Five Solas - Session#6 (2025.0.08.10)

Scott Keffer [: 00:00:02

Hi.

Scott Keffer [: 00:00:02

If you're looking for greater hope, assurance and confidence through the shifting sands of life, then join me on today's episode as we dig deep into the Bible to discover rock solid truth for life and living from the God of the Bible. I'm your host, Scott Keffer. Hi and welcome to today's episode. As always, for a deeper experience, you can go to the show notes and download the blank insight sheet. Fill in the blanks along with the group. Depending on how you're listening to this, there will be a link to the episode website@beholdingbibletruth.com and a sheet with the answers is included as well. Enjoy today's episode.

Scott Keffer [: 00:00:45

Okay, so we have been looking at the five SOLAs of the Prot Reformation. Get a sense of what they meant then and what they will mean now. First was ratia, which is grace. Christos. Yes. Which is Christ, glory of God and scripture. And as we said, these are, these were nothing new to the church at the time. The difference was this idea of only alone and all that it meant only or alone.

Scott Keffer [: 00:01:41

And so then we asked the question, does do the solas appear in scripture? Actually only one, seemingly to speak against justification by faith alone. You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. And we asked what question? That's the blank. What question is James 24:2 24 answering? What question is it answering? Because the. The scriptures use the word justification in Romans where the Spirit of God speaks through the apostle Paul that you're justified by faith, faith alone. By faith. Right. And then in James he says, are you just of our how is your faith justified? Different version.

Scott Keffer [: 00:02:24

This was evidence of the other is the basis of Paul in Romans was talking about the basis that a sinner can stand before a holy God and not be consumed. So what question was James answering? Is this question, what use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith, you say, I have faith, but he has no works. Can that faith save him? In other words, is that really faith? Can you just speak that I have faith? And he goes on to answer it with, you know, you see that a man is justified or that is his faith is evident for real. Not by faith alone. Not by faith alone. Interest in looking at that again, you want to go back to the sola fide, which is number four session again, all of these are on beholding Bible truth. You can either get the video version on YouTube or you get the audio version on any podcast platform. So today on Scripture, scripture, scripture.

Scott Keffer [: 00:03:30

And what I put down there is a Little history. The first date is 1456. 1456, first major work is published. The world changed when the printing press was developed. Of course, the first edition was a Latin Vulgate Bible which took six years to produce. So it was movable type. And of course the power of movable type is you could get every page to be the same. All you had to do is set it up as opposed to before that by hand doing it.

Scott Keffer [: 00:04:08

So in the half century the following 50 editions of the Vulgate were produced. But the question was, why not a Greek version? Because, sorry, I put down the reason. It's not hard to find. Scholars throughout Europe, including biblical scholars, had been accustomed for nearly a thousand years to. To think that Jerome's Vulgate was the Bible of the Church, much like the King James Version. For for many years the Greek Bible is thought of as foreign to theology in the Latin West. It was thought of belonging to the Greek Orthodox Christians who had, who had broken off schism, who were considered to be schismatics, who had branched off from the true Church. Few scholars in Western Europe could even read Greek.

Scott Keffer [: 00:04:51

So 15, 1456, the first Latin Bible. And then in 1516, first printed published edition of the Greek New Testament was produced by erasmus. And then 1517, shortly after that, the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. And now the Bible's out in public, 1521 at the diet of Worms. No, that's not like keto, where Luther refused to recant his writings and teachings. So you can see that the, that the Reformation was going on for a time. Right, For a number of years. Instead of asserting that Scripture alone should be the ultimate religious authority, says, unless I am convicted by Scripture and claim reason, I do not accept the authority of the popes and the councils.

Scott Keffer [: 00:05:50

But they have contradicted each other. My conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything. For to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen. That's all history as we'll take a look at Johnny Piper really deal with this last sola. Oh, and a reminder, if you go up there under the the Reformation, notice that sola fide and sola scriptura.

Scott Keffer [: 00:06:24

Right? Those were really the first two that were. They were primarily it during the Reformation. In other words, it was about faith alone and Scripture alone. The other ones came during the Reformation period and. And after. Does that make sense? Is this. It was about faith alone and Scripture alone. Okay.

