at my home, but you will still be rewarded with hearing God's word. Turn in your Bibles to Galatians. That is way too much. If you can just turn that down a bit. Galatians chapter one, we will spend some time in this morning. I have a bit of a scratchy throat, and that's due to Carl trying to smoke us out yesterday at a birthday party, and so I have a bit of a issue with my throat. Thank you, Carl. But I'm sure we can make it through the sermon. This Thursday, October 31st, marks the 502nd, if I'm not wrong, anniversary of what we know to be the Reformation. So this is Happy Reformation Week, for those of you who didn't know. Not Halloween. I know that's what you were thinking. It is that day that Luther took his 95 thesis, or points, and nailed it to a door in Germany in Wittenberg. He wanted to make a point. And for many of us, that's where the Reformation ends. And some of us have a little bit of a wide understanding, and we know about the break between the Reformers and the Catholic Church. And some of us know that even within that break, there was another break that took place, and it was between Lutheranism and the reform camps. And we know a little bit about that, but that seems to be where the Reformation ends. As if the fight that the reformers partook in is a done deal. Many of us do not understand the relevance and the importance of the Reformation, not just for church doctrine, but for our lives today. I decided to take a break from the Book of Ruth and emphasize over the next two weeks the Reformation. I'm not going to speak about Luther. I'm not going to speak about Zwingli or Calvin. I want to speak about a devotion that drove them to the point of the commitment that even if they had to die for it, they would be willing to give up their lives. That is the kind of devotion that we seem to be failing in our commitment today. The Reformation was more than a reaction against Rome. I agree with Carson, Sproul, Karl Truman, John MacArthur, John Piper, Steve Lawson, and the like, that biblical and scriptural authority is still being fought today. The battle for biblical authority is not something that the reformers started and died when they died. It is a battle that we are engaging in today. If we take a survey this morning and ask some of the modern Christians, what do you think drove the Reformation? What do you think was at the heart of the Reformation? And I know many of us would say, well, it was justification by faith, sola fide. Well, that was part of it. And some of us would say, well, it was the problem with indulgences, because that's what Luther just upset his stomach. It was a problem that the Pope thought that he was the authority. It was also an issue with regeneration and sanctification and all of those were problems, but that was not the driving force of the Reformation. This morning I want to highlight to you that the fuel that started the Reformation was the conviction that there is one authority in the Church of Jesus Christ. The conviction that kept the Reformation going and the seminal principle was the belief that the Bible is the final authority. Full stop. Period. End of discussion. I'm not saying that Sola Fidei was not at the heart of the Reformation. There is the material issue. That is what the heart of the Reformation was about. Regeneration. Justification. How can I be made right with God? But the formal cause. That which drove them to that conviction, that which overshadowed every other point of the Reformation was their conviction that there is one final authority and it is the scripture. The formal cause, the engine that drove the locomotion of the Reformation was sola scriptura, scripture alone. I want to draw your attention to the raging battle that might have started slightly more than 500 years ago. It is not over. The battle and the issue of scriptural authority is still the same today. Our day is filled with many voices, many different groups, many people vying for our attention and allegiance. Many different people believe different things on different issues. Many different fights are being taken up today. The fight for abortion, the fight for religious rights, the fight for women, the fight for justice. The fight for land. The problem is not the cause that we are taking up. The problem is what is our authority? That is the question we have to answer. Listen, if the Bible is not the final authority, something or someone else will be. You get that? If the Bible doesn't draw the line, if the Bible is not the final answer on the questions of how the church ought to conduct itself in the household of God and in the world out there, then someone else or something else will be that authority. Why do we appeal to people? I hear people often saying, well, you know what, pastor, this and this says this. You know what, I picked up this book and I'm convinced of this issue because this pastor says this. We lack the confidence to say that the Bible says so. We lack the conviction to say, listen, the Bible disagrees with you on this issue. We're too scared to draw the line in the sand and say, well, this is where the Bible draws the line. And so we court other people and we hide behind other people. They become the authority that we want to use as an argument against someone else. There is something that needs to be said for when