Well, take your Bibles, open up with me this morning to Ephesians chapter two. Gonna take a break this week from our study in the covenants to do a, I say it's a quick reformation review. We see if we get all of this done today. It may take us two Sundays to do that. But just wanted to review the five solas of the reformation. As we did celebrate this week, the 507th anniversary of the nailing of Martin Luther's 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, citing complaints and issuing basically an appeal for a debate on theological matters within the Roman Catholic Church, not intending to leave the church, but intending to reform the church, and in fact, got put out of the church, and that turned out to be a good thing. as the fires of the Reformation were lit under really the first of the solas that we look at, which is sola scriptura. But as a way of background, James Boyce, he wrote, reformed theology has been defined by the great, or actually I wrote, reformed theology has been defined by the great Presbyterian pastor James Boyce as, and this is his quote, theology solidly based on the Bible itself. When we look at Reformed theology, when we look at the fruit of the Reformation, it was a return to Scripture. What does the Bible say? He went on to write, Reformed Christians hold to the doctrines characteristic of all Christians, including the Trinity, the true deity and true humanity of Jesus Christ, the necessity of Jesus's atonement for sin, the church as a divinely ordained institution, the inspiration of the Bible, the requirement that Christians live moral lives and the resurrection of the body. They hold other doctrines in common with evangelical Christians, such as justification by faith alone, the need for the new birth, the personal and visible return of Jesus Christ and the great commission. But when we look at the specifics, the signature beliefs of those who are reformed in their theology and understand when we talk about being reformed in our theology, it is not just that we believe or hold to the doctrines of grace. There's more to being reformed than just being Calvinistic. And part of that is what's rooted in what lit the fires of the Reformation. It is a commitment to the doctrine of Scripture, to the sovereignty of God, to the doctrines of grace, and to the cultural mandate to work to bring people to Jesus Christ. Now, others have rightly summarized the great truths, the foundation of the Reformation as the five solas, sola, the Latin word, which is translated for us alone. We talk about sola scriptura, it is scripture alone. And that's a distinctive term to reformed theology. Here in our church, our ministry, this is a ministry in the reformed tradition. We agree with James Boyce. We readily identify our belief in the doctrines of grace and in these five solas that we're gonna cover. So what are those five solas? Sola Scriptura, Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, Solus Christus, Soli Dei Gloria. And how do we relate to those today? How are we actively carrying on in the spirit of the Reformation? Sola Scriptura, the doctrine of scripture alone. The Second Lenten Baptist Confession begins a lot, actually very similar to the way the Westminster Confession began, sharing this as our start. The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, so much that man is left without any excuse, they are not sufficient to provide that knowledge of God and his will, which is necessary for salvation. So where we start is we start with the Bible, the Holy Scriptures. The Bible is inspired. It is inerrant. It is infallible. It is sufficient. It is active. It is alive. It can't be bound. It can't be stopped. It always accomplishes the purpose for which it is sent forth. And that's where we have to start. And it's not coming to the Bible and saying, how does the church interpret the Bible? It's coming to the Bible and saying, what does the Bible say? In the process of interpretation of hermeneutics, there are rules that we use to rightly understand any written literature. We apply that especially to scripture to carefully and to rightly handle the word. But it is not that the church is over the word to explain it. It's that the church is under the word, ruled by it. Christ rules his church through his spirit, through the word that the spirit inspired. and this is why we submit ourselves to sola scriptura. If we are going to settle a debate, settle a theological point, settle an argument, if we're going to find an answer to a question, or find a cure for whatever we're being convicted of, we have to go to the scriptures. We have to be in the Bible. I'm gonna reference throughout the Cambridge Declaration from the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, and this actually was published first in 1996, still very relevant today, They wrote there, evangelical churches today are increasingly dominated by the spirit of this age rather than by the spirit of Christ. As evangelicals, we call ourselves to repent of this sin and to recover the historic Christian faith. In the course of history, words change. In our day, this has happened to the word evangelical. In the past, it served as a bond of unity between Christians for a wide diversity of church traditions. Historic evangelicalism was confessional. It embraced the essential truths of Christianity as those were defined by the great ecumenical councils of the church. In addition, evangelicals also shared a common heritage in the solace of the 16th century Protestant