Lesson [: 00:06:48

We live in a time.

Scott Keffer [: 00:06:54

They're good. Yes.

Lesson [: 00:06:58

This final session on the five SOLAs of the Protestant Reformation, we're focusing on scripture alone. These five SOLAs are an attempt to sum up what the Bible says about God's remedy for our worst problem, namely the problem of deadness, which is solved by being made spiritually alive, and the problem of the wrath of God which God himself solves BY his becoming 100% for us in Christ and the Gospel of Christ. The good news of Christianity is that our being made alive from the dead forever and God's becoming 100% for us and not against us in Christ forever is by God's grace alone, not any merit of ours on the basis of Christ alone, not any other Savior or contributor to the righteousness that founds our right standing with God received through faith alone. No measure of law keeping or works alongside faith as the means by which we become in God's favor or God becomes 100% for us, so that all things lead ultimately to the glory of God. And that right there is the Gospel of the Scriptures, the good news that we preach to everyone in the world because everyone is dead in their trespasses when everyone is under the wrath of God, as we saw in session one. And the warrant for the foundation for all that teaching and all that bold proclamation is this. With the Scripture alone as the only final and decisive authority for discerning and teaching and defending these these truths. Father, I pray that you would sweeten and deepen our confidence in the Scriptures as the soul decisive, vital authority for all we have to say and know in the world, especially about our life in Christ, our becoming saved, regenerated, justified, sanctified, glorified.

Lesson [: 00:10:02

Teach us now how the Reformers understood your word in relationship to the Pope and the councils and all human authority. I ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Here is one decisive historical publishing event that made all the difference in how the authority of Scriptures came into conflict with the authority of the Church. The first published edition of the Greek New Testament was produced. The first printed published edition of the Greek New Testament. Until then, for 1500 years the new Testament was passed along by being copied by head. It was produced by Erasmus in 1516.

Lesson [: 00:10:50

And you will see that the Reformation is dated usually from 1517, when Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Church in Wittenberg. Not a coincidence that the foundational document was finally accessible to everyone. And that made all the difference in the world how the Church and how the thinking of the Reformers would relate to the authorities who claimed to interpret Scriptures. Here's Luther's famous expression of the conflict, unless I am convinced by Scripture and by plain reason, is the way he reads Scripture. I do not accept the authority of the popes and the councils, for they have contradicted each other. My conscience is captive to the word of God. So the Scriptures are over popes and councils. Popes and councils have to agree with the Scripture in order for them to have authority.

Lesson [: 00:12:17

I cannot and I will not recant anything, anything that I've written on the basis of Scripture. For to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. So there you get the expression of Scripture, Word of God over popes and councils. Where did he get the warrant to do that? And here's the answer. But the text is is found Galatians 1:6 to 9 and I'll show you how Luther handled it. But let's read it for ourselves. Paul is writing to the Galatians, who are being misled by a false gospel.

Lesson [: 00:13:04

That adds to faith. Something else. Circumcision, lawkeeping, in order for faith to establish us on the righteousness of Christ. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another gospel. So no other gospel. There isn't another gospel. But which one? But there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

Lesson [: 00:13:42

But even if we are, an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached 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. So look at verse 8. It is all importance for the reformers. If, if. If we come. If an apostle shows up, we apostles show up. If I show up preaching a different gospel than the one we preach to you, that new Paul, whoever he is, is a false apostle.

Lesson [: 00:14:29

Because not only is he contradicting the gospel that was preached to you, he's implying that apostles can contradict each other. Then apostles change their minds once they have preached the gospel under the inspiration of the risen Christ. If an angel shows up and contradicts the gospel we preached, curse that angel. Don't believe that angel. And you can see where Luther is going to go with that with popes and councils. Watch him with. Luther believed that the Roman Catholic elevation of the post authority equal to or above Scripture was a threat to the gospel.

Scott Keffer [: 00:15:18

Indeed it was.