you come to the discovery of a biblical truth yourself. When you got the conviction from the clear instruction of Scripture, from the voice of God, in the Word of God, you walk away convinced regardless of what anyone else says, what everybody else believes, it doesn't matter because you are convinced this is what God says. Nobody moves you from that. Why? Because it's a biblical conviction. Now, granted, we can come to wrong conclusions. I'm not advocating that. The Bible has to be authoritative. This is the issue that drove Luther. Justification was a main issue in his heart. In fact, he said, if I can imagine that a man can be right with God, And that God is not angry with me. I will stand on my head for joy. Why? It was an impossible equation for him. On the one hand, you had a holy, righteous God. On the other hand, you had sinners, depraved and tainted by sin. And he said, this gulf is way too big. And then right in the middle, you had the Catholic Church. We have the answer. This is how you can get right with God. Do these things. Buy this thing. Keep this law. And for Luther, it didn't make sense. Well, if God is so righteous, so holy, and man is so sinful, how is keeping these things going to make me right with God? If God is not angry with me, I will stand on my head for joy because this is not possible. I cannot be, by any means of doing and keeping anything, be right with Him. So he went to the Bible. He stopped at this passage in Galatians that we will look at this morning. And his heart was so overwhelmed that he saw in the truth of the gospel God's answer to how a man can be made right with God. And so we have the flame of the Reformation, sola fide, by faith alone. But how he got to that was through a scriptural, biblical conviction that there is one authority that answers the question. Not Pope, not creed, not church, not law, not works, not man, not anything else. There is one biblical answer to the question of how can man be made right with God. Luther got into trouble for this. It was called after many occasions to appear before a council to give an account for his beliefs and his writings. This led to one of the most famous quotes, and you'll see it often during this week on Facebook or social media, one of the most famous quotes given by Luther. And we probably know the end of it, right? but I wanna give you the greater scope, the bigger picture of what he says, but notice the substance, the heart of his argument with regards to the gospel. And I quote, since your most serene majesty and your lordship require of me a simple, clear, direct answer, I will give one, and it is this. I cannot submit my faith either to Pope or to counsel, because it is as clear as noonday that they have fallen into error and even into glaring inconsistency with themselves. If then I am not convinced by proof from the Holy Scripture or by cogent reason, if I am not satisfied by the very text that I have cited, and if my judgment is not in this way brought into subjection to God's Word, I neither nor will retract anything. For it cannot be either safe or honest for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen." End quote. What Luther had was a deep, unflinching, willing to die conviction that the authority of God is in the gospel of God and if nobody agrees with me, I will stand here and die for that conviction. It made no sense to Luther to say that we can do stuff to be right with God. For him, the fundamental question was, and I agree with a lot of the writers of the Reformers, the main question was how can a man be right with God? That was the main issue for Luther. But the form of the driving force behind that was his conviction that the answer is in scriptural authority alone. It's given by God in His Word. Luther's saying, hang on. If the Bible doesn't say it, I'm not believing it. If the Bible doesn't tell me that I need to keep what you are saying, I need to buy that indulgence that you are wanting me to buy. If the Bible is not saying that I can get my family member out of purgatory by means of what you want me to do, I am not believing it. So the answer to the question, how can man be made right with God, is sola fide. But how we got there, that is what I want to look at this morning. How did Luther get there? It is God who justifies. What brought about this transformation from believing in Pope and creeds and church and tradition? It was biblical authority. It was sola scriptura. Listen to what he says. If I'm not convinced by proof of Holy Scripture, if I'm not satisfied by every text that I have cited, If my will and my mind and my heart and my conviction is not brought in subjection to the will of God, I will never retract. Because the authority is not me, it's not what I say, but God's Word. I'm convinced that the Bible says it, and so I believe it, and I'm willing to die for it. This morning I want to pause at the formal cause of the Reformation. What drove the reformers to pursue a reform of the church, a reform in the understanding of reconciliation and justification? I want to submit to you that it was a deep, willing-to-die devotion to the authority of Scripture. That was the engine of the Reformation. And so I'm going to give you three truths concerning Sola Scriptura. Three truths. Number one, sola scriptura, its inherent claim. Number