Reformation. Today, the light of the Reformation has been significantly dimmed. The consequence is that the word evangelical has become so inclusive as to have lost its meaning. We face the peril of losing the unity it has taken centuries to achieve. Because of this crisis and because of our love of Christ, his gospel and his church, we endeavor to assert anew our commitment to the central truths of the Reformation and of historic evangelicalism. These truths we affirm not because of their role in our traditions, but because we believe that they are central to the Bible. Beginning then with sola scriptura, this is the definition and the explanation from the Cambridge Declaration. Scripture alone is the inerrant rule of the church's life, but the evangelical church today has separated scripture from its authoritative function. In practice, the church is guided far too often by the culture. Therapeutic technique, marketing strategies, the beat of the entertainment world often have far more to say about what the church wants, how it functions, and what it offers than does the word of God. Pastors have neglected the rightful oversight of worship, including the doctrinal content of the music. As biblical authority has been abandoned in practice, As its truths have faded from Christian consciousness and as its doctrines have lost their saliency, the church has been increasingly emptied of its integrity, moral authority, and direction. Rather than adopting Christian faith to satisfy the felt needs of consumers, we must proclaim the law as the only measure of true righteousness and the gospel as the only announcement of saving truth. Biblical truth is indispensable to the church's understanding, nurture, and discipline. They go on and write, scripture must take us beyond our perceived needs to our real needs and liberate us from seeing ourselves through the seductive images, cliches, promises, and priorities of mass culture. It's only in the light of God's truth that we understand ourselves are right and see God's provision for our need. The Bible, therefore, must be taught and preached in the church. Sermons must be expositions of the Bible and its teachings, not expressions of the preacher's opinion or the ideas of the age. We must settle for nothing less than what God has given. As we look at Sola Scriptura, as we look at the doctrine of the Word of God being our sole authority, we do have to realize that too often today, you might hear somebody preach and they'll stand up and they'll read a verse, but then they preach a sermon that has nothing to do with that verse. It's like that verse is just a launching point to say, okay, we've got the Bible here. Preaching and teaching needs to be an explanation Paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, line by line, word by word, explaining the meaning of the word of God. This happened under the revival, under Ezra and Nehemiah, when the people came back from the captivity. They would stand and the priest would teach and preach the word of God. And the purpose was to read it and then explain it. That is expository preaching. What does this word say? What does it mean? And how is it applicable to us? The result, the Cambridge Declaration said, we reaffirm the inerrant scripture to be the sole source of written divine revelation, which alone can bind the conscience. That was Martin Luther's point. When he stood on trial and ended with the famous, here I stand, he started by saying, my conscience is bound by the word of God. There is nothing else and there should be nothing else that binds our conscience. That was Jesus's whole point in the Sermon on the Mount. He attacked the traditions of the rabbis and the Pharisees and the scribes. And he said, you've heard that it was said, he would quote their law to them, but they would twist it. They would misuse it. And then he would reply, but I say to you, and he would restate what the Word of God actually says. What God's Word says is binding. Our traditions are not binding unless our traditions are based on the Word of God. The Declaration goes on, the Bible alone teaches all that is necessary for our salvation from sin and is the standard by which all Christian behavior must be measured. We deny that any creed, council, or individual may bind a Christian's conscience. that the Holy Spirit speaks independently of or contrary to what is set forth in the Bible, or that personal spiritual experience can ever be a vehicle of revelation. When we look at Sola Scriptura and this, I say being that the spark that lit the Reformation, Wycliffe in 1300s began, he wanted to preach to the people and he wanted to give them the word of God in their own language. His disciple, John Hus, did the same thing. And instead of preaching in Latin, he preached in the language of the people in his congregation. and there was revival. People started getting saved. It was a miracle because the word was being sent forth, not just church tradition and not just ceremony and not just ritual. Well, they got so upset with Huss for what he did that they called for a meeting with him, tricked him, arrested him and burnt him at the stake. And then in order to show how mad they really were, Wycliffe, his mentor, who had died years before, they dug his bones up and burned them. Wycliffe didn't care at that point, but thinking that they were sending a message. Well, as John Hus was being burned alive, he said, today you are cooking a goose. And actually his family crest, his name meant goose. In a hundred years, there will be a