WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.000 Good evening. 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:11.000 So as Corrie was saying, it's 500 years since the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:17.000 with Luther and his 95 theses on the door of Wittenberg Cathedral. 00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:23.000 So we're commemorating this movement 500 years ago in the 16th century church 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:28.000 in the Roman Catholic Church, which saw Christians protesting 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:31.000 against what they thought their church had become, 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:37.000 a power-hungry, money-focused empire whose beliefs, whose practices 00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:42.000 had wandered far from the teaching of the Bible, from the early church. 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:48.000 The Reformation was about a lot of issues, really central issues to our Christian faith. 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:53.000 How can we know God? What does it mean to be saved? 00:00:53.000 --> 00:01:01.000 Can we have assurance of our salvation? Can we know for sure that God is our redeemer, 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:07.000 that he has saved us? What should the church be like? How should I read the Bible? 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:12.000 I suppose you could sum up the overall package with what Corrie was just saying, 00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:18.000 the ideas of the Reformation, that these protesting Christians were saying 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:23.000 that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone and Christ alone, 00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:28.000 that our highest authority in the church should be Scripture alone, 00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:33.000 and that all of life is to be lived for the glory of God alone. 00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:38.000 There was no single 16th century reformer who put these five things together 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:43.000 and said, this is a whole package, although they did argue for all of these things. 00:01:43.000 --> 00:01:48.000 Putting it together as five solas is a more recent way of trying to understand, 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:51.000 trying to describe what happened in the Reformation. 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:53.000 And it's a very helpful way. 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:57.000 So tonight we're starting off these sermons by looking at Sola Scriptura. 00:01:57.000 --> 00:02:02.000 Scriptura alone is the highest source of authority in the Christian faith. 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:08.000 Now, and I present that to you, it may seem really alien, this language of authority, 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:17.000 especially because there's an anti-authoritarian bent that runs deeply through our culture. 00:02:17.000 --> 00:02:21.000 Our culture likes to sell itself as we're individuals, we're autonomous, 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:26.000 we live by our own terms, we define, we choose who we are. 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:29.000 And that's something that's deep in our culture that you can tap into. 00:02:29.000 --> 00:02:36.000 Think of, well, not that long ago, in the buildup to the Brexit referendum, 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:41.000 Michael Gove really cynically tapped into it in a big interview on television. 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:47.000 He was told, all of these experts think that what you're telling us to vote for is madness. 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:53.000 And he tapped into this anti-authoritarian drive in our society and said, 00:02:53.000 --> 00:02:58.000 I think we've had enough of experts. 00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:01.000 So he's tapping into this thing in our culture that tells us, 00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:07.000 we live by our own terms, we don't need experts, we are our own authorities. 00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:10.000 But that's not really true for any of us. 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:17.000 Accepting sources of authority and what they tell us, and living by what they tell us, 00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:22.000 and an act of faith, is actually something completely normal, 00:03:22.000 --> 00:03:28.000 something that you do all the time, every day, as you go about your life. 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:33.000 In fact, if you didn't do this, if you were truly your own authority on everything, 00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:37.000 if you investigated every claim, if you came to your own firm conclusion, 00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:41.000 if you never lived by faith in what other authorities tell you, 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:43.000 it would paralyze your life immediately. 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:46.000 Your life would become completely unlivable. 00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:53.000 Living life is a constant exercise of walking by faith in what authorities tell us. 00:03:53.000 --> 00:03:57.000 You learn it as a small child, in the way that your parents teach you, 00:03:57.000 --> 00:04:02.000 this is what the world is, this is how the world works, this is how to live within it. 00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:06.000 When you're three, you're very limited ways of testing all of this out. 00:04:06.000 --> 00:04:11.000 You accept it by faith, and lo and behold, you learn how to walk through the world, 00:04:11.000 --> 00:04:13.000 you learn how to live. 00:04:13.000 --> 00:04:16.000 As an adult, you do this constantly. 