two, sola scriptura, its eternal necessity. Number three, sola scriptura, its practical implication. We will look at all three of those. The last two will be really brief since my time is almost gone. But we will spend some time understanding the inherent claim of the Scripture itself. If the Bible does not claim for Himself to be authoritative, then what are we doing? If the Bible is not God's final word on life and godliness, church conduct, church worship, application in your marriage, with regards to kids, raising godly kids, parenting. If the Bible is not the final authority, we then have to appeal to another authority. Furthermore, if the Bible doesn't claim itself to be the very words of God and therefore be authoritative, we are wasting our time. The first thing that I wanna point to you I point you to is the authority of the gospel. The authority of the gospel. Galatians chapter 1. This is what moved Luther to his conviction. Verse 6. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ on a turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. This is what moved Luther. God gave the gospel. Because God gave the gospel, the gospel is therefore unchangeable. cannot be meddled with. It must never change. What gospel is he talking about? Well, he gets there. Look at chapter 2, verse 15. This is the gospel. We ourselves are Jews by birth, not Gentile sinners. Yet we know that a person is what? Justified by Sorry, not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. So also we have believed in Christ Jesus, meaning we came by the same means, in order to be justified by faith in Christ, not by the works of the law, because by works of the law, no one will be justified. That is the gospel. It is by faith, sola fide, in Christ, sola Christus, alone. There is nothing else. No one else. This is the content, the heart of why the Reformation was so important, because the Pope and the Catholic Church said something different. So Luther was moved by this section in Galatians, and he believed that the gospel was given by God. It is God who justifies. Faith alone. Now look at verse 7. There is no other gospel. But there are those who try to distort the gospel. This message in chapter 2, verse 15. Look at 8. He includes himself in that we. If we, or an angel from heaven, Listen to what he says. Just perchance we came to you and we said, hang on, we preached to you the gospel, but it was almost right. We left something out. So the message we gave was 95% there. And this other part is what I'm gonna give to you now. We need to add it to the gospel. If we, Paul including himself, or an angel comes and says, what you've heard, what you've received, is not exactly complete, then what do you do? Well, you accept him. Maybe he's right. I mean, it is Paul after all. Maybe he didn't give us the entirety of the gospel. Let's say, for instance, we are gathered here today. And we believe justification by faith alone is the truth. Let's say that. And an angel with all his glory, a seraphim comes and he stands right here in front of this pulpit. Stretches out his wings. What will you do? I know I would do. I would be running away. What will you do? Because that's not normal. Not today at least. You would be What's the word I'm looking for? Amazed, right? That we have this angelic presence in our midst. But what if he says that, well, so I come from the Lord and I bring to you a message that the gospel that you have received is almost right. There is one thing that God still requires of you. You were almost in the kingdom, but this one thing, you need to become Jewish. Keep the law. Make sure that you uphold the truths of the law. You are almost there. You're almost in. Just keep the law. That's all God requires, and you will be saved. What should we do when that happens? I'm not asking you to imagine the possibility. I want you to place yourself in the presence of an angel or in the presence of Paul himself. Paul stands in this pool, but then he says exactly the same thing. I had it almost right the first time I preached it, but I forgot this one thing to tell you. God actually wants us to keep the law as well. What do you do? Well, he tells us. He says, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you have already received, Let him be accursed. It's a nice way of saying, let him be damned, condemned. I like what Piper says, let him go to hell. Because that's the implication. When you're condemned from God, you're condemned to eternity, to hell. So he says, if an angel comes, if I come and tell you the gospel is not complete, send me to hell. Curse me to a lost eternity without Christ, because that is how serious the gospel is. Now, the point has not been made yet. He's just telling you if this is possible. But why is he saying that? What is the motivation behind Paul's point that the gospel is so right, it is so true, it is so authoritative that it could not and ever should never be meddled with? Here's why. Because it is given by Jesus Christ. Didn't make this up. If you read on verse 11, for I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that we preached in the past tense, which you spoke about now in verse six through two to nine, the gospel we preached was preached to me, sorry, where was I now? That the gospel that was preached by me is not what? Man's. Gospel for