Lesson [: 00:15:20

Here's what he said. I consider it proper that the words of Scripture in which the saints are described as being deficient in merits. In other words, the gospel of Jesus is that we don't have any merits that will commend us to God. These scriptures are preferred to human words in which the saints are said to have more merits than they need. That was the great error Baron Catholic Church trying to establish our acceptance with God on the basis of accumulating the merits that can be applied from others to us. For the Pope is not above, but under the word of God. Where did he get that? According to Galatians 1:8, even if we or an angel, or he would say a pope or a council or a bishop or anyone else from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we you received, let it be accursed. So Galatians 1:8 was a decisive scripture that claimed Scripture, not human authorities outside Scripture.

Lesson [: 00:16:52

We see it again in First Corinthians 14:37,38. If anyone thinks that he is a prophet or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you as an inspired apostolic spokesman of the risen Christ, the things I'm writing to you are a command of the Lord. In if anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. If anyone, Pope, council, angel does not recognize the apostolic authority over them, they're not recognized. One last text to show the emphasis as in the Testament is coming to a close and the apostolic age is passing away. June1 Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith. What faith? That was once for all delivered to the saints. For as happens in every generation, certain people have crept in who pervert the grace of our God.

Lesson [: 00:18:25

Different kinds of perversions in different generations. In this case into sensuality and deny, as happens when grace is perverted. Deny the only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. So here we are with Jude saying my. My great burden for you is that you will contend for a faith that is not being added to generation after generation by church councils and by papal encyclicals and church decrees. No. A faith that is once for all delivered to the saints. That's what has to be contended for because the apostolic writers have produced Scripture and that Scripture is the sole decisive foundation for what we believe.

Lesson [: 00:19:26

They're smart. In conclusion, to all successions, the Christian Gospel is safeguarded by this truth. For you under God. The Scripture alone is the final decisive authority for deserting, teaching and defending the saving truth of the five SOLAs of the Protestant Reformation. All other Human authority. All other human insight may be useful. Oh, yes. No detraction from the usefulness of sermons and the usefulness of commentaries and the usefulness of church history and scholarship.

Lesson [: 00:20:10

No detraction. All other human authority and insight may be useful in understanding and teaching and defending the Scriptures, but they are subject to the Scripture alone as the final decisive authority. Therefore, for the sake of the gospel, the gospel of new life and justification by God's grace alone, on the basis of Christ alone, received by faith alone, so that all things lead ultimately to the glory of God alone, for the sake of that gospel. I'll say it again. The gospel of new life and justification by God's grace. Grace alone, on the basis of Christ alone, received by faith alone, so that all things lead to the glory of God alone, for the sake of that gospel, we take our stand. Oh, I hope you're with me in this. We take our stand with confidence and joy on the final decisive authority of the Scripture alone.

Lesson [: 00:22:22

Clearly, there are some people who think that any group that focuses incessantly on the Reformation is not thinking in old enough terms, all the way back to the New Testament, not thinking.

Scott Keffer [: 00:22:34

Here we go. I did it right the first time.

Lesson [: 00:22:46

We live in a time in, certainly in the west, where people don't conform. We have been taught to speak up and to assert ourselves and to not let anybody else tell us how to what to believe. There are a lot of cultures in which everybody conforming and everybody fitting in. That's the cultural value. That is not our cultural value. Because of that, it's true that there are just all sorts of angry, sometimes, certainly assertive points of view being pushed out there. That's true about everything, though. Absolutely everything.

Lesson [: 00:23:22

So in our culture, whether you're talking about the Bible or whether you're talking about even atheism, for example, atheists are constantly arguing there's all sorts of atheisms and they get very, very angry with each other. Does that mean atheism is wrong necessarily because there's a lot of divergent views and because people use atheism to justify all sorts of different kinds of behavior? No.

Lesson [: 00:23:44

Now, I think atheism is wrong, but.

Lesson [: 00:23:47

It'S not wrong because there's that diversity. It's not wrong because there's that debate going on. And therefore you can't just say, oh, well, the Bible, you know, you can't. There's no way to ever understand what the Bible is saying, because look at all the different diversities of viewpoint, what you're really saying, if that's your Argument is that nobody can know anything about. But then how can you know that? And how you can be so sure about that? And how can you, in a sense, pontificate to people who do believe the Bible and say, well, nobody can really understand the Bible. Nobody can be sure about it. How can you be that sure? In the end, that argument explodes. In the end, that argument undermines itself.