swan that you will not be able to kill or to cook. A hundred years from Hus, 1416. to 1517, a man whose family seal had a swan in the middle of it, nailed 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg. These are the sparks of the Reformation where the people, the preaching, the church sought to go back and rediscover the word of God, not just traditions, not just what the church said, But what did the word of God say? From that and from what happened with the reformers and the reformation, we see five or four other solas that spring to life. The first out of that was sola gratia, by grace alone. This is Ephesians 2, eight through 10. For by grace, you've been saved through faith in this, not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. This was Martin Luther's battle with himself. He was guilty. He was convicted of sin. And he didn't know how to get rid of that conviction. He went to other monks, to other priests. He tried confession. He tried to do everything that he knew to do and ended up finally searching the scriptures. And Romans 5 came alive to him. Romans 5 that demonstrates that justification is by faith. That's the next sola, sola fide. But in discovering justification by faith, not by works, not by human works, he was driven to understand grace. For by grace, you've been saved. Salvation is not something you can earn. It's not something that you can buy. It's not something that you can merit. It's not something you can pay the church for. It's not something that you can go through a ritual to be a part of. Salvation is by grace alone. And the scriptures are clear, for by grace you have been saved through faith and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. We don't give ourselves grace, God gives us grace. It's not our works, we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand. This grace has been given to us in the form of a covenant. It is the outpouring of the new covenant made with the blood of Christ that we've been studying. The second London Baptist confession talks about the covenant and it talks about the effectual call. Those whom God has predestined to life, he is pleased and is appointed an accepted time to effectually call by his word and spirit out of that state of sin and death, which they are in by nature to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ. He enlightens their mind spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God. He takes away their heart of stone and gives them a heart of flesh. He renews their wills, and by His almighty power causes them to desire and pursue that which is good. He effectually draws them to Jesus Christ, yet in such a way that they come absolutely freely, being made willing by His grace. This effectual call is of God's free and special grace alone, not on account of anything at all foreseen in man. This is the call. This is God's grace. This is God coming, seeking us. As Spurgeon describes the work of the Holy Spirit, he referred to the Holy Spirit quite often as the holy hound of heaven. He was gonna hunt you down and there was nowhere you could hide from him. He was gonna chase you till he caught you. He was coming after you because Jesus came to seek and save that which is lost. And that's all by grace. God did not look at any one of us and say, oh, there's a good one, I want that one. No, he said, there's a bad one. I want that one so I can make that one good. That's his grace. The Cambridge Declaration on this sola says, unwarranted confidence in human ability is a product of fallen human nature. This false confidence now fills the evangelical world from the self-esteem gospel to the health and wealth gospel, from those who have transformed the gospel into a product to be sold and sinners into consumers who want to buy, to others who treat Christian faith as being true simply because it works. That's just pragmatism. This silences the doctrine of justification, regardless of the official commitments of our churches. God's grace is not merely necessary, but it is the sole efficient cause of salvation. We confess that human beings are born spiritually dead and are incapable even of cooperating with regenerating grace. We reaffirm that in salvation, we are rescued from God's wrath by his grace alone. It is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that brings us to Christ by releasing us from our bondage to sin and raising us from spiritual death to spiritual life. We deny that salvation is in any sense a human work. Human methods, techniques, or strategies by themselves cannot accomplish this transformation. Faith is not produced by our unregenerated human nature. This was part of the argument, as we then look at sola fide, by faith alone, part of the argument that actually brought me to understand the doctrines of grace was a friend of mine, Brian Hedges, and we were both teenage boys, we had met in a Bible conference, and him, the son of a preacher, going to be a preacher, me called to preach and already preaching, and he asked me a question. He said, before you were saved, were you spiritually dead or spiritually alive? Well, I was spiritually dead, okay? So you were spiritually dead. Can a spiritually dead person exercise a spiritual gift? Well, no. Well, what is faith? Faith is a gift. It's right here. It all comes back to Ephesians 2. For by grace, you have been saved through faith. And the question is, which is the gift, the grace or the faith? And the answer is, yep, all of it. is a gift of God's grace. By this gift of grace, he gives us the