Sola Scriptura
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Morning. My name is Spencer and I am one of the pastors here. So we're going to be looking at Sola Scriptura today. We are in a series called the five solas. These are the five anthems that came out of the Protestant Reformation. And we are in, well, last week, Chet walked us through kind of an overview of all five and we're posting up in Sola Scriptura today, which means scripture alone.
So when I was in college, I was a new believer. I was excited about following Jesus. And when I got to college, I was like, I need Christian community. As Chet said at the very beginning, like you Christians need community. I realized that. And I was like, I want to find some people to love Jesus.
I went to a college, Presbyterian college, though it's called Presbyterian college. It was very much not a Christian college. So I got on campus and I met some people that said, hey, come to this, this discussion group, this faith discussion group on Monday night. And I said, sweet, I'm there. So I rock up, got my pocket Bible, ready to go, excited.
I walk in and they say, oh, they pointed at my Bible. You're not going to need that here. I said, what? No, seriously, like we, we don't, you're not going to need that here. And I was like, oh, okay. So I put it down and, uh, I was like, this is gonna be the worst Bible study ever, but we'll give it a go.
Uh, and for the next hour, I listened to a bunch of 18 and 22 year olds pontificate and theorize about what Christianity was all about by never pointing to the Bible at all. And it just blew my mind. It would be like going to a calculus class and day one, the professor just says, hey, put your books away. You're not going to need that this semester. What do you think math is? What is math to you?
You'd be like, no, I'm out. Well, guess what? I stayed the whole hour and, uh, because I didn't want to disturb the herd and make it seen. I was like, okay, I'm just going to be curious here and watch and see what happens. And it blew my mind that you could actually have a discussion about Jesus and Christianity without actually opening the Bible. And what I did not realize at the time is that I had been shaped by a view of the scriptures that has a long tradition.
That tradition is called sola scriptura. I like how one pastor defines this. He says, sola scriptura, he says, is the Bible has the final say on everything. The Bible has something to say about that. The Bible has the final say on everything. The Bible has something to say about.
So sola means alone. Scripture alone is the final authority for what is true. That's why I found that group so shocking. And also why I never went back that you could actually have a discussion about Jesus without going to the scriptures. And as I would go on to learn over the coming years, is that these beliefs were rooted in the Reformation tradition of sola scriptura that goes not just back to the Reformation, but goes all the way back to the early church. So today we're going to look at sola scriptura in this series.
It's basically what the five solars are answering this question of how are we saved? Okay. And if it's as Chet was walked us through last week, if it's by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, if that's what that is, then we've got to have some source material for that statement. And this is where Protestants and Catholics have a different answer. Have a different answer for what the answer is for that. So we're going to walk through this today.
I'm going to walk us through the history of how this came to be. And then we're going to sit in what the Bible teaches on this. And then we'll close with some encouragements that I think are good for us as we continue to reform as the Protestant tradition is. That we can grow in this encouragement to continue to be people of sola scriptura. So let me pray for us.
And then we will jump in. Lord, we love you. We thank you for the goodness of the gospel, that it sets us apart to be a people that can sit under the authority of your word. God, I pray that you would mold and shape us this morning in your image, that you'd help us be present, and that we respond in Christ's name. Amen. Okay.
So one of them, one of the common misconceptions about the Reformation is that Martin Luther and the Reformers came up with new ideas. These were not new ideas. Luther was not the first to say these ideas like scripture alone. This goes back all the way to the first century church. The first century church believed the Bible was the final authority on what is true. And if that is the case, then how do things go awry?
How do the church go off the rails? In order to do that, we've got to walk through some church history. Now, I know when I say history, some of you are like, please, no. Like, don't. I hated history in high school. I don't.
Listen. Church history can be helpful. So come for the church history. Stay for some of the incredible baby names you're about to hear. For those of you that are thinking about starting families, boy, oh boy, do I have some special names for you. Church history is chock full.