I did not receive it from anyone Nor was I taught it, but I received what it the gospel through a revelation of Jesus Christ. Did you get that? The gospel I preach is the gospel I received and who did it come from? God I Received the gospel of God and because I have received this gospel of God. I gladly preached it to you and you received it and But if I come to you now and say, hang on, I made a mistake. I didn't give you the full gospel. Here's what you do. You curse me to hell. Let him be damned. Cut off. Accursed. Why? Because it is the gospel of God. This is what he calls it in Romans chapter 1. He says it is the gospel of God which the Lord prophesied concerning Jesus Christ. It is the gospel of God concerning Jesus Christ. If anybody comes to us with a gospel other than the gospel of God concerning Jesus Christ. Let that person be accursed. Why? It is God's gospel. I have no place meddling in God's gospel. You have no place meddling in God's gospel. No church has any place changing the message that we received in the Word of God. Luther and the reformers were so reluctant to change the message of the gospel, adding anything to it. Why? Because they rightly understood that it was God who gave the gospel. This was the driving force behind the Reformation. It was the engine that was in the locomotive of the Reformation. Without biblical authority, without the belief that the Bible is the final word on the essence of the gospel, on the nature of the gospel, there would be no Reformation. It was a deep, immovable conviction that God's Word is unalterable. So here's what Luther says on this verse, and I quote, For the overthrowing of this, their wicked and blasphemous doctrine, justification by means of works, thou hast here a plain text like a thunderbolt when Paul subjects himself or an angel from heaven. and doctors upon the earth and all the teachers and masters whatsoever under the authority of scripture. See, to him it was not just about the essence of the gospel. To Luth it was about what is the final authority. This queen, the authority of scripture, ought to rule and all ought to obey and be subject to her. Whether Pope, actually let me back up, I was trying to skip something here. They ought not to be masters or judges or arbiters, but only witnesses and disciples and confessors of the scripture. Whether it be Pope, Luther, Augustine, Paul, or even an angel from heaven, neither ought any doctrine be taught or heard in the church besides the pure word of God. That is to say, Holy Scripture, otherwise, accursed be both the teacher, the one in this pulpit, and the hearers together with their doctrine. If you receive it, he's saying, and you approve of the error in the pulpit that is not presenting the gospel as God has given it, you are as accursed as the one who presents the gospel. The Reformers were so committed to this truth that they were willing to die for it. Luther drew a line in the sand and said, here's the line, biblical authority. The final word is God's word, end of the line, end of the sentence, full stop, period, no debate. Don't try to argue with me, this is the line. And he was willing to give his life for it. Why was scripture so important? Well, because it was revealed by God. It's given by God. Luther believed that his scripture was delivered from the claws of the Pope, that there would be a worldwide reformation, and boy was he right. When the scriptures were printed and given to the hands of the lay person in the street, when the scripture was unbound and unhinged from the authority of the Pope and the church, what happened? We saw a global transformation. Churches were changed, lives were being transformed. Why? Because the power is in the gospel. Again, one more quote from Luther. It seems to be a light matter to mingle law and the gospel, faith and works together. Let me pause there. Today we have this issue where some are trying to keep the law to sanctify themselves and some are adding the law to the gospel. And he says back in his day that it seems a light matter to add the law to the gospel as if it's one thing. It seems a light matter to do this. Listen to what he says. Do you get that? The authority is not me. The authority is God's voice in the Word of God. The authority is the gospel. And Luther says, when the minute you add anything to it, you overthrow it. You nullify it. When the gospel is Christ plus something else, it ceases to be the gospel. You might not believe me, but this is what Paul says. Notice what he says in chapter two. We read the first part of it, I'm gonna jump down to the end. Verse 19, for through the law, I died to the law, so that I may live to God. I've been crucified with Christ. Crucified to what? To the law. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live, I live in the flesh, not in law, I live in the flesh by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ, what? died for no purpose. If sanctification, justification is by means of the law, Christ's death means nothing. Absolutely nothing. We void the gospel when we add anything to the gospel. Now this is all good and well. We say that the Bible is authoritative, but how do I know? Well, first I pointed out that the gospel was given by Jesus Christ and Paul calls it the gospel of God concerning his son. Therefore, if God is the one who presents the gospel, the gospel is what? Authoritative. That is Paul's point. That was Luther's point. I don't get to meddle with the gospel because it's God given. Now let me expand a little bit further. Why do we say then that the Bible is authoritative? Well, just like if the gospel is given by God and therefore is authoritative, if the scripture is given by God, it would therefore be what? Authoritative. Look at 2 Timothy 3.16. I'm sure you know this verse of by heart. 