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:19.000 So you're in the supermarket and you're there to buy some chicken, 00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:21.000 and it says it's chicken on the packet. 00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:24.000 Do you stop and say, maybe it's seagull. 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:28.000 I need to go and do tests on this meat before I'll accept that it's chicken. 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:32.000 Is the sell by date, is the use by date telling the truth? 00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:36.000 That's a bad example, because we have this national scandal over the last week 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:39.000 where we find out that we actually should question that a bit more 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:41.000 with most of the chicken that we eat. 00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:44.000 Imagine that when you meet someone new and they say, 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:49.000 hi, I'm James Eglinton, do you say, is that really his name? 00:04:49.000 --> 00:04:53.000 Can I see some photographic ID please before we establish this relationship? 00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:55.000 We don't live like this. 00:04:55.000 --> 00:04:59.000 We all live on the basis of things that we can't prove, 00:04:59.000 --> 00:05:02.000 either because we just don't have the opportunity to, 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:05.000 because we don't have the skills to, or because there are things that are unprovable, 00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:08.000 but we accept them and we live on that basis, 00:05:08.000 --> 00:05:11.000 living a life of faith. 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:19.000 Most profoundly, so one of the most important sources on this 00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:22.000 in terms of Christians have written about this in the past was Augustine. 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:25.000 So really important early Christian thinker. 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:29.000 He has a book, The City of God, where he tries to work out 00:05:29.000 --> 00:05:32.000 what does it mean to have faith, to live by faith? 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:36.000 He goes through lots of things in his life that he just accepts by faith 00:05:36.000 --> 00:05:38.000 because he can't prove them. 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:41.000 Then he gets down to the very core of his existence and asks himself the question, 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:43.000 how do I know I exist? 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:47.000 Not all these other things around me, the colour blue or these chairs, 00:05:47.000 --> 00:05:49.000 how do I know that I'm even here? 00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:52.000 He says, I have no way of proving this. 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:55.000 I can't step out of myself and look at myself externally 00:05:55.000 --> 00:05:59.000 and do some tests and work out, yes, Augustine is a real person. 00:05:59.000 --> 00:06:03.000 You believe you exist because you're self-conscious. 00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:08.000 I can see all of you around me and I seem to be a thinking-speaking person talking to you, 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:10.000 but I have no way of proving any of this. 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:14.000 I simply accept what seems to be real, which is that I'm alive, 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:18.000 that I'm a thinking existing being, 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:20.000 and I go on living life on that basis, 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:25.000 even though I have no way of proving any of it, that I actually exist. 00:06:25.000 --> 00:06:30.000 That's the question that philosophers have wrestled with ever since Augustine, 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:35.000 and the general consensus is you cannot prove that you exist. 00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:37.000 And yet people go on living. 00:06:37.000 --> 00:06:42.000 We live lives of faith in ourselves and so many other things in the world around us. 00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:48.000 We don't do this gullibly, accepting all sources of authority and what they tell us. 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:51.000 Imagine you've never met me before, you don't know that my name is James, 00:06:51.000 --> 00:06:54.000 and I shake your hand and say, hi, I'm Henry Jones. 00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:59.000 That on its own seems perfectly plausible, so you believe that. 00:06:59.000 --> 00:07:04.000 Then we go on talking, and I mention just casually that I'm 6'8", 00:07:04.000 --> 00:07:08.000 and you start thinking, oh, that seems a little bit odd. 00:07:08.000 --> 00:07:13.000 Then I mention also casually in conversation that I just turned 13, 00:07:13.000 --> 00:07:17.000 and you look at the beard and think something's gone really wrong there. 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:21.000 And then I mention later on that I'm actually Chinese. 00:07:21.000 --> 00:07:23.000 You stop believing. 00:07:23.000 --> 00:07:26.000 We don't accept authorities in a really gullible way, 00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:32.000 but we do live by faith in all kinds of sources of authority and what they tell us. 00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:37.000 Think of things like, well, you go and see your doctor. 