It is fertile with baby names. All right. So you can stay for that and listen. But we've got to walk through some history to understand what's happening here. So like each of the five solas, the slow fade began when the Western church became the Roman Catholic church.
Because early on in the New Testament, the New Testament church, the New Testament people believed that the Bible was the final and sole authority for what is true and what is good. You can see that. We'll walk through a lot of the biblical evidence here in a little bit. But you see that in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, when it says, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Like the church believed this out the gate, that if you want to be equipped for every good work, you went to the scriptures that would grow you and shape you in what is good.
This is what they believed early on. And as the final books of the New Testament were being written, and as the New Testament canon was being finalized, canon is just a word for standard of the books. So this is the standard, which is the 27 books in the New Testament, 66 books in total in our Bibles. The early church looked at the Bibles. You can look around. You got blue Bibles underneath your seats in front of you.
Okay? That blue Bible, the words that are in it, this is what guided the early church. They looked at this as the chief authority for their lives. Now there are skeptics that will say, wait a second, no, no, no. Didn't they just choose what they wanted? They just choose which books of the Bible they wanted.
They kicked out some of the other ones. What about the Apocrypha? What about the things that were included? I don't have the bandwidth to be able to get into the Apocrypha today. If you want to have a discussion on that, we can have that later. But that is a false argument.
That is not true. Early on, you can see it in early church history. They looked at the books of the Bible, and they didn't choose them and say, these are the ones. They were already recognizing, these are the scriptures. These are the scriptures that were handed down to the church. You can see that through the early church fathers.
You can take it Clement. Clement, a church father in 95 AD, was writing about this, pointing to these scriptures that were authoritative. You can look at Ignatius in 115 AD. Get your pens ready, guys. We'll see some baby boys named Ignatius. It's a good one.
All right? You can look at Polycarp. Maybe not a good one. You can give it a try. It's the Wild West of names these days, guys. You can name whatever you want.
Polycarp in 108 AD. Irenanus in 185 AD. Hippolytus in 200 AD. Church father after church father after church father is simply pointing out, these are the books that guide and shape the church. These have authority. Let me make this very clear.
The church did not choose the scriptures. They merely recognized what was already authoritative as the word of God was handed down to them. And for 300 plus years, for 300 plus years, the church was guided by this belief as it exploded across Europe and North Africa. And then early on in the fourth century, Constantine was the first Roman emperor to convert Christianity. And then in 380 AD, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. And that's when it became the Roman Catholic Church.
Rome meaning centered in Rome, Catholic meaning Latin for universal. So the universal church as centered in Rome. And a few things happened when that took place. The first is that it was now politically convenient to not just be a Christian, but to be a Christian leader. Because when the church got morphed into government, it became convenient to be a political leader and a church leader and corruption started to seep in. The elite started to convert to Christianity and become political leaders because that was convenient.
Second, the Roman Catholic Church commissioned one of the early church fathers, Jerome. They commissioned Jerome to create the first Latin translation of the Bible. The Bible was written in the Old Testament, Hebrew and Aramaic, and the New Testament, Greek. They commissioned him. We want you to translate that into Latin because Latin was the official language of the Roman Empire. So he did this and his translations ended up becoming something called the Vulgate and became the translation of the Bible for a thousand years.
From 500 to 1000 AD, that was the chief and almost sole translation in the Western church. Now around this time is when Rome finally falls. The Roman Empire falls and we enter into a period between 500 and 1500 AD, which is known as the Middle Ages. Okay, so in the Middle Ages during this time, there's no longer a need for everybody to learn Latin because the Roman Empire has fallen. It's a time where there's not a lot of technological advancement. There's a lot of disease that goes through.
There's not a lot of education. Some of the stuff you see in movies may be overplayed, but it certainly wasn't a very good time. And while this is happening, the only scriptures that are circulating around the churches in Europe and Northern Africa are in Latin. And the Catholic Church had those. And no one else except the elites knew Latin, which means, this is why this is really important. It means that for a thousand years, they held the keys to what the scripture said.