gift of faith. But in order for us to use that gift of faith, we first have to be made spiritually alive. We have to be born again by the spirit of God. That's why Jesus told Nicodemus, you must be born again. And Nicodemus' question was the question that all of the Arminians in our lives should ask. How can I enter into my mother's womb and be born again? How can I do that? I can't do that. And the answer is exactly. If you are dead in sin, you can't birth yourself. You can't exercise a spiritual gift. This has to be enabled by the grace of God. When we look at the Sola of faith alone. and proclaiming the truth that salvation is by grace alone. We understand from the same text here in Ephesians 2, 8, 9, that God gives with his grace the faith that we need in order to believe him and obey the gospel. The really great news about this grace is that God gives us grace. He gives us repentance. He gives us faith. He gives us everything we need to turn from our sin and to him. And that's where Martin Luther started. The first of his 95 theses, a contention that in the life of a believer, repentance is not a one time act. Repentance is a daily way of life. We are always daily repenting of our sin, repenting of everything that we are outside of Jesus Christ and turning to him in faith. When we're born again and we do that for the first time, we are justified and we are converted. Our justification then is solely by faith. Now it's not by faith that is alone, that is faith without works, but by active living faith alone. John MacArthur said it this way, we are saved by faith alone, but that faith does not stay alone. To be the faith alone that brings justification, it has to be faith that works. The evidence of regeneration, the fruit of regeneration, are repentance and faith followed by good works. It's not the works that faith accomplishes. It's the instrumentality of that gift by faith alone that we're made righteous before God. We trust Christ and based on that faith that God gave us by his grace, he imputes the righteousness of Christ to us fully and declares us to be right with him. You understand, we see this picture of the angels in heaven rejoicing anytime a sinner repents. And you understand they're really not rejoicing because of anything we do. They're rejoicing because of what God just did. God saved another sinner and declared that sinner to be righteous in his sight and to be reconciled with him. And all the angels say, Amen. Holy, holy, holy. He saved another one. He's done it again. The Puritan catechism asked the question, what is justification? Justification is an act of God's free grace wherein he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone. The Second London Confession says those whom God affectionately calls, he also freely justifies, not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins. This is why this Sola is important. This is why this Sola is important to the work of Martin Luther in the Reformation, because the Roman Catholic Church does not teach imputation. They teach infusion, that Christ's righteousness is attained by us by faith and his righteousness is joined to our righteousness and presented together that makes us right with God. Well, when you realize if I was to pile up all of my righteousness before Christ, it's just a bunch of filthy rags that need to be burned. That's the best. That is the absolute best any of us can do on our own. This is not an infusion where we get some of Jesus and some of us. And in fact, they understand the corruption of that doctrine because they had to create a whole new place that you go when you die to burn off your efforts in purgatory. As Martin Luther opposed Tetzel, he was going around collecting indulgences and here was the deal. People always react when a church asks for money. You understand that indulgences were the first church building fund campaign. They were building the Vatican. They were building St. Peter's Basilica, and they needed money to do it. And so they had an ingenious idea. We have all of these people who know that when they die, they're going to purgatory. And at that point, they would tell you, you or your relatives who've died are going to be in purgatory for a million years. suffering until finally all of your wickedness is burned off because what Christ did is not sufficient. And then you'll be welcomed into heaven. But we have good news. If you pay a certain amount toward the building of the basilica, it will take thousands of years off purgatory for your loved ones and for you when you eventually get there. This is so It's as silly as the guy that got caught a couple of years ago under a bridge downtown in Austin selling golden tickets. He had these little foil tickets that he had written on with a Sharpie, free entrance, admit one to heaven, $5,000. Nobody was buying his tickets, but people were paying for those indulgences. And Martin Luther opposed it because he understood you're trying to sell salvation. You're corrupting the grace of God. You're corrupting the doctrine of justification by faith. Our justification is not Christ's righteousness infused with ours and joined to it. We have nothing to contribute to our salvation. Jonathan Edwards said, actually, the only thing we do contribute to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary. It is the imputation of the full righteousness of Christ to us upon our exercising the faith that God has given us by grace, wherein God can declare that we are right with him. What a transformation that is. That is