00:07:37.000 --> 00:07:39.000 Your doctor tells you, we've done some tests. 00:07:39.000 --> 00:07:41.000 I have news for you. 00:07:41.000 --> 00:07:45.000 Sometimes maybe in your life you've questioned them, you've asked for a second opinion, 00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:51.000 but we go on the basis of expert advice, and authority figure tells us this. 00:07:51.000 --> 00:07:53.000 Think of when you take legal advice. 00:07:53.000 --> 00:07:56.000 Think of when you go and see your mortgage advisor. 00:07:56.000 --> 00:08:00.000 We ignore experts at our peril. 00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:04.000 So we have all these authority figures telling us all kinds of things, 00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:09.000 and we accept lots of what they tell us about your mortgage, 00:08:09.000 --> 00:08:18.000 about your health, about politics, about the things that you study at university. 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:20.000 What about God? 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:23.000 What about authorities on God? 00:08:23.000 --> 00:08:30.000 Now, our world is also full of authority figures, sources of authority, 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:33.000 telling us a lot of different things about God. 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:37.000 Some of them tell us that God doesn't exist. 00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:43.000 Some of them tell us that God might exist, but it's so unknowable that you should just forget about it. 00:08:43.000 --> 00:08:47.000 Remember those adverts on the buses a couple of years ago, there's probably no God. 00:08:47.000 --> 00:08:50.000 So stop worrying about it and enjoy your life. 00:08:50.000 --> 00:08:54.000 Some sources might tell you, well, there are lots of gods. 00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:59.000 Some authorities will tell you there is a God, and he's a kind of loveless slave driver 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:03.000 who just wants to ground you into the ground. 00:09:03.000 --> 00:09:09.000 Some will tell you there is a God, and amazingly this God endorses everything that I endorse 00:09:09.000 --> 00:09:11.000 and how I think the world should be. 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:15.000 So classic example in our culture of liberal Christianity, 00:09:15.000 --> 00:09:20.000 and it's God who, coincidentally, is really for progressive social values, 00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:23.000 and that's also God's big thing. 00:09:23.000 --> 00:09:30.000 Which authorities do you rely on, do you submit to, on God? 00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:36.000 In the context of the Reformation, that's where this idea, sola scriptura, 00:09:36.000 --> 00:09:41.000 scripture as the ultimate authority on God, comes to the fore. 00:09:41.000 --> 00:09:47.000 So in the context of the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church had put scripture 00:09:47.000 --> 00:09:51.000 and the church as equal authorities on God. 00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:55.000 Scripture is God's revelation, but the church tells you what it means. 00:09:55.000 --> 00:10:01.000 So the church is this mouthpiece of, well, what should you think about scripture? 00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:03.000 What does it mean? 00:10:03.000 --> 00:10:07.000 And because the church tells you what it means, it interprets it for you, 00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:11.000 they're seen as equal sources of authority. 00:10:11.000 --> 00:10:16.000 And the protest that the Reformers brought was, well, they thought the church had introduced 00:10:16.000 --> 00:10:21.000 so many things, like the example that Corey mentioned, selling indulgences. 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:25.000 The idea that, or purgatory in the first place, that when you die, 00:10:25.000 --> 00:10:29.000 you go to some kind of other place, neither heaven or hell, 00:10:29.000 --> 00:10:33.000 and you're still suffering there, but you know what, if someone on Earth really cares about you, 00:10:33.000 --> 00:10:39.000 and they pay money, then the church has the power to let that soul rise up out of purgatory 00:10:39.000 --> 00:10:41.000 and then go to heaven. 00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:47.000 And they put those things in thought, that's not what the Bible teaches. 00:10:47.000 --> 00:10:52.000 And if that's true, doesn't that mean that the church sometimes gets it wrong 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:54.000 in interpreting the Bible? 00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:58.000 And what basis then can the church be corrected? 00:10:58.000 --> 00:11:02.000 If they're equal authorities, then how can you correct the church? 00:11:02.000 --> 00:11:06.000 And their insistence in arguing for sola scriptura 00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:11.000 is that scripture and the church are not equally authoritative. 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:16.000 Scripture is the higher authority, and it's the thing by which we judge 00:11:16.000 --> 00:11:21.000 what the church says and does and believes. 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:24.000 And then the Reformation, this is a really important point. 00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:31.000 Sola scriptura wasn't a rejection of all other, let's call them sources of authority on God's. 00:11:31.000 --> 00:11:38.000 So books by Christians, creeds, confessions, catechisms, all that kind of stuff, tradition. 00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:44.000 It wasn't a rejection of all of them, but it was an insistence that the Bible 00:11:44.000 --> 00:11:47.000 is the highest authority over all of them, 00:11:47.000 --> 00:11:52.000 and that all these other sources are only authoritative insofar as what they say about God, 00:11:52.000 --> 00:12:01.000 about the gospel is grounded in what scripture teaches us. 