They're the ones that knew it. And everyone went to the priesthood, went to the bishops to find out what God said because they weren't going to be able to read it for themselves. And this is when around this time is when the Catholic Church stops looking to the scriptures as the chief authority and it starts looking within. And it starts looking within. And that's when councils are start forming and bishops start forming doctrine and the church starts forming doctrine that is completely disconnected from the word of God. And the scriptures stop becoming the chief authority.
That is why to this day in the Catholic Church, the church is greater than the scriptures. The church is greater than the scriptures even today for the Catholic Church. That is how certain Catholic doctrines creep in that have no basis in the scriptures. Take purgatory, for instance. Purgatory is the idea that there's this limbo place between hell and heaven, that if you don't commit these super bad mortal sins, when you die, you have some venial sins. You can go to purgatory.
You can be purged of that before you enter into heaven. That's found nowhere in the scriptures. There's not a scriptural basis for that. You can go back to Platonic philosophy. You go back to Plato, who was a pagan Greek in the 4th century BC. But you're not going to find that in the scriptures.
And that's what happens. A lot of times with Catholic doctrine, they have debates, scholars have debates, and they have councils. And over time, it develops into a doctrine that's cemented. It's a little bit like a game of telephone. The game of telephone when you're a kid, where you would, you know, one kid would whisper to the next kid a phrase, and the next kid would whisper all the way around the circle. Then you get back to the final person.
They stand up and they say their phrase, and it's not the same thing. That's a little bit of how some Catholic doctrine came in to be. It was passed, it was passed, it was passed, it was passed, and then it's completely disconnected from the scriptures. And then in 1274, in 1274, purgatory became an official Catholic doctrine. And this happened with a host of issues we'll see in the other five solos. Things like pilgrimages, things like veneration of the saints, which is praying to Saint Mary or Saint Thomas.
This happened with things like indulgences. We'll see that more in sola fide, with paying to get out of purgatory. There are different doctrines that crept in and became official Catholic doctrine. And that was until about 300 years before Martin Luther steps on the scene in 1500. About 300 years before, there were some people that finally started to challenge the Catholic Church on this. And I'll give you a few examples.
From 1200 to 1400 AD, there were three different main figures in Europe. They started to challenge this idea that the church is not the authority on what is true, that the Bible is the authority. There's a man named Peter Waldo, who was a French merchant that began to challenge this with a movement. There was a man named John Wycliffe, an Englishman, a professor at Oxford, who began to also, like Peter Waldo, translate the Bible into their native tongue. They're like, we don't have the word. The common people need the word of God.
There was a man named Jan Hus, which is Czech. Hus is Czech for goose. So again, baby names, y'all. Hus. Who doesn't want a name? That's boy or girl, right?
Hus. Okay? Each of these figures over the next two to three hundred years began to challenge the Catholic Church by translating the Bible into the common tongue and preaching it to the people in their own language. And when they did this, well, the Catholic Church was not very happy. Back then, the Catholic Church did what they did best back then. They absolutely destroyed dissent.
Like during that period, if you challenged the Catholic Church, it did not go well for you. They came at you very hard. It's a little bit like, if you've ever seen Parks and Rec, which is an episode, which is a TV series on local town government, there's this episode of Parks and Rec where a Venezuelan diplomat comes into town to observe local town government. And then he, there's this, he shows up to a town council meeting and the people are doing what happens at town council meetings. They're yelling at the council members and they're protesting. And he sees this and he's like, why are they not being taken to jail?
This does not happen in Venezuela. If you do this, you go to jail. All right? You play music too loud, jail. You drive too slow, jail. You drive too fast, jail.
You undercook fish, jail. You overcook chicken, jail. Jail, jail, jail, jail, jail. All right? That's, that was the Catholic Church. You challenged them, jail.
