by sight, not by faith so often. If we could just rapture our souls up with what Christ has done, and that He is sufficient for our salvation. If we can help guard ourselves from that. The problem is, when many people depart from Christ alone, and that Him is the only mediator, and that we have direct access to Him, when we depart from that, often we start putting things in between us and Him. We start putting these degrees of separation between us and our Lord. And that is never a safe place to be. We must always guard against that in our own hearts, in our own minds. And you must, if anybody ever up here in this pulpit preaches to you another way, you must find another church. There is one way, one truth, one life. So let's grab a hold of this truth. You must hold on to it with all your might. Bank everything on Christ and Christ alone. Find surety and find rest for your soul in Him. Let Him be your motivation for holiness, for righteousness, for missions, for service. Let Him be your motivation for worship, your drive to serve. And I want to tell you not to compromise on this. That Christ is the only way. Christ is the only hope. Don't make Jesus one of many in order to win people over. What people need to know, and what I believe in our culture a lot of people are going to be desperately seeking after, is something solid. something sure, something indomitable, something unchanging to rest their souls on, in a world that is so shifting, in truth that is so subjective. They want something of deeper substance than the reality that they've been living in. I truly believe that. And if you hold Christ alone before them, people won't come around you in spite of it. I think they might be coming to you. If you hold this truth, this glory that Christ and Christ alone saves, and if your life manifests that, I think people will be drawn to you because of that, not in spite of it. Because you hold to the exclusivity of Christ, that there is one reality that gives hope for anybody and everybody. And if your life reflects that one reality, people will be drawn to it, I believe. Because people are going to want that. They're going to be disillusioned by everything they've been taught and everything they've been thinking. They're going to want to know, what is it like? What is that one way? Just give me something, a true reality, a rock to stand on, a refuge to run to, that will not crumble when I try to grab hold of it. It will not crumble when I try to cast myself upon it. If you just have that and are mastered by Christ and Christ alone, I think people will be drawn to it. So in closing, Jesus Christ has the corner market of salvation for mankind. There is no hope nowhere else but Him, and He is wholly sufficient for your salvation. and for our worship. You cannot make too much of Christ. God the Father exalted Him higher than anything else, He exalted Him all the way up to Himself, and you cannot over-exalt Christ. And you cannot be too afraid to go directly to Him, because you know what it's like to be down here with us. He is your only hope, so go to Him, and find your God.