2 Timothy 3. All scripture is breathed out or inspired by God. This is the primary source being highlighted. In academic papers, we had to find a primary source, not secondary sources, not what this one's quoting about this one and that one says that about that one. You wanna go to the source. The river is purest at its source. This is the source of the authority of Scripture. All scripture is, if you've got inspired, take the little word, circle it, and take a line right next to it, above it, on the margin, breathed out. It's a compound word. It's made up from theos and pneuma. Theopneustos. It is breathed out by God. That is a literal and probably the best translation, if the ESV, I think, has that. of that word. When we say inspiration, we kind of muzzle, we kind of cloud the meaning there. It is breathed out. When we speak, our breath carries our words. Nobody speaks while breathing in unless there's something wrong. I don't know if you can speak like that, but nobody naturally speaks while breathing in. But the minute you speak, you are breathing out. And as you speak out, your breath carries your words. That is the implication here. That is what is being said here, that when God spoke, when His breath came forward, His word came forward, and what Paul defines as His word here is all of Scripture is breathed out by God. The source of Scripture is God Himself. Every single word in Scripture, we spoke about the red letter Bible, not just the red letters of Jesus, every word is breathed out by God. So let's bring this to a final conclusion. If God gave the gospel, and the gospel is so authoritative because He gave it, and therefore we can't meddle with it. In the same way, if God gave the scripture in its totality, if He gave it, then that means that every word of God carries what? Authority. Every word that God gives is authoritative. Whether it's a preposition, then the joints, or a verb, or a noun, they use the language to put forth a point. Everything that God says is authoritative. How do we know it's authoritative? Because God is the ultimate authority. There is no higher authority than God. Listen, in a country you have the president, right? Now it's debatable if he's the final authority, because maybe his wife is pulling the strings. It doesn't matter. He is the final authority. He gets sovereignty over the nation, over the country. Whether we like it or not, he has invested authority. He gets the invested authority by being elected to that position, whether it's by democratic means, or by stealing the election, or by meddling in an election. It doesn't matter. He has the authority at that point in time, invested authority. Whatever rule he makes is law, right? Because he's got invested authority. God is not like that. God doesn't have invested authority. He's got ultimate, unchallenged, uninvested authority because He Himself is the authority. So whether He gives the law or whether He limits the law or whether He has fulfilled the law in Christ doesn't matter. He's the one that guides, that limits, that decides what needs to take place. So from Old Testament, Genesis 1 verse 1, in to the end of the book, Amen. From the first word to the last word, God has spoken. That is authority given to us. It is final. Because He is the final authority. Jesus says that in Matthew 28, He's got all authority. How is that possible? Because He's God. Because He's God. Throughout the scripture you have, and God said, and God spoke, and God told someone to write. Why? Because he's the source of scripture. And if he's the source of scripture, then what he says is the final authority. The church at Thessalonica, when they received the preaching of Paul, he says to them that you did not receive it as a word of man, but received it for what it really is, the word of God. What do we call this today? The Bible. Let's change that. It's the Word of God, because in the Word of God, the voice of God speaks. I think I made my point. God is the final authority, and since His Word is given by Him, and because the gospel is given by God, and it's God's gospel, therefore the gospel is authoritative and cannot be meddled with. Likewise, the Word cannot be meddled with. That is the Bible's own claim. If the Bible is true, and it is, then it has the final say, and it does. Now let's consider the last two points. It's eternal necessity and the implication of this. I've already touched on this in Galatians. The main reason for needing a reformation was because the gospel was clouded. The connection between the gospel and scriptural authority cannot be denied. If the word of God cannot be trusted in reference to the gospel, then we will never be saved. If perchance we do need to keep the law, then the gospel in the Bible is wrong. If perchance we do need penance, If we do need to keep the sacraments, if we do need a measure of