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:07.000 So it wasn't that these other sources are just done away with now, 00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:09.000 and we only read the Bible. 00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:12.000 The Bible is the best book to read, but the Reformers also thought 00:12:12.000 --> 00:12:15.000 that you can get great benefit from reading other things as well, 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:20.000 but their authority is grounded in God. 00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:26.000 And the reason for that, for the Bible is unique as a source of authority on God, 00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:33.000 is that it's the only book on God whose author is God. 00:12:33.000 --> 00:12:38.000 Our church is a Reformed church, so we have catechisms, 00:12:38.000 --> 00:12:40.000 we have these books of Christian teaching, 00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:42.000 we have the Westminster Confession of Faith, 00:12:42.000 --> 00:12:44.000 as what we call our subordinate standard, 00:12:44.000 --> 00:12:49.000 so it's our summary of how we as a church understand what the Bible teaches, 00:12:49.000 --> 00:12:53.000 and we've tried to state it there clearly. 00:12:53.000 --> 00:12:57.000 We have a great tradition of Christian writers and books. 00:12:57.000 --> 00:13:01.000 We have a church tradition that goes back to the Reformation over the last 500 years, 00:13:01.000 --> 00:13:07.000 and it goes back beyond it into the early church, to the ancient churches, 00:13:07.000 --> 00:13:14.000 councils and creeds, and we have all of that, and we value it, we love it. 00:13:14.000 --> 00:13:19.000 It gives us a coherent identity that goes into the past, 00:13:19.000 --> 00:13:25.000 but we see all of those things as subordinate to the authority of the Bible itself. 00:13:25.000 --> 00:13:29.000 We think that in all of those things the Bible is unique, 00:13:29.000 --> 00:13:32.000 and the question is why? 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:35.000 Why does our church say this? 00:13:35.000 --> 00:13:37.000 Why does our church affirm this? 00:13:37.000 --> 00:13:41.000 Why is the Bible our highest authority on God? 00:13:41.000 --> 00:13:51.000 I think that something that's easy to not to understand 00:13:51.000 --> 00:13:54.000 in looking at these five solas of the Reformation 00:13:54.000 --> 00:13:58.000 is to think that the solas are primarily about us, 00:13:58.000 --> 00:14:02.000 that they are about Christians, that they are about what Christians think, 00:14:02.000 --> 00:14:04.000 what Christians do, what Christians believe, 00:14:04.000 --> 00:14:08.000 or what Christians should do, and what Christians should believe. 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:18.000 But actually, each of these five solas primarily is making a really important point clear about God, 00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:21.000 not primarily about us, but about God himself. 00:14:21.000 --> 00:14:26.000 And we miss the point if we think that the solas are primarily to teach us about ourselves 00:14:26.000 --> 00:14:29.000 and about what we should believe, what we should do. 00:14:29.000 --> 00:14:33.000 Primarily they actually teach us about what kind of God the Lord is, 00:14:33.000 --> 00:14:35.000 what he is like, who he is. 00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:41.000 So an example of this, Solagratia, okay, grace alone, we're saved by grace alone, 00:14:41.000 --> 00:14:47.000 that isn't primarily a statement about us and our salvation. 00:14:47.000 --> 00:14:50.000 It is a statement about those things that we're saved by grace alone, 00:14:50.000 --> 00:14:55.000 but primarily it's a statement about who God is, what kind of God he is, 00:14:55.000 --> 00:15:00.000 that he is a God who saves, and that he's gracious in how he does so. 00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:05.000 It tells us a lot about God's heart. 00:15:05.000 --> 00:15:08.000 Solafi day, faith alone, okay? 00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:14.000 It's not primarily a statement about us and something that we exercise. 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:17.000 Even though it is a statement about that, that we need to have faith in Christ, 00:15:17.000 --> 00:15:21.000 and faith in no one else to save us but Christ. 00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:26.000 But it's primarily a statement about the kind of God the Lord is, 00:15:26.000 --> 00:15:31.000 a God who is faithful, a God who can be trusted. 00:15:31.000 --> 00:15:37.000 So we can look at them first and think, well, this is really about us and our faith, 00:15:37.000 --> 00:15:40.000 but really it's about God primarily. 00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:43.000 It's about who God is, what he is like, 00:15:43.000 --> 00:15:52.000 and then because of that, how we should understand a relationship to him. 00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:59.000 So, Sola Scriptura, well, what does it teach us about God? 00:15:59.000 --> 00:16:04.000 By its name, it looks like it's primarily a statement about the Bible, okay? 00:16:04.000 --> 00:16:11.000 Scripture alone, but it's also most profoundly a statement about God. 00:16:11.000 --> 00:16:15.000 And Sola Scriptura, if you want to understand it, the Bible alone, 00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:18.000 and why the Bible should be our highest source of authority on God, 00:16:18.000 --> 00:16:22.000 we actually have to start with the doctrine of God, 00:16:22.000 --> 00:16:24.000 okay, with trying to understand who God is, 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:28.000 or with thinking about who God is, what God is like. 00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:34.000 And where we have to begin is this reality, okay, this mind-blowing reality, 00:16:34.000 --> 00:16:39.000 that knowledge of God begins with God himself, 00:16:39.000 --> 00:16:48.000 that God knows himself fully, exhaustively, perfectly, infinitely, okay? 00:16:48.000 --> 00:16:51.000 And only God can have that knowledge. 