Lesson [: 00:24:24

It doesn't really work.

Scott Keffer [: 00:24:29

So Keller was saying, if. If scripture is the final authority, how come there's so many different views on what scripture. And that's usually. That is usually the complaint against the evangelical view that it's scriptural. All. Nobody can agree on what's said. Right. A lot of variations.

Scott Keffer [: 00:24:47

So Keller's saying, because there's variations, that doesn't nullify the fact that scripture is true. Right. People. People say, well, they can't even agree on what the Bible says. Right. And so that's. Can nullify the fact that scripture. Are you saying there isn't anything that somebody believes that they don't have great variation about what they believe? So scripture alone.

Scott Keffer [: 00:25:10

Thoughts or questions on scripture alone. I put a couple of verses here to help us kind of end very important if that's the case. So Spirit of God through Second Peter deals with this issue. So when I first came to Christ, I was sitting in my used Fiat Strata at the parking lot of the Pittsburgh Steelers stadium because I couldn't afford to park in town. I park over there for 75 cents and walk over the bridge. And I turned on the radio and John MacArthur came on and he said, what is the Bible? And I thought, what is the Bible? When the Christian at the time, what the heck is the Bible? And he claims that it's the word of God, God's word. And I hadn't really thought about that. And shortly after that, or was it.

Scott Keffer [: 00:26:10

I think it was before that, Beth had bought me a zippered edition of the King James Bible, which I thought was rather odd that nobody spoke King James. So it's really hard to read. And I had never seen a book with a zipper. That seemed very weird to me that you would put a zipper on a book. But MacArthur said, right, the Bible claims to be God's word, not written by man, not written by through man, but written by God himself based upon this verse. He said, so we have the prophetic word made more sure. Really? What word is that? To which you do? Well, to what? Attention. What is it? It's like a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning Star arises in your heart.

Scott Keffer [: 00:27:00

Oh, there's some sort of transformation that goes on. The word shines forth in darkness. Right. But know this first of all. Know this first of all. What's that mean? Foundational principle. Know this first of all that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation. One's own interpretation.

Scott Keffer [: 00:27:30

For no prophecy was ever made by not an act of the human will, but men move by Holy Spirit spoke from God, which you're. If you're a thinking person, you would say, well, how'd that happen? Miraculously? No, but how did it happen? I have no idea other than it did. So if we break that down, no prophecy of scripture. So scripture, if to define what is scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation. What he means there is not the after interpretation, understand, not how we interpret it. He's saying the writer themselves was not interpreting what they were writing. Like they. They said they didn't know they were searching for the things they were writing about.

Scott Keffer [: 00:28:43

So when he says one's own interpretation, he's not saying what you and I interpret after we read it. He's saying the writer was not determining. Oh, this is what I'm going to write about. The writer was writing scripture not really knowing what they were writing. Right. No prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will. So the writer was not in their will, understanding and writing the scripture.

Scott Keffer [: 00:29:16

But what was happening? They were moved by the Holy Spirit and literally they spoke from God, means they wrote it down. What the heck is this mean? I have no idea. It's not a matter of their interpretation as they wrote it out. 40 authors, 1500 years, way different. All different types of writing. All different types of writing. That's the first and foundational principle, that scripture is the word of God. Scripture is the word of God.

Scott Keffer [: 00:29:56

Well, that one's hard. If scripture is the word of Almighty God, is it likely that there will be much that we do not understand? Well, that seems, that seems foundational. But if God is speaking, the God who spoke and the world was created, spoke and the world was created. Think about that. Spoke and the world was created. If that's the case, if that is the case, then it's not only likely that you won't understand everything, so you can be absolutely assured that there is much that will be written that you will not understand. That's got to be clear. That man in.

Scott Keffer [: 00:31:04

In their own thinking will not come. There we go to agreement on Everything. This is the word of God. Scripture is the word of God spoken from God through 40 different authors over 1500 years. Well, is that really true? Yes. And Timothy says, how much of scripture is breathed by God? Literally, the word means breathed by God. How much scripture? All scripture. All scripture.