works, then the Bible is wrong. That means I can't trust this. That means that we've been living a lie. That means that Paul has been lying to us, which means that Jesus has been lying to us, which means we need to take this and throw it out because we cannot trust it. There is eternal implications for if the Bible is not the final authority on the word, sorry, on the gospel. This was the line for the reformers. This was the hill to die on. If I contrast the gospel, as revealed in the Word of God. I can't trust the Word of God. And so, because I trust the Word of God, I trust the gospel, which means the church and the pope and the creeds and traditions are all wrong. You get that in the quote that I read first by Luther. They're all wrong. So, this is what it comes to. If the Bible is divine truth, and it is, then there is one divine Savior, Jesus Christ. And He is. If I believe every word in this, then I've got to believe John chapter 14, where Jesus himself says that I am what? I am the way. I am and I am If Jesus said that, if it's written in the pages of Scripture, that is the voice of God. I didn't make it up. We might not like the idea that there is only one way and only one divine Savior because of our heart for those who are not saved, but what if there is one way because Jesus said so? There is one way. If the Bible must be believed concerning how we are justified, then works cannot ever enter into the equation. Then the law cannot ever enter into the equation. If it is justification by faith alone, and we believe that because that is what the Bible says, we cannot add to it. It can't be Jesus plus. The minute we plus, we nullify the heart of the gospel, which means our souls are not secure. That means you need to keep the law. That means you need to start working for your own salvation. If the gospel is not sufficient, we are saying that the death of Jesus Christ on the cross is not enough. This was Luther's burden. He maintained that the issue is both scriptural authority and justification because they are intrinsically connected. You cannot have sola fide without sola scriptura. I hope you see that. There is only one infallible voice, and it is God's voice in God's Word. Chapter 3, verse 15 of 2 Timothy, Paul says that the Scriptures is able to make you wise unto salvation. Psalm 19 says that it is the word of the Lord that restores the soul. The law of the Lord that restores the soul. Speaking about the totality of God's revelation. It is Romans chapter 10 verse 13, and we don't like it because it goes against the grain of what some people believe, and we want to be compassionate. But the word of God says that faith comes by what? Hearing what? Hearing the word of Christ. End of the line, full stop. That is how people get saved. That is how people get into eternity. That is how people are in a right relationship with God. And apart from that, no one can ever be saved. And so we say, what about the pygmy on Mount Ararat? He's never heard the gospel. He's living in a cave. He's never seen the light of day. Have you read Romans chapter 1? Because of God's revelation in nature and the fact that He knows that God exists without the gospel. He's guilty. He's guilty. So are you. So am I. And the only way we can go from that state of ignorance and judgment to a state of being right with God is through what God gives in His Word. Let me push the line even further. And no other way. There is no other way. I didn't make it up. I might not, because of compassion for the lost, want that to be the final say, because what if? But that is the final word. This is how God saves and how He chose to redeem His people. So finally, there's eternal implications for our souls if the Bible is not authoritative. What about the implications? Was Sola Scriptura merely the battle cry of the Reformers? Do we leave it with Luther? Do we leave it with Calvin? Do we leave it with Zwingli? Carson and Sproul says that the fight of the reformers in Sola Scriptura is not over today. I fear that we have fallen asleep to the theological truth that there is one final authority. How do I know that? Because of how we want to reason We wanna make allowances or implications for certain things. John MacArthur was called a unloving, unkind, misogynist because he spoke up about a woman in the pulpit just recently. MacArthur said that SBC, Southern Baptist Convention, has abandoned biblical authority because they have abandoned the clear and plain meaning of scripture. You know what they did? They invited a woman to speak. So what's wrong with that? I mean, clearly the Bible doesn't make allowances for such things. So maybe MacArthur then is But too hard. You know what he said to her? Go home. Go ask your husband. What's offensive in that? Well, if you go to Titus, you go to Timothy, you know what the Bible has to say, and therefore God has to say about the woman in the pulpit, that a woman shall not have authority over a man. And she's not given the place to teach in the pulpit of God, the Word of God to the people of God. And if we have a problem with that, we've got a problem with what God says. It is not MacArthur that said it, it is Paul that said it, it is God that says it. We need to get rid of this duality where we say we believe in biblical authority, but on the other hand we want to make