00:16:51.000 --> 00:16:59.000 If you are an infinite, eternal, unchangeable, all-knowing being, 00:16:59.000 --> 00:17:02.000 if that is what you are, which is what God is, 00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:05.000 it takes one to know one, okay? 00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:12.000 You have to be all of these things to fully know what someone like that is, okay? 00:17:12.000 --> 00:17:14.000 So to have this kind of self-knowledge, 00:17:14.000 --> 00:17:18.000 you yourself would have to be infinite, eternal, all-knowing, 00:17:18.000 --> 00:17:22.000 to grasp by God who is all of these things. 00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:25.000 But that's exactly who God is. 00:17:25.000 --> 00:17:31.000 He knows himself fully, and he is the only one who can do that, okay? 00:17:31.000 --> 00:17:34.000 Because of what God is. 00:17:34.000 --> 00:17:43.000 God is the original and the only true expert on himself, okay? 00:17:43.000 --> 00:17:46.000 Because God has that knowledge of himself. 00:17:46.000 --> 00:17:49.000 And that knowledge that he has of himself, 00:17:49.000 --> 00:17:52.000 he then chooses to share with us. 00:17:52.000 --> 00:17:54.000 He reveals it, okay? 00:17:54.000 --> 00:17:58.000 He shares what he knows of himself with us. 00:17:58.000 --> 00:18:02.000 And in fact, everything that we could know of God 00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:08.000 begins with what God knows of himself and that he shares with us. 00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:12.000 He has to share it with us for us to know it, okay? 00:18:12.000 --> 00:18:14.000 He has to reveal it to us. 00:18:14.000 --> 00:18:18.000 So we're talking about how these solas actually first teach us about God. 00:18:18.000 --> 00:18:24.000 What sola scriptura teaches us is that God himself is the only, 00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:30.000 the perfectly qualified knower of himself, okay? 00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:33.000 God can know God like God knows God. 00:18:33.000 --> 00:18:36.000 But he chooses to share that with us, okay? 00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:39.000 Maybe he's flipping to talk about it as expertise, okay? 00:18:39.000 --> 00:18:41.000 But that's something that you can compare it to and, you know, 00:18:41.000 --> 00:18:43.000 things that we know about as humans. 00:18:43.000 --> 00:18:46.000 For God, it's just knowing himself perfectly, 00:18:46.000 --> 00:18:49.000 delighting in himself and what he knows of himself. 00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:52.000 And then he shares what he's, he shares that delight 00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:56.000 in revealing himself to us. 00:18:56.000 --> 00:18:58.000 And because of that, because God is the only one 00:18:58.000 --> 00:19:00.000 who could know himself perfectly, 00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:05.000 God, therefore, is the only authority on God 00:19:05.000 --> 00:19:10.000 whose expertise isn't derived from any higher authority, okay? 00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:11.000 So for God to know about himself, 00:19:11.000 --> 00:19:13.000 he doesn't go and ask anyone else. 00:19:13.000 --> 00:19:15.000 He knows himself. 00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:20.000 And God, because of that, is uniquely qualified to tell us about himself, 00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:23.000 to tell us that he is, that he exists, 00:19:23.000 --> 00:19:29.000 to tell us who he is, to tell us what he wants. 00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:31.000 And we see that in John 17. 00:19:31.000 --> 00:19:33.000 That's why I asked if we could read this chapter. 00:19:33.000 --> 00:19:36.000 In Jesus' high priestly prayer, 00:19:36.000 --> 00:19:39.000 Jesus in this prayer is praying to God, 00:19:39.000 --> 00:19:46.000 praying to his Father that we, that his people will know God 00:19:46.000 --> 00:19:49.000 in order that God, that knowing God, 00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:51.000 not just knowing about him, but knowing him, 00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:53.000 being in relationship with him, 00:19:53.000 --> 00:19:56.000 having him show himself to us, 00:19:56.000 --> 00:19:58.000 and us responding in faith, 00:19:58.000 --> 00:20:01.000 that knowing God will sanctify us, 00:20:01.000 --> 00:20:04.000 that it will change us, that it will make us holy. 00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:06.000 So Jesus is praying for that, 00:20:06.000 --> 00:20:10.000 that you will know his Father. 00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:14.000 What does Jesus call on then when he's praying 00:20:14.000 --> 00:20:17.000 in order that his people will know God? 00:20:17.000 --> 00:20:19.000 What he calls on is the truth, 00:20:19.000 --> 00:20:21.000 because he says to his Father, 00:20:21.000 --> 00:20:26.000 your word is truth. 00:20:26.000 --> 00:20:30.000 He's calling on God to share what God knows of himself 00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:33.000 with his people, to transform them, 00:20:33.000 --> 00:20:36.000 to make them new people. 00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:39.000 What's the consequence then of that unique knowledge 00:20:39.000 --> 00:20:43.000 that God has of himself for us in our world? 