Scott Keffer [: 00:31:55

For the word of God is living, active, sharper than a two edged sword. Piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit. Where's that? In there. Soul and spirit in there. Right. Piercing as far division of soul and spirit of both joints and marrow and able to what? Judge. Judge? Scripture says that God's word is like a hammer. It's like an anvil.

Scott Keffer [: 00:32:33

It judges. When's it judge? The thoughts and intentions of the heart. Oh, you mean my role is not to take scripture and judge it. That's what we do. I don't believe that. I don't agree with that. I don't like that. I'm judging scripture.

Scott Keffer [: 00:32:52

God says, no, my word is there to judge you. My word is there to judge your thoughts and intentions. And my word is unlike any other word because it is living and active. One of our clients, Ted, estate planning attorney in California, was kind of figuring out faith in middle of one of our conversations. We were talking about and he was reading commentaries, devote. He was reading devotionals, I think. And I said, let me ask you a question, Ted. When you prepare for court, where do you go to prep? He said, what do you mean? What do you read the most of? He said, the law.

Scott Keffer [: 00:33:41

Oh, you mean you go to the source? You don't read what other people say about the law. You read the law? He said, yes. I said, not. The devotionals are bad, but that is not the source. You're reading what people have discerned from Scripture. You're supposed to go to Scripture. It alone is alive. It's alive.

Scott Keffer [: 00:34:07

Really? It's words on a page, but it's living and active. So our, our role is not to judge scripture. I like that. I don't like that. I agree with that. I understand that. I don't understand that. That's us sitting in judgment.

Scott Keffer [: 00:34:28

The scripture, Jesus said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. Scripture is alive. And God said, my word which shall go forth from my mouth, shall not what? Return to me. Void. Empty. Really? What will it do? It will accomplish what God desires and without succeeding for the manner to which I sent it. When you go to the Word, you should say, lord, do that.

Scott Keffer [: 00:35:17

Let that Word, do the work that you want it to do in me, which is alive, it's living and active because the grass withers the flower phase, which, by the way, so do you. But it says, the word of our God stands forever. And Jesus said, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. My words will never pass away. So thoughts or questions about scripture alone, Scripture alone. There's, you know, there's history, there's verbal history, there's, you know, historic documents that surround Scripture. Of course, there's lots of other stuff, but at the end of the day, they're saying, how do we determine what to believe, what testimony to believe? Right. Come back to Scripture as the authority.

Scott Keffer [: 00:36:20

Yeah, that's always a good thing. So the foundations, I would say it's not basics, it's the foundation. There's a big difference. Right. Foundations are the footers. Right. The faith. And he says that's the base.

Scott Keffer [: 00:36:33

See, we think we come to the Scripture to judge it and to know it and have the answer because we're evangelical. But God says, you're here to meet with me. You're here to meet with me and let my word go forth to do what I wanted to do, not you to determine what it's going to do. Because knowledge pops up. The Scripture reveals. Scriptures humble us. You see? See who God is, We see who we are. Reveals the thoughts and intentions of my heart.

Scott Keffer [: 00:37:08

That's hard. That's hard. That is hard. But His Word, there is nothing like His Word. Commentaries are great. Preaching, teaching, all that's great. But there's nothing like the Word of God. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceeds for salam.

Scott Keffer [: 00:37:30

Every word. So it's a reminder Scripture. Will there be disagreements till he comes again? He says unto me often, as if I explained it to you, you would be able to understand it. Right. You can comprehend the. He is the blessed and only sovereign. The blessed and only sovereign, the King of kings and the Lord of Lords, who alone possesses immortality, and he dwells in an unapproachable life. That's the one spoke all things into being, and he spoke a bit of his wisdom into Scripture.

Scott Keffer [: 00:38:15

But in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was right. So we have His Word. We have the Word, right. Do we get it all? Absolutely not. Just be in awe. So, final minute, it was a interview with Dr. Tim Keller, who's since passed John Piper and D.A.

