Sola

You may be seated. Well, you meet me at Romans chapter 3. Romans chapter 3, this is a one-off topical sermon. You know I don't do topical sermons too often, but on October 31st, it's hard not to. Romans chapter 3, when I came in on Thursday, as a side note, I was, on Friday morning, sorry, when I walked in, I was Surprised to find that the clock was on the back table, and I told Mr. McElhaney, Bob, I said, so does this mean I can preach as long as I want, and you could tell there's a clock right back there for me. So Romans chapter three, verses 21 through 33 is where we'll be looking at today. You're gonna find that on page 1001 of your Pew Bibles. I gotta say, it's good to be back home with you all. Romans chapter three, beginning at verse 21.

Let's pay careful attention now to the reading of God's word. 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 and 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 justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Where is boasting then? Is it 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, 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.

Prayer for Illumination

The grass withers and the flower fades, but brothers and sisters, the word of our God endures forever. Let's pray. Oh Father, we thank you for your word and we pray now that as we sit at your feet under your word, we pray that you might teach us. We pray that your Holy Spirit would open our eyes that we might see, soften our hearts that we might believe. We pray these things in Jesus's name, amen.

Sermon

It used to be, in books I read, even into the 2019, 2020 time range, people would ask, you know, this is not too long ago, I'm not talking about bygones, but this was recent history. For 50, 60 years, people have assumed the greatest question that you could ask someone was, what must I do to be saved? That's not the question of our age, though.

We've seen a radical paradigm shift in American thought and Western thought. We've seen a radical paradigm shift, a radical change of thinking in the Western world where it's no longer what must I do to be right with God, but why do I need to be made right with God? I think God needs to be made right with me. We have a culture now that takes things that we have taken for granted in the West, and just discarded them.

Deconstructed them, apostatized from them, walked away from them, and said, I don't want this, I want my truth. I need my emotional needs filled. This is a sad commentary on where we are today, but I think there are truths ancient truths that were rediscovered 505 years ago, but even more, 2,000 years ago that we find in these pages. We won't believe them unless we have faith, unless the Holy Spirit's working in us. So I'd like to present to you five old principles. Very old principles you're well familiar with. Five onlys, five solas to look at today.

So the first is a principle of authority, sola scriptura, by scripture alone. 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 says, all scripture is given by inspiration, that's the theonukos, that's the idea of breathed out by God. All scripture is given by inspiration, it's profitable for teaching. for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God might be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

God has spoken. He's written it on a page. He's given us his word, and his word does things. His word is authoritative because it comes from him. It gives us teaching. A doctrine is not a word that we really like today. We think of doctrine, we think of dogmatics, we think of like, written in stone, hard things, hard truths. Brothers and sisters, this is hard truths that God's given us. not blown about, they're not changing, but it's something firm that we can stand on and say, okay, God gave us a foundation, the apostles and the prophets, and the foundation has cured, it's dried.

We can build a house on it, and God is building his house on it. He's laid a foundation stone, his name is Jesus Christ, and then we have the teaching of the apostles and the prophets as the foundation, and now we as living stones are being built up on it, but the foundation doesn't change. People might not like the foundation. People might try to chip away at the foundation as if they could. But the foundation doesn't move.

We live in a day and age in which people come to even a written word and this is just postmodern hermeneutics. I'm just telling you what the, if you go to any university and you learn from a literature professor who's drunk deeply of the well of postmodernism, they're just gonna say, well, words are interpretive.

And I am able to interpret something different out of it than you're able to interpret something out of it. No, I'm sorry, words have real meanings, fixed meanings, historical context, grammatical context. Try to explain to your wife or your husband that, well, I know that you're interpreting my wedding vows that way, but that's not really how I meant my wedding vows to be taken. I didn't really mean that I would love you until death do us part. I just meant until things got rough. No, you really meant those words when you said them. They had meaning.

God's word really does have fixed meaning. It's not moving and shifting around. No, it is fixed, and people don't like that, It's the rock upon which we stand. There's objective truth and it starts with the authority that this is God who gives this revelation.

It is God himself who has breathed out these words and even when we come to these words and there are difficult questions, have you ever done that before? Have you ever gone to a passage and you've just looked at it and you've gone, I don't know what that means. Been there, done that. Oh, we can go to other more clear passages of Scripture and oh, okay, that's what that meant by there. We're able to see that Scripture is able to interpret Scripture.

This is what's called the rule of faith. And then we're able to go, but there are people who teach these weird things about, and I'm just gonna throw this out there, you know I don't like throwing stones at people, but the cults do this all the time. They'll take some obscure passage, Mormons will take some obscure passage about baptism of the dead, something or another, in 1 Peter 3, and there's a whole bunch of questions about it, and they'll build this huge doctrine around it about how you baptize, you know, your kids for your dead great-great-aunt who maybe didn't hear about Jesus, and you're sitting there going, I don't know where you got that from that passage from. It's what the Jehovah's Witnesses do. It's what all the cults do.