why we are told that we are a new creation in Christ. That faith which receives Christ, the confession goes on, depends on him. That's the sole instrument of justification. Yet this faith is not alone in the person justified, but is always accompanied by all the other saving graces. And it is not a dead faith, but works by love. I noticed that somebody this week had posted online that dead orthodoxy was still alive. Just think about that statement. It was a funny statement. Dead orthodoxy is still alive. Now, what is dead orthodoxy? That's a term that you use for people who sound like they've got it all right, but they're not living it. Now, my response was to just a play on words. Can it be called orthodox if it's dead? Because if it is right doctrine and it is really believed, that will produce right living. What we believe affects how we behave. If it is orthodox doctrine, we will have orthopraxy. That is our practice will be orthodox. It will be right. If you claim to be orthodox and believe the truth, but you don't do the truth, you don't believe the truth. It's not enough to hear it. It's not enough to repeat it. We have to hear it and we have to do it. And those works don't save us, but those works prove that our faith is saving faith. Martin Luther wrote, faith is a work of God in us, which changes us and brings us to birth anew from God. It kills the old Adam, makes us completely different people in heart, mind, senses, and all our powers, and brings the Holy Spirit with it. What a living, creative, active, powerful thing is faith. It is impossible that faith ever stopped doing good. Faith doesn't ask whether good works are to be done, but before it's asked, it's done them. It's always active. Whoever doesn't do such works is without faith. He gropes and searches about him for faith and good works, but doesn't know what faith or good works are. Even so, he chatters on with a great many words about faith and good works. Faith is a living, unshakable confidence in God's grace. The Cameron's Declaration reminds us justification is by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone. This is the article by which the church stands or falls. Today, this article is often ignored, distorted, sometimes even denied by leaders, scholars, and pastors who claim to be evangelical. Although fallen human nature has always recoiled from recognizing its need for Christ-imputed righteousness, Modernity greatly fuels the fires of this discontent with the biblical gospel. We have allowed this discontent to dictate the nature of our ministry and what it is we are preaching. Many in the church growth movement believe that sociological understanding of those in the pews is as important to the success of the gospel as is the biblical truth which is proclaimed. As a result, theological convictions are frequently divorced from the work of the ministry. This is what that sounds like. No rules. Just Jesus. And the answer is, which Jesus? You have to understand what the Word of God tells us about who Jesus is, or that might be Jesus, or that might be Jesus. Who knows? Jesus is Jesus, and he is defined by his character and nature. He is fully, in essence, the same as the Father. He was conceived of the Virgin. He was born in that incarnation. He was crucified, he was buried, he was raised, he has ascended. Who Jesus is matters. We cannot try to make a distinction and just preach Jesus without the truth of the gospel, without the convicting power of the law, without the word of God being applied. The Cambridge Declaration says, while the theology of the cross may be believed, these movements are actually emptying it of its meaning. There is no gospel except that of Christ's substitution in our place, whereby God imputed to him our sin and imputed to us his righteousness. Because he bore our judgment, we now walk in his grace as those who are forever pardoned, accepted, and adopted as God's children. There is no basis for our acceptance before God except in Christ-saving work. We reaffirm that justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone. In justification, Christ's righteousness is imputed to us as the only possible satisfaction of God's perfect love. We deny that justification rests on any merit to be found in us or upon the grounds of an infusion of Christ's righteousness in us, or that an institution claiming to be a church that denies or condemns sola fide can be recognized as a legitimate church. The next is solus Christus, this is Christ alone. The gospel is exclusive. There is only one Lord, there is only one Savior, there is only one Redeemer, there is only one way to the Father to get us there forgiven. Now I did, I noticed people have been posting online and people have been commenting and the deal is to say that there's only one way to God, only one way gets you there. All the other roads lead somewhere else. You know, really that's not true. All roads lead to God. because whatever road you take, when that road comes to an end, you're gonna be standing before God. There is the only one road that gets you there justified. All of the rest bring you before your judge to be condemned. The gospel is exclusive. When we look at who Christ is, some have said that any sincere person from any religion or faith will eventually make it to heaven. The current Pope said this just a few weeks ago, that all religions, eventually lead to God. And if you are devout and sincere in whatever religion you practice, God will honor that. In fact, as of this Pope, you know, there is