00:20:43.000 --> 00:20:44.000 Well, the obvious question is, 00:20:44.000 --> 00:20:48.000 where has God shared that knowledge of himself with us? 00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:51.000 What we see in Scripture is that God has done that 00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:53.000 generally in the world in creating it. 00:20:53.000 --> 00:20:56.000 So think of texts like Psalm 19, 00:20:56.000 --> 00:20:57.000 think of Romans 1. 00:20:57.000 --> 00:21:01.000 So God makes the world as a kind of theater of his glory. 00:21:01.000 --> 00:21:05.000 And in that he shows us things about himself, 00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:11.000 his creative power, the limitless extent of his genius. 00:21:11.000 --> 00:21:15.000 Everything in the world, as God made it, 00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.000 reveals God's own greatness, and so far as he is greater 00:21:19.000 --> 00:21:22.000 than the universe he's made. 00:21:22.000 --> 00:21:25.000 The universe is ancient, God is eternal. 00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.000 If the universe is vast, God is infinite. 00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:35.000 But he also reveals himself specifically in Scripture. 00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:38.000 That's why we read the 2 Timothy 3 text, 00:21:38.000 --> 00:21:42.000 that God, in the sacred writings that Paul writes about there, 00:21:42.000 --> 00:21:47.000 God has breathed out his word in order that we will know him, 00:21:47.000 --> 00:21:54.000 to equip us for lives of godliness. 00:21:54.000 --> 00:21:56.000 What are the consequences of that then 00:21:56.000 --> 00:22:03.000 for how we live individually and as a church, as Christians? 00:22:03.000 --> 00:22:05.000 Well, there's this principle about knowing, 00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:10.000 that what we know of God and how we relate to others, 00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:12.000 and the claims of authority on God, 00:22:12.000 --> 00:22:18.000 always has to be grounded in Scripture. 00:22:18.000 --> 00:22:21.000 Think of an example like this in Acts 17. 00:22:21.000 --> 00:22:25.000 So Paul and Silas go to Berea to teach people 00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:27.000 their Christian faith. 00:22:27.000 --> 00:22:31.000 And what Paul writes, what you find in Acts there is, 00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:33.000 that they received the word with all eagerness, 00:22:33.000 --> 00:22:36.000 examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things, 00:22:36.000 --> 00:22:41.000 the things they were being taught by Paul and Silas, were so. 00:22:41.000 --> 00:22:44.000 And of course, so there's this principle of knowledge then, 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:47.000 that what we know about God has to be grounded in Scripture. 00:22:47.000 --> 00:22:53.000 But you could do that in quite a lifeless, intellect-only way. 00:22:53.000 --> 00:22:57.000 And that doesn't do justice to, not simply to, 00:22:57.000 --> 00:23:00.000 what God has revealed of himself in the Bible, 00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:03.000 but why God has revealed that. 00:23:03.000 --> 00:23:09.000 Not that God hasn't revealed himself only so that we will know about him. 00:23:09.000 --> 00:23:12.000 Okay, so God doesn't reveal himself in the Bible, 00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:16.000 just to give us a lot of facts, even accurate ones. 00:23:16.000 --> 00:23:20.000 What did Jesus pray for in John 17? 00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:26.000 Not simply that God's people would be armed with lots of good facts about God, 00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:32.000 but that they would know him, that they would be changed. 00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:35.000 And Sola Scriptura, therefore, is something, 00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:40.000 the Bible has, this is why the Bible should take such a central place 00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:43.000 in our lives of faith, in our individual lives, 00:23:43.000 --> 00:23:47.000 and the life of this church. 00:23:47.000 --> 00:23:51.000 Because of how important the Bible is, 00:23:51.000 --> 00:23:57.000 because God wants us to know Scripture so that we will know him. 00:23:57.000 --> 00:24:01.000 Because God wants us to know him. 00:24:01.000 --> 00:24:09.000 I want to talk just briefly about some challenges that this idea faces in our context. 00:24:09.000 --> 00:24:13.000 So we live in a kind of post-modern culture. 00:24:13.000 --> 00:24:17.000 And in our post-modern culture, there's a lot of skepticism to the idea 00:24:17.000 --> 00:24:23.000 that a single human can have a big picture and get some kind of universal truth. 00:24:23.000 --> 00:24:28.000 So instead, you have lots of, well, you have your opinion, I have mine, 00:24:28.000 --> 00:24:31.000 we all have our different interpretations, multiple interpretations, 00:24:31.000 --> 00:24:33.000 and many things are possible. 00:24:33.000 --> 00:24:39.000 And in that kind of context, an idea like Sola Scriptura could really easily be misunderstood. 00:24:39.000 --> 00:24:45.000 If you misunderstand it as thinking, there's no authoritative tradition 00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.000 that tells us what we should think when we read the Bible. 00:24:49.000 --> 00:24:51.000 So let's all read it in our own way. I'll read it in my way. 00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:53.000 You read it in yours. 00:24:53.000 --> 00:24:57.000 We may disagree on everything, but it's kind of relative, isn't it? 00:24:57.000 --> 00:25:03.000 You can read the biblical texts in multiple ways and come up with lots of different conclusions. 00:25:03.000 --> 00:25:09.000 And there's no longer an authority in the church that tells us what we have to believe. 00:25:09.000 --> 00:25:12.000 That isn't Sola Scriptura. 00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:16.000 Sola Scriptura doesn't reject church tradition. 