concessions for where this world is leading the church today. If the Bible is authoritative, And now I'm gonna push the envelope to a little bit more of a personal aspect. If the Bible is authoritative, and it is, then it is the final word on how we can conduct our lives. I don't get to cheat on my taxes, do I? That's lying. So, what then about creation? Ah, the Bible doesn't talk about dinosaurs, so dinosaurs probably didn't live. And, you know, I don't know, dinosaurs look really old. I mean, have you seen those pictures? They must be possibly 25 million years old. You know, it's gotta be. How else can you get such an old, ugly looking thing if it didn't take so long? Because people, when they grow old, they grow not exactly pretty, you know? So therefore, maybe creation is wrong. If the Bible is so authoritative, and let me put it this way, the Catholic Church recognized that they had no answer to what we call today science, the rise of evolution. And at the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church recognized that we don't have an answer, so we do need to make accommodations for signs. And so what they said, and this is a common phrase in evangelical churches, that the Word of God is authoritative over matters of life and faith. Faith and practice. So when the Bible speaks to you about how you ought to live, authoritative. When the Bible speaks about what needs to take place in the church, authoritative. But the minute it goes outside that and speaks about creation, not authoritative. See, faith and practice, science. Faith and practice, culture. So the Bible's not authoritative. History, it's not authoritative. Well, I don't know about them, but clearly in my Bible, there is one verse that clearly settles the question. In the beginning, God created. End of discussion, full stop, period. That's what it says, whether we like it or not. He's the one who created. Now you've got those that want to compromise with science and say, hang on, what if God created, but it took millions of years? Well, read a little bit further. Day one, day two, day three, day four, day five, day six, and God rested on the seventh day, Exodus, and God created in six days. And on the seventh day, He created so that You may work for six days and the rest on the seventh. Do we work seven days? Do we work millions of years before we get to our rest? No. Why is Exodus acceptable, 20, but Genesis 1 is not acceptable? We want to make accommodations. If the Bible is authoritative, let it be authoritative. Let it be the final word, because it is the final word. Whether we fully understand creation or not, that's not the point. It says, he created in six literal days. So what then about how you raise your children? Well, you know, you don't know my child. Child of the devil, I can't help it. She is, that's just who he is, I can't help it. Besides, the law is now that it's against the law to discipline your child. If the Bible is authoritative, let it be authoritative. You spear the rod, you spoil the child. Father, do not neglect the rod of discipline. Father. Father. Do not neglect the rod of discipline. Take up the mantle of biblical authority and apply it in every aspect of your life. We don't get to pick and choose when the Bible is agreeable or not because it is God's final word. Whether you like it or not, it is God's word and he says we should discipline our children. So discipline your children. What about the gospel and evangelism? Oh, this is so much. We need to insist. and we must maintain biblical authority. It is God's voice in God's word. He breathed it, we have it, let's live by it. Not our opinions, not our theology, not our church, not our creed, not what I say, not what Don says, not what Peter says, but what God says in his word is final authority. Sola Scriptura or nothing else. The Reformation was brought about because of an immovable, willing-to-die commitment that this, that God has given, is the final word. May the fuel that drove the Reformation never burn out in our hearts. I ask you to examine your life where the Bible's authority has been weeded out, where we've been compromising on scriptural authority, Take it up. Don't just believe it, but apply it. Without a deep conviction in sola scriptura as the final authority, we cannot guarantee sola fide. Does that make sense? Without the Bible being final in everything that it touches, whether it's history or science, if it's not final, I can't guarantee that you will be saved by grace through faith. We need to move beyond the mere profession that the Bible is authoritative and live under the authority of Scripture, governed by it, and remain faithful to it. Father, we thank you for the word given. Thank you for your voice clearly given to us in your word. We pray, oh Lord, that you would grant us forgiveness for compromising on biblical truth, compromising on key tenants of your word, on even meddling with the gospel. Pray that you bring about a deep conviction and an undying commitment to the faithfulness of your word. Unchain the truth of your word in our hearts, and let it not only convict us, but drive us to a deeper devotion and faithfulness, such as we have never experienced or seen in our lives. Oh God, by your word, sanctify us. Change us for your glory. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.