You challenged them, inquisition, torture, death, crusade. During this period, they went hard after anyone that showed dissent. And that is what happened. So there's a first, there was a high stakes game of where's Waldo? Waldo, because Peter Waldo and his people were being hunted down. Peter Waldo was actually not killed by the Catholic Church, but thousands of his followers, thousands of his followers were called the Waldensons.
They're absolutely crushed. The Catholic Church couldn't get to Wycliffe. He was in England. They couldn't kill him, but they did excommunicate him and they did get him fired from his teaching position in Oxford. And then after he died, they dug up his bones and they burned him for good measure. And then Hus, they said, Hus, come to Rome.
We want to hear your ideas. We'll give you safe passage. And then he got to Rome and they said, ha ha, we don't make deals with heretics. And they arrested him and then they burned him at the stake. And there's this urban legend. I don't know if it's true or not.
I like to believe it's true, but we don't know for sure. That when he was being burned at the stake, that he said a hundred years from now, somebody is going to take up this cause. And then a hundred years later, Martin Luther steps on the scene and Martin Luther steps on the scene. And when he realizes that the Bible is actually the chief and final authority, when he begins to discover this, boy, the backlash was intense. It led to a very aggressive resurgence of this. Because when you're deprived of something that's really, really good, you get a little angsty when you realize you've missed out on it.
Like Chet and I were talking a few months back, we're talking about biscuits because Chet loves biscuits. About twice a year, you're going to hear a sermon illustration about biscuits in heaven. It's going to happen. He loves biscuits. And we're talking about biscuits. And I was like, man, I love biscuits too.
I don't eat them a whole lot. And then it hit me. I was like, I don't eat them a whole lot because we don't have them at home. And we don't have them at home because my wife doesn't like biscuits. And she's the one that makes the grocery list. And she's the one that cooks.
I was like, Chet, I've been deprived of biscuits for 10 years of our marriage. We haven't had biscuits. And I went home and I saw Anna. And I said, Anna, we don't have biscuits. Why don't we have biscuits? Why don't you like biscuits?
I want biscuits in this house. She's like, calm down, crazy. I'll get you some biscuits. All right. I was a little angsty because I was like, I want this. I've been deprived of something that's very good.
And we now have biscuits. I saw it yesterday in the bottom drawer. And I was like, yes, we have biscuits in our house. You could argue that Martin Luther's stand was as important as my stand. But he stood aggressively.
Y'all, he was in a debate. He was in a debate one time with a guy named Sylvester Prius, who's a Catholic scholar. And the scholar came at him. And this is what the, this is what the Catholic scholar Sylvester Prius said. He says this, he says, he who does not accept the doctrine of the church of Rome and the pontiff, that's Pope of Rome as an infallible rule of faith from which the Holy Scriptures to draw their strength and authority is a heretic. Now, look, look, look at that again.
He's saying, if you don't accept the doctrine of the church of Rome and the pontiff of Rome as the infallible rule of faith, the scriptures too support it. The scriptures support the Pope, it supports Catholic doctrine. But if you don't actually accept this, you are a heretic to which Martin Luther responded in true Luther form. You cited no scripture like an insidious devil. You pervert the scriptures. And that's Martin Luther in that show right there.
Very angsty, responds very aggressively. But that right there, that distinction of the Catholic church had a counter-reformation after this period. They reformed a lot of their corruption in a lot of ways. Thank you, Jesus, that that happened. But that right there, that argument that Sylvester Prius made and that Luther countered with, that still is the law of the land today.
That you either accept what the pontiff of what the Roman Catholic church teaches with the scriptures being underneath it, or that's heresy to them. And Luther says, no, it is the scriptures alone. And we're going to see this in the coming weeks, that as he realized what is in the scriptures, as we were going to see in Sola Fide, and Chet introduced this last week in Romans 1 17, when he read, for it is, it for in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. When he read that in Romans 1 17, and realized the church teaches something different.