only one group on the planet that's not going to heaven. Protestant Christians. That's it. Because the Council of Trent is still in force, and the Council of Trent denies the gospel of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, and condemns anybody who believes in the doctrine of justification by faith, condemns them as being lost and unsavable. But the Hindus, the Muslims, they're all going to get there. And the truth is, everybody in all those groups, they are going to end up together in eternity. And it's not going to be in the presence of God in a good way. It's going to be in the lake of fire. There is only one way, and that way is through Christ. When we say that any sincere person from any religion or faith will eventually make it to heaven, Jesus disagrees. He says that he is the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father except by him. The period in catechism, who is the redeemer of God's elect? The only redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ. Mary is not a co-redeemer. John MacArthur said, as soon as Mary died, she never heard another human conversation from the earth. People who pray to Mary, it's not Mary. She hadn't heard. People say, if you can't get God to do it, go to the son. If the son won't do it, go to his mother. His son has to do what his mother tells him. That boils down the doctrine of Marianism. It's Mariolatry. It is making an idol out of the mother of Jesus. The only Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who being the eternal Son of God became man and so was and continues to be God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever. He is the way, the truth, and the life. Cambridge Declaration says an evangelical faith becomes secularized. Its interests have been blurred with those of the culture. The result is a loss of absolute values, permissive individualism, and a substitution of wholeness for holiness. recovery for repentance, intuition for truth, feeling for belief, chance for providence, and immediate gratification for enduring hope. Christ and his cross have moved from the center of our vision. Again, John MacArthur had said recently that the trouble with so much preaching is that instead of preaching the need for salvation, we're preaching that people need therapy. It's not sin, it's just an addiction or a chemical imbalance. No, we need to be preaching the gospel. Now, is there a place for therapy, for counseling, for cures emotionally and spiritually? Yes. But first, we have to start at the gospel. That's the foundation that we build on. The declaration says, we reaffirm that our salvation is accomplished by the mediatorial work of the historical Christ alone. His sinless life and substitutionary atonement alone are sufficient for our justification and reconciliation to the Father. We deny that the gospel is priest if Christ's substitutionary work is not declared and faith in Christ and his work is not solicited. That brings us then to the most glorious, I think, of the five solas, the outworking of Reformed theology, and that is soli deo gloria, glory to God alone. It is the reminder that God alone is worthy of worship and deserves and even rightly demands that we glorify him alone. When you see God in his glory, even if only with the eyes of faith, you cannot help but glorify him. He alone is worthy of glory and honor and praise. It is all about God and not at all about us. He is God and we are not. And God alone is worthy of glory and he will be glorified. How much better to participate in that willingly and joyfully to magnify and to exalt his name. That is the chief end of man. That is the main reason we were created. Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. What rule, the catechism asks, has God given to direct us how we may glorify him? The word of God, which is contained in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify God and enjoy him. Thomas Watson, you read the full thing in your notes that I sent out, I don't have time to read it all this morning, but Thomas Watson, one of my favorite Puritans, said that glorifying God consists in four things. It is to appreciate God. It is to adore God. It is to have affection for God and a subjection to God. It is to say not only that we appreciate God and all that he's done, but this appreciation means we can't put a value on God. He is more valuable than anything else in all of the known creation. Then we adore him. That is worship, give unto the Lord the glory, do his name. That is why we have to have the Spirit's help in worship, because we can't magnify his name as it ought to be magnified. We're incapable, while we're still in this fallen flesh, we're incapable of glorifying God as he deserves and as he demands. So the Spirit helps us to do that. affection. This part, Watson says, this is part of the glory we give to God who counts himself glorified when he is loved. The first and the greatest command is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. The proof of love is obedience. If you love me, keep my commands. And that leads to subjection. When we dedicate ourselves to God and stand ready dressed for his service, thus the angels in heaven glorify him. They wait on his throne and are ready to take a commission from him. Therefore, they are represented by the cherubim with wings displayed to show how swift they are in their obedience. We glorify God when we are devoted to his service. Our head studies for him, our tongue pleads for him, and our hands relieve his members. The wise men