Scott Keffer [: 00:38:39

carson, on what's the point of the Reformation.

Lesson [: 00:38:47

We live in a time.

Lesson [: 00:38:50

Clearly, there are some people who think that any group that focuses incessantly on the Reformation is not thinking in old enough terms, all the way back to the New Testament, not thinking in contemporary enough terms. The needs and concerns of the church today. Why exactly should we spend the focus that we do give to the Reformation?

Lesson [: 00:39:13

Well, why not?

Lesson [: 00:39:15

Well, yes, I know the reason they say why not. I mean, one is they feel like it's divisive. It's true. When you read Luther and Calvin. I've recently gotten back into that, reading them. They make a lot of their polemical statements, a lot of the ways in which they talk about other. The papacy and so on. You look at it and say, you shouldn't talk that way.

Lesson [: 00:39:41

We shouldn't be that polemical. But that was a different situation. There was life and death. There were national churches. It was. It was very politically charged. We're not in that same situation, and I don't own all that rhetoric. But I think the reason we believe the Reformation is so important is because we think they did get the Bible right.

Lesson [: 00:40:00

We think that you had a massive moment and a massive movement in which people sought to look at the Scripture and find out what the biblical gospel truly was. And we thought they did get it right. And even though the Puritans moved that forward differently than the revivalists moved that forward than the Princeton theologians, I mean, every century, people moved it forward differently. They weren't just reiterating Luther and Calvin, but they said the Reformation got it right, and then they were applying that to their own time. And I do think we would be the same. Rather than looking at the Reformation as basically a mistake or another way.

Lesson [: 00:40:41

I mean, they got it right. They got it. I mean, they get the Bible. It isn't just that they read their Bibles differently and saw the Gospel afresh. They read their Bibles. The recovery of sources in the Renaissance and in the Reformation is something that I don't think you ever outgrow back to the sources in every seminary curriculum, Lord willing, which is a Reformation principle that we shouldn't let go.

Lesson [: 00:41:13

Kenneth Concert used to say to us, when I was a lot younger, he used to say, evangelicalism at its very best is simply the return to the New Testament at its very simplest. Now, that's a bit of an oversimplification, but you can see what he's trying to say. He's not trying to set aside a movement as if it's better than the New Testament or if it's stepping away from the New Testament, but Insofar as it's tested by the New Testament, as by the whole counsel of God, then it becomes for us a movement that we can attach ourselves to. The roots of evangelicalism is not finally in the evangelical awakening, it's in the Scriptures.

Lesson [: 00:41:51

Right.

Lesson [: 00:41:52

So would you say that returning to the Reformation to get our bearings on the Gospel makes it harder to make progress with Rome or clouds developments between Protestantism and Catholicism that makes us unable to see hope? Because I think that's one of the issues of unity, is that the Reformation was a protest against the failure of the Roman Church to see the Gospel clearly. And the question is today, is the Reformation over?

Lesson [: 00:42:31

Do you still need it?

Lesson [: 00:42:32

Yeah, well, obviously we are not going to be. If we really do think they basically got it right, I think that certainly poses problems for any movement toward reunion with Roman Catholicism. Yes, we obviously are not as open to talking about that. I certainly think, as I said, our attitude toward Roman Catholics might be. Well, I should say this when I was reading the Institutes, which surprised me, there is a place and I need to go find it and somebody's going to watch this and say, where is that, Tim Keller? But there's a couple places in the Institutes where Calvin says not only are there true Christians in the Roman Catholic Church, but there are true churches. Use the word churches, true churches in the Roman Catholic Church. But that doesn't mean that the Roman Catholic Church as a church hasn't lost the Gospel. So there's more of a balance, probably even in the Reformers attitude toward the Catholic Church.

Lesson [: 00:43:33

And we do know the way in which Calvin talked to Catholic theologians, etc. That he was not saying, you can't come into my house because I'll be defiled or anything like that. So I would say our attitude toward the Catholic Church doesn't necessarily require us in any way to step away from the Reformation. Still to make there's much that we can learn from other people who believe the Apostles Creed and believe. And they take the Apostles Creed literally. I have to say anybody else that takes the Apostles Creed literally is a Trinitarian Christian. I need to, I need to have a relationship with them of some sort. But I don't feel that by backing away from the Reformation is the way to further those kinds of relationships.