The church teaches faith and works. And he was so tormented by the works aspect of that, that he had to earn God's favor. He had to be good enough. When he realized that, no, it is by faith. When that clicked for him, he realized, oh no. No, no, no, no.
The Catholic church has completely missed the boat on this. And he nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg on October 31st in 1517. And from that moment forward, Luther was guided by the scriptures are my authority. I don't answer to the church, I answer to God and his word. And the Reformation tradition continued after him through Zwingli, through John Calvin, through John Wesley, and the Reformers that followed, that the scriptures are our chief authority. And it shows up even today, literally in this moment right now.
That when we gather together on a Sunday, we are shaped by that tradition. It's the reason why the songs that we sing come from the scriptures. It's the reason why we read scripture all the way to the biggest moment of our Sunday morning gathering is the proclamation of God's word and a pulpit that is centered in the room. All of that is built upon sola scriptura because we find our chief authority in the word of God. So that's 2,000 years of church history for you.
You guys made it. Good Job. All right. But that's what shaped 2,000 years of history for why we believe the Bible is authoritative. But more importantly, let's look at the scriptures and see what the scriptures have to say on this.
All right. In order to look at the scriptures and how the scriptures speak about itself. Well, you have to acknowledge something. So we do believe, as I said earlier, the Bible has the final say on everything. The Bible has something to say about. But we argue as Protestants, the Bible is self-authenticating.
The Bible speaks to itself. And there have been skeptics who have said, wait a second. That is circular logic. That is circular reasoning. And we say, yes. Yes, it is.
It is a matter of faith for us because what circular logic, circular reasoning is, is that God has spoken in his word. And God speaks truthfully in his word. And the word actually testifies to who God is, that we should believe and trust in him. Because God has spoken in his word. And his word is true. And we trust his word.
And his word speaks to who God is truthfully. And therefore, we trust God. And God has spoken. You see how that works? And we say, absolutely. We take it as a matter of faith that God has revealed himself.
And he's revealed himself in the scriptures. And we believe that God has revealed himself truthfully. Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, if you really do get hung up on that, you and I can have a, have a fun chat later. We can have an epistemological argument, which is just an argument about how we know things.
And I will show you why it is that most of the things that you know that you might accept as fact, whether it's science or from other systems, work in the same kind of reasoning. We make assumptions all the time. There's not much logic that's actually concrete and foolproof. But we can have the discussion later. I spent the majority of our collective attention span on church history. I'm not going to subject to 98% of that.
You can come talk to me later. But the scriptures are absolutely self-authenticating. All right. Go back to 2 Timothy. Let me give you some lead into verse 16 and 17. He says this in verse 14, but as for you, and this is Paul writing to Timothy, a young pastor, but as for you continue and what you have learned and have firmly believed knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings.
We pause for a second. What's being referenced there is what he says earlier that his, uh, his Christian mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois are the ones that led him in faith. And it would, well, I love that is as you're saying, listen, you know, you've learned the scriptures from, your mama and your grandmama, which y'all, this is why we care so much about teaching our kids the Bible. This is why we're trying to equip you to train your children, to, to love Jesus and to know his word. It's so important. That's why we developed, we had a whole training weekend in the fall on this.
We developed something called roadmap that is meant to help you lead your children in faith. It's so important to leave a legacy of faith by opening the sacred writings, as Paul says here, because you've been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise, for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. And these next two verses are worth committing to memory. He says, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. The man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Amen.
The Bible is, hear this, breathed out by God. That is a metaphor that God has breathed out. He has inspired. He has spoken. And as we look at his word, it is a gold mine for teaching and for reproof and for correction, for training in righteousness. It's meant to guide our lives that all other wisdom, all other advice.
We hold that against the scriptures to see whether it is good and true. The Bible is the standard for what is good. You can go back to the Old Testament. You go to Psalm 119, a passage out of the Old Testament, and just look at it over and over again, showing that the Bible is the chief authority. Verse 24, it says, your testimonies are my delight. They are my counselors.