They take these obscure passages and they use the obscure passages to tell you what the whole means, and that's just a backwards. Reason and logic tell you that the more clear passages should tell you how to interpret the less clear passages. But it is scripture alone. It's scripture alone.

This is something that became a key point in Martin Luther's life as he was wrestling through church canon as the sale of indulgences were going on and as people were saying that you could buy your family out of purgatory and you could do good works to be able to lessen your time in this place of supposed torture that he realized he couldn't find it in the scriptures. He realized that in the word of God, he could not find these things said.

And then he thought, well, maybe I'll go to the church councils because they say things. But then church councils would disagree with each other. And he thought, well, maybe I just need to listen to popes. But popes and church councils and different popes would contradict each other. And then he found that this was always church fathers contradicting one another. And he found that there was no church council, no church father, no teaching of the church, no pope. And even in our own day and age, it's not a pastor or an elder who gives you the final authority. But it's God's Word. It's God's Word.

This is why Martin Luther, when he sat there and he was, as he sat there and he was put before him 40 books, Books that he had written in the Archbishop asked him, do you recant of your errant teachings? Martin Luther replied with this quote. Let me read it to you.

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the scriptures or by clear reason, for I do not trust either in Pope or councils alone, since it has been well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves, I am bound by the scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive by the word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. I can do no other, here I stand, so help me God. When the scriptures say something, the Christian's conscience is bound to it. When God's word is spoken out and our minds are enlightened, our understanding is seized, we must hold to God's word and we stick there. Why? Why though?

The Bible's old. This is like two millennia old, and that's just the New Testament. We're not even talking about the Old Testament. I mean, obviously, maybe that was old. Maybe that was back then. If this was just some ancient document, sure. Maybe it aired.

But if it is the very word of God, then we're dealing in a whole different ballgame, aren't we? But this isn't something I can convince you about. I can talk until I'm blue in the face. I can tell you all about how God has providentially preserved his word. We can look at the manuscripts. I can show you the embarrassing amount of evidence we have of God's word being kept pure throughout the ages.

I could go and I could talk to you about all the apparent contradictions in scripture, and we can talk about all the theology there, but at the end of the day, if the Holy Spirit does not convince your heart that this is the very word of God, It's done. But I propose to you that if your mind is not under the Word of God, if you do not go, what that says is the end of it, then you're not just rejecting the words, but you're rejecting the God who says, this is how I'm speaking.

It's Calvin and his institutes who said, the testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason. For as God alone is a witness of himself in his word, so also the word will not find acceptance in men's heart before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the spirit. Let me read that again. The word will not find acceptance in men's heart before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the spirit. So let me ask you, do you believe God's word? Let me give you a moment of truth this morning where you ask yourself, is this really what I believe?

Because your family's gonna try to pull you away from it. Because the world is trying to pull you away from it. Because the media that we consume every day is trying to pull you away from it. Because this world, the authority of the powers of the air, do not want you to be subjected to God's word.

So I need to ask you, do you accept this or you just accept the parts that you like? Has God arrested your mind that this is the very Word of God? Or is it your truth? I pray that it is God's Word alone. But if it is God's Word alone, if God is the one who has authority, if it's breathed out by Him and profitable for teaching, for correction, for reproof, for training in righteousness, that also has the right to tell us how we are saved.

These are the next two solas on your outline, sola fide and sola gratia. By faith alone and by grace alone. I want you to look back in your Bible with me at Romans chapter three where we were just looking at, we'll just walk through this real quickly together. Verse 22, Romans chapter three, verse 22.

Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ and to all men and to all and on all who believe for there is no difference. Righteousness of God is revealed through faith in Jesus. That's what verse 22 teaches us. What does verse 23 teach us? But there's a problem. All had sinned. every single one of us. God set the bar of righteousness and every single one of us, right in line with our father Adam, fall short of that measure of righteousness.

But doesn't in there, verse 24, we are declared righteous by his grace, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. That big word justified is just a fancy word for God in a legal declarative way says you are righteous. God, as the judge, declares to those who have faith in Jesus, you are righteous. The instrument by which God chooses to show his grace is Jesus Christ. This is what verse 24 teaches us. So let's look down at verse 25. Whom God sent forth, this whom is Jesus, God sent forth Jesus 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. The Father has made us righteous by the Son.

The word propitiation just means brought us into a right relationship. The sins are gone, the guilt is gone, and all the acceptance is there. Have you ever had that type of relationship with someone where there was a serious break in your relationship? Where there was conflict, there was something that went wrong and you were just totally separated and something had to happen where you can be fully reconciled with one another and enjoy harmony with one another.