00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:21.000 So things like confessions of faith, creeds, statements of belief. 00:25:21.000 --> 00:25:29.000 In fact, it affirms tradition, but it says this tradition is under the authority of Scripture. 00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:37.000 And the tradition only is authoritative insofar as it sounds in line, as it times in line with Scripture. 00:25:37.000 --> 00:25:42.000 And it's also, if we kind of twist it in a postmodern way, 00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:47.000 it's hard to see the sense in which Scripture actually has any kind of meaningful authority. 00:25:47.000 --> 00:25:55.000 If you can read its contents in any multiplicity of ways with multiple meanings. 00:25:55.000 --> 00:26:00.000 In the Reformation era, the challenges that this idea faced were quite different. 00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:06.000 The big challenge was, instead of Sola Scriptura, Sola Ecclesia, the church alone, 00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:10.000 is the authority on what we know of God. 00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:19.000 One of the really striking things about Sola Scriptura is what it says about how the church can get that wrong. 00:26:19.000 --> 00:26:25.000 And then the Reformers draw us back to Scripture in order that our churches can be more biblical, 00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:28.000 that they can be reformed when they do go wrong. 00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:33.000 But I suspect that probably for most of you, something like the church alone, 00:26:33.000 --> 00:26:38.000 that's not a great threat to how you read the Bible. 00:26:38.000 --> 00:26:42.000 Because of that kind of postmodern context I was talking about. 00:26:42.000 --> 00:26:46.000 I think that a great challenge to this, probably for many of you, 00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:52.000 is something that instead of Sola Scriptura, Scripture alone, or Sola Ecclesia, the church alone, 00:26:52.000 --> 00:26:55.000 we have something more like Sola Cultura. 00:26:55.000 --> 00:27:02.000 Culture alone is the authority on how we read the Bible, or the authority on how we know God. 00:27:02.000 --> 00:27:06.000 So the kind of culture that we live in is post-Christian, 00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:15.000 it's quite aggressively secular, and it views its progressive secular culture as the corrective, 00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:21.000 rather than the church, rather than what God reveals in Scripture. 00:27:21.000 --> 00:27:29.000 Our culture, this post-Christian culture has a secularizing impulse that wants to reshape the church, 00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:32.000 that wants to reshape the Christian faith in its own image. 00:27:32.000 --> 00:27:37.000 And it takes a kind of get-with-the-program attitude towards Christianity, 00:27:37.000 --> 00:27:46.000 adapts to our values, conforms to us where your traditional Christian belief is different, 00:27:46.000 --> 00:27:51.000 live and think on our terms, will still despise you, but will tolerate you. 00:27:51.000 --> 00:27:58.000 You see this a lot in the ways that secular politicians air their opinions on the church and Christianity. 00:27:58.000 --> 00:28:04.000 It's something that needs to get with the times, and if it does that, we'll ignore it again, 00:28:04.000 --> 00:28:07.000 and if it doesn't, we'll keep on pressuring it. 00:28:07.000 --> 00:28:17.000 So for us, the context is more Sola culture, I think, as this ultimate authority on what we believe about God. 00:28:17.000 --> 00:28:23.000 The issue there again is that Scripture becomes a set of texts that you can chop and change. 00:28:23.000 --> 00:28:31.000 You celebrate it when its contents confirm what culture, culture alone, as the highest authority wants you to do. 00:28:31.000 --> 00:28:36.000 But where Scripture challenges our secular culture, well, then Scripture shouldn't have any authority to speak. 00:28:36.000 --> 00:28:39.000 We get rid of those texts. 00:28:39.000 --> 00:28:42.000 What's the problem with Sola culture? 00:28:42.000 --> 00:28:49.000 With culture alone, why can't secular culture serve as our highest authority on what we believe about God? 00:28:49.000 --> 00:29:01.000 And again, this is where we come back to John 17, to Jesus' high priestly prayer, where Jesus in his prayer says that he is not of the world. 00:29:01.000 --> 00:29:09.000 That he has come into the world as God reveals himself by sending his Son into it. 00:29:09.000 --> 00:29:19.000 So Jesus has come from God to speak to us as God, to speak to us from God. 00:29:19.000 --> 00:29:23.000 And he does that faithfully as the Son that God sends. 00:29:23.000 --> 00:29:32.000 As God's faithful Son, he faithfully shares God's perfect knowledge of himself with us. 00:29:32.000 --> 00:29:41.000 This is very clear in John 17, that Jesus has shared what God gave him to share with us, that he's not of the world. 00:29:41.000 --> 00:29:51.000 And when he speaks about the world at the end of his prayer, he could not be clearer that the world does not know God. 00:29:51.000 --> 00:29:56.000 The world does not know you, he says in verse 25, I know you. 00:29:56.000 --> 00:30:06.000 It could not be any clearer why for Jesus the world rather than God cannot be your highest source of authority in what you think about God. 00:30:06.000 --> 00:30:11.000 It has to be God himself, and that God has spoken in the Bible. 00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:17.000 What does the Bible say about the Bible? 00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:29.000 I mentioned it earlier from 2 Timothy 3, that when Paul writes to Timothy, he encourages him in the fact that he has read the Bible, the sacred writings, since he was young. 00:30:29.000 --> 00:30:33.000 The Bible can make him wise to salvation through faith in Christ. 