That the Bible, that his testimonies counsel us, that leads us. In verse 25, it says, give me life according to your word. It is life-giving. In verse 31, it says, I cling to your testimonies, that you cling to it like a life raft in the raging sea. He clings, he says, I trust your word in verse 42. In 105, he says, your word is a lamp to my feet, a light to my path.
In the midst of the darkness of this world, that it lights up the path for us to ultimately pursue what is good in Christ. Over and over again, you see this view throughout the Old Testament, end of the new, that the scriptures are the chief authority, that no tradition, no outside teaching goes above it. Absolutely. Jesus addresses this head on in Mark 7. In Mark 7, the Pharisees are very upset that Jesus is not washing his hands before he eats. You might be thinking, wait a second, I would like him to wash his hands before he eats.
It's not an issue of sanitation. That's not why the Pharisees are upset. They're upset because it's a religious ritual, a religious ritual that you're supposed to wash your hands before you eat. Only problem is, that religious ritual is found nowhere in the Old Testament law. It's actually based on Jewish outside commentary, Jewish tradition. A Jewish tradition that they followed, and Jesus absolutely just cuts through their argument.
And how he does it is so important for how we view the scriptures versus tradition. Verse 9, he says, And he said to them, this is Jesus, You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition. For Moses said, Honor your father and your mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. So he's saying, You have some tradition. You get a fine way of rejecting that, and he references one of the top ten commandments, right? The ten commandments.
Honor your mother and father. He says, You have a fine way. And this is how he addresses this head on is where it absolutely makes sense. He says, But you say, If a man tells his father or his mother, Whatever you have gained from me is korban, that is, given to God, then you no longer permit him to do anything for his mother and father. And what Jesus is getting at in that is that he's calling out what the Pharisees were actually doing themselves. You see, the scriptures in the Old Testament teach us to honor our father and mother, that as they grow in their age, to continue to take care of them.
But they started this outside practice that was outside the Old Testament law, that was in this Jewish commentary tradition called korban, that you could actually bypass giving money to your parents to take care of them and give it directly to the temple. Because that was the holy thing to do. I'm not going to take care of my parents. I'm going to give it to the temple. And the Pharisees were doing this themselves. And what makes this so evil is, is that when the Pharisees did this, they were enriching themselves because they were the beneficiaries of what went into the temple treasury.
How messed up is that? And Jesus just cuts through their tradition to absolutely see you make voices, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down and many such things you do. You see, it cuts through it. Is it in the word of God or isn't it? If your tradition does not line up with the word of God, you have made void the word of God. And this is still what the Catholic church does today.
They have teachings that do not align with the scriptures and those teachings sit over atop the scriptures in authority. And as Protestants, we say no. As Protestants, we join Paul as Paul in first Corinthians when he writes, he says, I've applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us hear this, not to go beyond what is written. The word for written, there's the same Greek word for scriptures. Don't go beyond the scriptures because the Bible is the final authority for us. It is why Jesus in Luke six says, everyone who hears what I says and does it is like a man who's built his house on the rock.
It is why over and over again, when he's in debates with the religious leadership, he says, have you not read? Have you not read? Meaning, have you not read what the scriptures teach? It's why when he's in the wilderness facing off with Satan, that he's quoting scripture in defense. Here's the reason why when you have a study Bible and you open up your study Bible and you look in the middle and there's these things called cross-references. It's these Numbers that have different letters that correspond to different parts of the page.
And if you look at that and you follow this verse, actually cross-reference to this verse and this verse and this verse, because the Bible is quoting itself all the time, alluding to itself all the time, because the Bible sees itself as the chief authority. That is the biblical argument. And I could cite verse after verse, after verse, after verse, after verse, after verse that proves this. Now, some of you may be thinking, that's great. I see you're really excited about that. Thank you.