Again, God has made that full harmony again through Jesus. Verse 26, God demonstrates his righteousness by showing this Jesus, to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. God is the one who is righteous, and God is the one who declares who is righteous. And where is this righteousness to be found? In Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ.

Verse 27, if that's true, if we're declared righteous in Jesus, if we are made propitious because of Jesus, if we're reconciled, if there's harmony between us and God now because of Jesus, where's boasting? That's a natural question Paul has in verse 27. Where then is boasting?

Is it excluded by what law of works? No, but by the law of faith. See, we didn't do it. I don't know about you, but that takes a whole lot of spirit-filled humility. We are Americans. We pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and we get stuff done. The problem is when it comes to salvation, the only thing we've done is done the deed that made us dead. It was Christ who did everything. It was Christ who did everything. We are declared righteous apart from the law of works. That's what verse 28 says.

Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. This is like the shackles coming off. This is freedom being preached to the prisoner. This is saying it's not by the law. You do not have to do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do everything perfectly to be made right with God because Jesus Christ did it all.

It's not what we do, but it's what Christ has done. We are justified by grace. Or we are justified by faith. We are justified by faith because of God's grace. This is the next sola gratia, by grace alone. Ephesians 2, eight through nine. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

The first part of Ephesians 2 is really, doesn't paint a good picture of us. For you were dead, nekros, corrupted. Yuck. You know, Jesus don't go into the tomb. His body is decomposing and it stinks. Dead, walking zombies, floating upon the sea of sin.

And here for some reason, For some reason, this is a miraculous thing about what God does. As we heard, Olivia and I heard the other week from Paul Washer, God loves to pick the runt of the litter because it shows him the most glory. For some reason, God chose sinners like me and you. God chose sinners like me and like you to be vessels of his grace and of his mercy. For by grace you were saved through faith and not of yourselves. It is all by the work of Jesus Christ. It is all by the work that God has done. Faith plus works will never get you into the presence of God.

But I'm telling you, this goes against everything in the American culture. I'm just gonna read to you three statements that you might hear in our culture. Do your best, and God will do the rest. Brothers are best, sisters are best. That's what got us into this mess. It's not what we're gonna do to get us out, it's that God does all of it. Another statement, you've gotta make yourself right with God. I hate to tell you, you're never gonna make yourself right with God, it's God who's going to make you right with himself.

A longer passage, this is an actual quote, born out of the American spirit. We need to be reconciled to God, for we know that it is by grace that we are saved. Man, if the sentence stopped there, it'd be a good sentence. After all we can do, period. We need to be reconciled to God. We need his grace after everything we do.

There's nothing we did when Jesus Christ hung upon that cross and he breathed with his gasping last breath. It is finished. He finished the work. It was Jesus who paid the price for sin. It was Jesus who lived a life of perfect righteousness. It was Jesus who made his father's face shine upon him. It was Jesus that said it was finished.

How dare we then try to follow Joseph Smith and say, after all we could do, then God fills up the rest of the tank. No, that's not how it happens. No, we are saved by faith. By the grace of God. And this is why we preach Jesus Christ and him crucified. First Corinthians chapter two, verse two. For we have determined to know nothing other than Jesus Christ and him crucified. Forth soulless Christus. By Christ alone. By Christ alone. You could not have been saved without Jesus Christ truly coming in the flesh.

There's a whole bunch of people, liberal Christians, who will try to convince you in their books with all their thinking that somehow the incarnation isn't actually that important. Brothers and sisters, if Jesus Christ did not come in the flesh, you and I are in a heap of trouble. If Jesus Christ was not born then we believe in a fairy tale. But if Jesus Christ was not born of a miraculous birth, not of natural generation as our confession says, but of a miraculous birth, then we are also in a heap of trouble.

Because we need a new Adam. Because we needed a new covenant head. Because we needed a savior. We needed one who could truly stand before the Father and say, these are mine and I have died for. It is by the life of Jesus Christ, Him keeping every single aspect of the moral law of God that we are saved. We are saved by the death of Jesus Christ. By the death of Jesus Christ, we are washed in the blood of Jesus Christ. We are justified by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is one of the most astounding statements for me in the book of Romans.

He was put to death for our sins, but raised for our justification. Jesus Christ was put to death in that grave because he was going to pay the price of your sin, but he didn't stay there. Your Lord raised again on that third day, and he ascended up into heaven, and it was proof that he was the one who was perfectly righteous. His father accepted him.

It is in Jesus Christ that we find our life. It is in Christ that we have remission of sins. It is in Christ that we have eternal joy. It is in Christ that we have our life. It is in Christ that Paul was able to say in Galatians 2.20, it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. In the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. It is your life about Christ.