that came to Christ did not only bow the knee to him, but presented him with gold and myrrh. So we must not only bow the knee, give God worship, but bring presence of gold and obedience. We glorify God when we stick at no service. That means when we don't stop at anything, nothing is going to prevent us from serving God, loving him, and being obedient to him. Then we fight under the banner of his gospel against an enemy and say to him, as David said to King Saul, thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine. This is not to fight the world. It's to understand the world is the mission, but is to be involved in spiritual warfare, praying for the release of those who are bound in sin. The Cambridge Declaration concludes whenever in the church biblical authority has been lost, Christ has been displaced. The gospel has been distorted. Faith has been perverted. It has always been for one reason. Our interests have displaced God's and we are doing his work in our way. The loss of God's centrality in the life of today's church is common and lamentable. It is this loss that allows us to transform worship into entertainment, Gospel preaching into marketing, believing into technique, being good into feeling good about ourselves, and faithfulness into being successful. As a result, God, Christ, and the Bible had come to mean too little to us and rest too inconsequentially upon us. God does not exist to satisfy human ambitions, cravings, the appetite for consumption, or our own private spiritual interest. We must focus on God in our worship rather than the satisfaction of our personal needs. That means when we come to worship, we don't come to worship God for what we can get from him. We come to worship to give him what he deserves. He has to be the focus. God is sovereign in our worship. We are not. Our concern must be for God's kingdom, not our own empire's popularity or success. We reaffirm that because salvation is of God and has been accomplished by God, it is for God's glory that we must glorify him always. We must live our entire lives before the face of God, under the authority of God, and for his glory alone. We deny that we can properly glorify God if our worship is confused with entertainment, if we neglect either law or gospel in our preaching, or if self-improvement, self-esteem, or self-fulfillment are allowed to become alternatives to the gospel. We come to Christ to get rid of ourself. Following Christ is death to self. That won't preach very well in the modern evangelical church today, will it? We have to die to all that we are outside of Christ. The conclusion, sola scriptura, sola gratia, sola fide, sola Christus, sola deo gloria. These are the five solas, the outworking and the fruit of the Protestant Reformation. We see that the Reformation today can be found as an ongoing reality in the lives of those who believe and who live by these doctrines. The Reformation is still alive. It is not a finished work of the past. It is not just an accomplishment of those great reformers and theologians 500 years ago. It's present with us. It's here as we confess that the scripture alone is our source of authority in all matters of faith and practice. And having a high view of scripture, we have a high view of God and understand that he has saved us by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. And he's done all of this for his glory alone. This is your history as part of this church. This is your heritage sealed with the blood of the martyrs, delivered to us, celebrated again after 507 years, the beginning of the Reformation. And while we do talk about reformed theology, We can't leave it in the past tense. Being reformed means to always be reforming, to be constantly bringing our lives in line with the scripture, reforming whatever area it needs to be reformed in. When we look at this and see what happened and reflect on the history, I've summed it up, one of my favorite verses. So often the third verse and hymns are the best. The third verse of it is well with my soul. My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Even so, it is well with my soul. That is where the Reformation brings us, to know that we can rest in God, in his grace. We can trust his word, and we can have assurance that we've been justified. This week then, take up your cross, having been crucified with Christ. Continue always reforming until we see Jesus, because it's only then that the Reformation will be complete. Let's pray together. Father, we do thank you for your word and for historical truth. And as we've celebrated the Reformation this week, we thank you for those men who submitted to your word and anointed by your spirit brought a revival, a revival of the truth of the gospel and justification by faith. We thank you for the fruit of the Reformation, for the many churches today that are standing and preaching the truth of your word, believing that it alone is our sole infallible authority for faith and practice. And we thank you, especially this morning for sola Christus, that Christ alone is the way, the truth, and the life, that he is the only way by which we might come to be reconciled to you. We thank you for his sinless life, for his innocent death, for his burial and resurrection. We thank you also then for the imputation of his righteousness as we exercise the gifts you've given us by your grace. Father, I pray this morning that we would be enabled by your spirit to make much of you, much of Christ and much of the gospel. We pray these things in Jesus name, amen.