I'm not Catholic. I wasn't raised Catholic. Why do we have to spend so much time making that point? The reason why, because there are ways that we as Protestants, as Baptists, there are ways that we functionally reject sola scriptura today. Though our faith is built upon that tradition that shows up in a lot of ways, even in this moment, there are ways that we functionally reject scripture alone as our final authority. And with the time we have left, I just want to give some encouragements for us to continue to grow in scripture alone.
So first, we need to know our Bibles. We need to know our Bibles. One of the ways that we function, we show a functional disbelief of sola scriptura is we just don't know the Bible. That we're biblically illiterate. There are Christian survey groups, y'all, that survey those who identify as Christians. And the results that come back every year get more depressing in a lot of different ways.
But one of them is, is this idea of biblical literacy, people knowing their Bibles. I saw one survey that said slightly over half of the Christians who surveyed on that said that you can get to heaven by being good. You can get to heaven by being, just be a good person. You can get to heaven over half. And the scriptures adamantly say, no, you can never be good enough. That's the whole point of why Christ died for us.
There's one survey, survey, that 70% of the self-identifying born of Christians, born again Christians, in this survey, ages 18 to 55. They said that Jesus was not the only way. 70%, that's off by 20%. That's startling. Our faith is built upon, no, Christ is our only hope, as we'll see in Christ alone. He is our only hope.
Another survey, 66% of evangelicals answered and said that Jesus was not God. Jesus was, our faith is built upon that, that Christ is God. These are the most basic Christian beliefs. And what it reveals is a few things. One of them is, is a lack of biblical teaching in pulpits across the country. But another thing is that we just don't read our Bibles like we should.
We don't read our Bibles enough. Y'all, we need to know the scriptures. Y'all, this is worthy of our focus. It's worthy of our lives. That passage in 2 Timothy 3 shows the riches of the scriptures. Y'all, if I told you that I had a prophetic book, and this prophetic book had every single stock pick that you should make every day the stock market is open, the stock market is open over the next 10 years.
And if you, or something you ought to do, crypto, there you go, for the rest of you. That if you follow this book every day over the next 10 years, you will be a billionaire in 10 years. And you're like, I don't know, I'll give it a shot. And a month in, you're like, I just made $1,000. Two years in, I just made $10,000. A year in, I'm a millionaire.
You would read that book every single day the market opens so that you could make the trades because that's a tangible thing. Of course, I want to be a billionaire. And the scriptures show something that is infinitely and eternally better than riches. That there's a wealth of eternal riches in the scriptures. And our lack of reading, it shows a functional disbelief that it is the sole authority for what is good in this life. We need the scriptures.
If we want to do the things that we talk about being a gospel centered community on mission, if we want to make disciples, if we want to train our children to know who God is, if we want to share the gospel to a dying world that desperately needs Christ, if we want to taste and see that the Lord is good, we need the Bible. We need to know our Bibles. And if we don't, we functionally show that we don't believe the Sola Scriptura is true. Second, we need to submit to our Bibles. We need to submit to our Bibles. We are increasingly shaped by an anti-authoritarian culture.
There's a culture that does not care about authority. And this shows up. I mean, we have conversations and we're not unique. We talk to other pastors. You read about other pastors online. They're having the same conversations that you sit across the table from somebody who is choosing sin.
And you open up the Bible. You say, you should not be cohabitating with the person you're dating. Don't do this. Let me show you from the scriptures why this is sin. That you should grow in generosity. To not be stingy with your money.
Jesus talks a lot about this. We sit across the table from someone that says, I'm getting a divorce because I want to be happy. And say, no, look at what the Word of God says here. Don't do this. And we have heard people say, and we're not unique in this. We've heard people say, I don't care what that says.
I'm going to do what I want to do. And where the Bible supports my life, I will, I will, yes and amen. But where it doesn't, I will reject it. And the Bible becomes a buffet where you choose what you want and you reject what you don't. And that anti-authority, that, that shows up. Y'all, every now and then I have this complex ethical situation, like a variety, just complex ethical situations that come up.