What is the object of your faith? Is it Jesus Christ? Who is it that you will cling to on that last great day when you must give an account for all that you have done? Is it going to be that, Father, I have sinned, but there is one who has paved a path for me to be here in your presence, and the Lamb is sitting on the throne? Is it Jesus Christ who is your hope? Is it Jesus Christ who is your life?

Is it Jesus Christ who is the only thing that you can come to the Father with? We are robed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. It is in Jesus we have a Savior. It is in Jesus we have a King. It's in Jesus we have an inheritance. It is in Jesus Christ that we have peace forever.

I'm sorry, if you get tired of me preaching about Christ, you ought to just find a new church. because it is Christ who we love. By scripture alone, by faith alone, by grace alone, by Christ alone, to God alone be the glory, soli deo gloria. First Corinthians chapter 10, verse 31 tells us, therefore, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it unto the glory of God. If you have been washed by the blood of Jesus Christ, if you have been reconciled to your father by Jesus Christ, if he has poured out his grace upon you and if he has chosen you and you have faith in him, if he has taken out your heart of stone and given you a heart of flesh that when you hear this good news about Jesus Christ, your joy wells up in you, live your life for Christ. live your life for God's glory.

God did not save us because of our good works, but he certainly did save us so that we could do good works. Let me say that again. God did not save us because of your good works, but he certainly did save you so that you could do good works. God saved us for his own glory. God saved you because it brought him glory. Now we live our lives to bring him more glory.

Though we still sin in our lives, this is a tension we have. It was again Martin Luther who gave us this wonderful statement, similar justice at peccator. We're at the same time justified and sinners. We struggle in this life, right? We wanna love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves, as we just said in their Westminster Shorter Catechism, and yet we don't do it. We know we fail that. When you read that question in the catechism, did you go, oh yeah, check that off on the list today. I did that one perfectly this week. If that's the truth, I wanna go talk to your kids and your spouse. But even in our fallen state, as God has redeemed us, we show that glimmer of light, that he's poured out his grace for us.

So as you go about this week, maybe you're a teacher, Will you teach for the glory of God? Maybe you assemble things, maybe you test things, maybe you sell things, maybe you design things. Do you do it just because it's a job or do you do it because you know that you'll bring glory to God because of it? For you farmers. As you're winding down the harvest season and fixing broken machinery and doing all the paperwork that comes with the cold season, will you do it to the glory of God or for your own? For those of you who run a business, why are you doing it? I praise for the glory of God.

For those of you who work in healthcare, why do you care for the people you care for? Why do you go into that hospital, that nursing home, that place each and every day of the week? Why do you do it? Do you do it to bring glory to your father who's in heaven? For those of you who are retired, how are you using your time? Are you using it? to love well for the glory of God? Are you doing it to build up the generations under you for the glory of God? How are you using your time in retirement?

Maybe for some of you, your students, maybe you children, let me ask you today, children, how can you glorify God this week? Can you honor your parents? Can you do your schoolwork well? For those of you who your full-time job is caring for family, Whether that's caring for adults or caring for children, will you do so showing the love and patience of Jesus Christ to the glory of your Father who's in heaven? Some of you might be mechanics or work in banking or retail. How do you respond to clients, customers, people you're working for?

Is it for the glory of God? How radically would it change our lives, how it looks when we interact with people around us? If we asked ourselves, saying this is a perfect world, how will I bring glory to God in this situation? As your kids are driving you nuts and you want to pull out your hair, How can you bring God glory in this situation? As you're dealing with that client, that customer, that person in your workspace that just makes you go berserk and you just, how can you bring glory to God in that situation? For some of you who are at the bottom of the valley of the shadow of death, in the deep pits of depression, How can you bring glory to God? Can you show us what it looks like to hope when everything looks hopeless? Brothers and sisters, we only have one hope.

His name is Jesus Christ. And as we cling to him, as we love one another, as we follow his commandments, as we love our Father in heaven and as we love one another, we show the good work that he's done in us. Never let go of his word. Seasons come, seasons go. Harvest is over, planting will come, but the word of our God is never gonna change. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore. His grace, his mercy is new every morning. Go to Christ every day. Look to him alone. Trust in him alone.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. Oh, Father, we thank you for the redemption we have in Jesus Christ. We thank you that you have bought us back, that you paid the price. Father, we pray. Lord, I pray that you would use this sermon, this odd sermon, that you would use it to build up your people. Father, I pray that your Holy Spirit might impress these words upon our hearts and upon our lives, that we would be people of grace and of truth. I pray that we would stand upon the rock and that we would never be moved. In Jesus's name.