Lesson [: 00:44:24

When you think of the Reformation, you can think lessons of what not to do and lessons of what to do. And we learn from history both ways, I presume. I mean Luther's anti Semitism go there. Calvin's civic religion to put to death.

Lesson [: 00:44:44

Yeah. How he understood church state relations, our lessons.

Lesson [: 00:44:48

I mean, these are pressing things on us today, I think, that are valuable to learn negatively, but overwhelmingly from my own experience, anyway, it's positive. And it's not just that they got the Bible and they got the gospel, but they got preaching preaching. And I don't think that's ever going to grow old. And every generation starts to doubt preaching, you know, and we can do it with video, we can do it with drama, or we can do it with something else. And boy, the way the Lord in history, it seems to me, has lifted up the pulpit. And Luther and Calvin were eminently scholar preachers. Say a word about either of you, about preaching or scholarship. I mean, would there have been a Reformation without universities, without Calvin, Luther being scholars?

Lesson [: 00:45:41

Who's to say when you live in alternative universes? But probably not. But at the same time, we need to keep saying to many, many Christians today is that while we want to fasten on the Word, we also want to show how we're part of a chain history that goes back and back and back. We're not trying to be so innovative that we're the first generation to get it all right. So part of every preacher's responsibility is to teach the counsel of God as they're studying the Scriptures themselves, but to check it out with previous generations. And in that sense, you want to check out especially those generations that seem to have been closest to understanding the Gospel in a rich and thick and biblically faithful way. And the Reformation was one of those generations.

Lesson [: 00:46:23

And even though Calvin would call his Institutes basically a Bible digest, nevertheless, when you actually read them, it is remarkable how he, for every one of his points, he not only gives you a tremendous exegesis, but he does everything he can to root it in the teaching of the Fathers. Everybody who came before him in the history of the Church that would say the same thing. He makes sure you see that. That, yeah, that. Augustine, of course, but lots and lots of other. He just knew the early Fathers of John, Chris Osterman, oh, my goodness. And he always rooted the gospel not only in the scripture, but also in the former history of the church. So you do not have this idea like you had the early Church and then nothing happened.

Lesson [: 00:47:10

And then suddenly the Reformation, we got back to it. He doesn't see it that way.

Lesson [: 00:47:13

That's partly because he was concerned to show that the Catholic Church of his day was not. Yes, all the way from the 2nd century to the 16th, he was trying to show how far away it was. So one of the Reasons that he quoted the Father so much was to show the change.

Lesson [: 00:47:28

We like the Reformation.

Lesson [: 00:47:30

We do like the Reformation.

Lesson [: 00:47:31

Thanks.

Scott Keffer [: 00:47:33

So there you go. That's why we've taken these six weeks to take a look at five solars and get partos in the history of the Protestant Reformation, which is the foundation of what we believe. All right. Give thanks. Holy Father, we bless you today not only for the gift of your son, the Lord Jesus, the gospel of the saving grace, your favor and love for humankind, and the Savior himself who shed his blood and bore your wrath on the cross, but that you are a God who speaks and has spoken, given us the gift of your word and its power. And so we're grateful for that. So I pray that you would refresh, renew, and revive our desire to be able to say, oh, how I love thy law. It is my meditation all the day.

Scott Keffer [: 00:48:35

May it be so for each of us, Lord. And I pray for each person here that you would bless them and keep them, that you cause your face to shine upon them, that you would let your countenance rest upon them, and that you would bless them and keep them all their days. Keep them in your word. Deep, deep, deep in your word. Lord, may we walk in the love and the power of your spirit and the power of your word. So bless us and keep us. Amen.

Scott Keffer [: 00:49:08

Thanks for listening. I hope you have greater hope, assurance and confidence in your life and a deeper trust in the God of the Bible, in his son, Jesus Christ. Until next time. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. And may the Lord lift up his cap, countenance on you and give you his peace, his shalom in your soul and in your life. Until next time. May God bless you and keep you.