And I'm like, oh, goodness. I know that I'm supposed to consult God's Word. I know I'm supposed to pray. I know I'm supposed to consult other Christians who are consulting God's Word. And there's a part of me that just says, that's really exhausting. I just want to go from here.
I want to go from the gut. Let me just make the call. And that is a rejection of the authority of God's Word. And we'll submit the lesser things, y'all. We will go to the internet. We will go to mom blogs and to podcasts and to anything else to find advice and wisdom.
Or even worse, we'll go just with ourselves. We'll see ourselves as the authority on what is good for us. We spent a summer, last summer, in the Proverbs. And the Proverbs basically acknowledged that. The assumption is, is humanity, yes, you want to choose what is good for you because of your fallen flesh. Here is what the wisdom of the Scriptures says otherwise.
But we show a functional disbelief in Scripture alone when we say, I don't want the Scriptures. I want what is best for me. And the Bible holds a better way out. It shows an eternally better way that is for us if we would just submit to God and His Word. Last, we need to stand on our Bibles. Not literally.
We need to stand on our Bibles. That song we were singing earlier, it's based on the solid rock, comes from Luke 6, 47. It says, Everyone who comes to me and hears my word and does them, I will show you what he is like. He is like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. Y'all, the Scriptures are worth our lives. We can stand on them.
They are trustworthy. They are tried and they are true. Every now and then, I will hear the objections say, the Bible has contradictions. The Bible has this in it. Look at this. When I was a younger Christian, I used to wig out.
I am like, oh, where? And then over the years, I hear someone say, oh, look at this in the Gospels. Look at this. And I go and I look at it and I study it and I go deeper, deeper down the well, deeper into the riches. Consult commentaries from 2,000 years of church history, of church interpretation. I look at it and I look at it.
I'm like, man, no, absolutely. This is true. And it's good. And the older I get, the less I'm not thrown off when someone says that. I'm like, no, show me. Show me the Scriptures.
Let's study it together. It is trustworthy and it is true. It is worth banking our eternities on what it says. We can firmly stand on the Word of God. Martin Luther understood this. He understood that the church standing on its own authority is a road lined with corruption that leads to self-destruction.
And that is why when he stood on trial for his teachings, his teachings like this on Sola Scriptura, when he stood on trial and they said, you need to recant. And he knew exactly what he could face. He knew what happened to Hus a hundred years before him. He knew that he could be burned at the stake. And he considered it for a day. And he came back later and he said, here I stand.
I can do no other. And what he was standing on was the Word of God. The Word of God alone as his authority. And from that moment forward, I mean, he would rather have faced a gruesome fate from a wayward church than disobey God and his Word. And that tradition has continued over the last 500 years. We are beneficiaries of the ones who stand on that tradition while we also look at the ways we can continue to grow into it.
Matt's going to come up and he's going to sing a song over us that you have not heard before. My hope is that you would consider those three things that are behind me. Consider how we have functionally rejected the scriptures alone as our authority for what is good and what is true. We have fallen short. And how we need to absolutely know our Bibles, we have fallen short in the ways we have said, I don't want to submit to this. We have fallen short and not standing firm on the scriptures.
Praise Jesus that Sola Scriptura isn't the only five, one of the five solas. That we can receive grace because the faith has been gifted to us in Christ. That where we fail to believe this, there's mercy that is given to us. And that we as Christians get to walk this out in beautiful repentance saying, I want God. And his word. And I get to commit the rest of my life to that.
Let me pray for us. Lord, we lack faith and wisdom. But you have it in abundance. God, may you grant that to us and more so. That we would trust you and your word. That we would see your word as valuable, as profitable, and as beautiful and good.
Help us be a people that continue to stand on scripture alone. Because it is one of the most beautiful gifts that you've given us in the church. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. The beginning of the Psalms.
And Psalm...