00:30:33.000 --> 00:30:45.000 And then Paul gives Timothy the reason he should continue to turn to the Bible above all else, and not given to the kind of sola culture, a culture alone of his day, which Paul describes in the chapter. 00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:59.000 And the reason is, the reason why the Bible above all else should be the authority that he will trust in about God is because all of it has been breathed out by God. 00:30:59.000 --> 00:31:01.000 It's been inspired by God. 00:31:01.000 --> 00:31:06.000 It's the only book about God whose author is God. 00:31:06.000 --> 00:31:16.000 This is why so often in Scripture we find this description of the Bible of God's word as a lamp. 00:31:16.000 --> 00:31:18.000 A lamp to our feet, Psalm 119. 00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:22.000 Your word is a lamp to our feet and a light to my path. 00:31:22.000 --> 00:31:48.000 Scripture has been breathed out by God to illuminate the darkness around us, to shine a light on our path from God, where God does that by directing us to Jesus, because the one who's shining that light, because Scripture's divine author knows God as God, because it's divine author is God. 00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:57.000 I said at the beginning, in your life, we spend all of our lives looking to sources of authority about all kinds of things. 00:31:57.000 --> 00:32:13.000 And you look to those things, you live out your faith in them with the hope that they will be light to your feet, a lamp to your feet, and a light to your path in many areas of life. 00:32:13.000 --> 00:32:20.000 Think of the political commentators that you consistently turn to to interpret all of these complex things for you. 00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.000 Think of the newspaper columnists that you regularly read. 00:32:24.000 --> 00:32:27.000 Think of the media outlets that you regularly turn to. 00:32:27.000 --> 00:32:29.000 Which channel do you always go to for your news? 00:32:29.000 --> 00:32:32.000 Which newspaper do you buy every day? 00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:40.000 You look to people in your life who inspire you, who seem to know what they're all about. 00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:45.000 You look to experts, and if you submit to the right authorities, it can be great. 00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:51.000 It can lead you to wisdom, to knowledge, to understanding. 00:32:51.000 --> 00:32:53.000 It could save your life. 00:32:53.000 --> 00:32:58.000 But if you submit to the wrong authorities, it can be devastating. 00:32:58.000 --> 00:33:07.000 At its core, the Reformation was a call for God to be our authority on God. 00:33:07.000 --> 00:33:10.000 Our ultimate authority. 00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.000 The God who knows himself perfectly, who delights in what he knows so much, 00:33:14.000 --> 00:33:20.000 that he would send his son into our world to share God with us, 00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:26.000 and then to pray the prayer that he prayed in John 17. 00:33:26.000 --> 00:33:34.000 The God who would reveal himself to us faithfully in Scripture, 00:33:34.000 --> 00:33:42.000 who through his Holy Spirit inspired human authors as God breathed out these sacred riphings. 00:33:42.000 --> 00:33:49.000 And also that we might not just know about God, but so that we would know God. 00:33:49.000 --> 00:33:55.000 At its core, the Reformation was this insistence that no one knows God, like God knows himself. 00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:59.000 But it was also an insistence that that God wants us to know him, 00:33:59.000 --> 00:34:06.000 and that he has made himself known by giving us his Son, by giving us Scripture, 00:34:06.000 --> 00:34:09.000 by giving us his Holy Spirit. 00:34:09.000 --> 00:34:15.000 So I hope that as we, over the next four weeks now, as we go through these solas, 00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:23.000 what we'll see is how the Reformation was this rediscovery of the greatness and glory of God through the Gospel. 00:34:23.000 --> 00:34:26.000 God as he wants us to know him. 00:34:26.000 --> 00:34:28.000 Let's pray together. 00:34:28.000 --> 00:34:34.000 Father God, our Maker, our Redeemer, 00:34:34.000 --> 00:34:38.000 we thank you for the knowledge that you have of yourself, 00:34:38.000 --> 00:34:45.000 that everything you know of yourself infinitely, exhaustively delights you, 00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:51.000 for the knowledge that exists between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 00:34:51.000 --> 00:34:55.000 of that shared glory, of that shared love. 00:34:55.000 --> 00:35:00.000 And we thank you that you have been so pleased by what you know of yourself, 00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:05.000 that you would reveal yourself by creating our world, 00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:10.000 that you would reveal yourself by creating us as your image, 00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:17.000 that you would reveal yourself by speaking to us in the Bible, in Scripture, 00:35:17.000 --> 00:35:24.000 that you'd reveal yourself by sending Jesus into the world to pray the prayer that we have read tonight. 00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:27.000 We thank you for giving us Scripture. 00:35:27.000 --> 00:35:34.000 We pray that you would help us to love it, to read it, to cherish it, to be shaped by it, 00:35:34.000 --> 00:35:40.000 to encounter you through it, and to be sanctified by it as your Word, 00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:43.000 because your Word is truth. 00:35:43.000 --> 00:35:47.000 So Lord, please help us through all these things to know you better, 00:35:47.000 --> 00:35:50.000 to love you because you loved us first. 00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:55.000 And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.