Every generation throughout church history has seen doctrinal struggles and debates. But perhaps no doctrinal dispute has ever been contested more fiercely or with such far-reaching, long-term consequences as the ultimate issue, the issue of justification.

The controversy over the doctrine of justification in the sixteen century focused on the nature of the gospel and, therefore, the essence of Christianity itself. The church must always struggle with errors, but this controversy involved an article of the faith that is fundamental to faith itself.

The Bible itself makes justification a hill to die on. The Apostle Paul frequently admonished and instructed Christians not to be quarrelsome, divisive, or combative. He extoled the virtues of patience, love, and tolerance. Yet when it came to a battle over the gospel itself, this same apostle was utterly inflexible. He considered some things intolerable, and one is the distortion of the gospel. He wrote to the church in Galatia:

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 one, 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 preached 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. For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. (Galatians 1:6-10)

Paul used the strongest speech to condemn perversion of the gospel. He insisted there is only one gospel. And the gospel he preached in his letter to the Galatians is the gospel of justification by faith alone. The Judaizers were corrupting the gospel by requiring works in addition to belief as a necessary for justification. Twice Paul pronounced a curse on this distortion, using the Greek word from which we get the English word anathema.

But at the Roman Catholic Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, Rome condemned the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith alone and declared it anathema. They did this because they were convinced that the Reformed doctrine was "another gospel," a distortion of the biblical gospel.

This was undoubtedly the most explosive issue of the 16th century, and the best place to start is probably with the 16th century's most dynamic character.

Luther was born November 10, 1483, in Eisleben, Germany, to a copper miner. His father wanted something better for him; he wanted Martin to become a lawyer. In 1505, on July 2 on his way home from law school, he was caught in a thunderstorm and was hurled to the ground by lightening. He cried out, "Help me, St. Anne; I will become a monk." St. Anne was the patron saint of miners.

Fifteen days later, to his father's great displeasure, Martin kept his vow. On July 17, 1505, he knocked at the gate of the local Augustinian Hermits and asked to be accepted. On easter, April 3, 1507, he was ordained as a priest.

If you've heard anything about Luther, you've probably heard that he was a bit pathological, that is, mentally disturbed. Most of his mental uneasiness grew out of his legally oriented mind which could not escape the relentless necessity for punishment of wrongdoing. Of all the things he knew, he knew that the holiness of God demanded punishment for sin. He also knew he was a sinner. That was bad news.

This is why he became a monk. He thought that he could become righteous.

I was a good monk, and I kept the rule of my order so strictly that I may say that if ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery it was I.

Yet it still didn’t work.

This led to one of the most famous incidents in church history when Luther attempted to officiate his first mass. Schooled in proper Roman Catholic orthodoxy, Brother Luther sincerely believed that he was about to perform a miracle by turning the bread and wine into the actual, physical body of Christ. When he came to a particular point in the service he froze. He later recounted the experience:

I was utterly stupified and terror stricken, "With what tongue shall I address such Majesty, seeing that all men ought to tremble in the presence of even an earthly prince? Who am I, that I should lift up mine eyes or raise my hands to the divine Majesty. The angels surround Him. At His nod the earth trembles. And shall I, a miserable little pygmy, say 'I want this, I ask for that'? For I am dust and ashes and full of sin and I am speaking to the living, eternal and true God.

It was this deep consciousness of the holiness of God that compelled Luther into his role as Reformer. To his mind the problem was clear: God is holy. Man is sinful. God must, and will, punish sin. Luther was sinful. Luther must be punished. This caused him fits.

His spiritual father, Staupitz, arranged for him to take over a teaching role at the University of Wittenberg. So he was transferred from Erfurt to the 2,500 person town to be a Doctor of Theology.

Luther himself, and all Reformers that followed, focused on the question, How is a person justified? On what basis or grounds does God ever declare anyone just? As the Psalmist put it, "If you, LORD, should mark iniquities...who could stand?" (Psalm 130:3). The question is rhetorical, because not one of us could possibly stand before God because none of us is righteous.

So how does God come to accept a person? Must we first become inherently just before God will make such a declaration? Or does he declare us just/righteous before we are in ourselves actually just? God's justice demands that we be righteous, so how can we be?

Luther himself could not get past this point of God's justice:

If I could believe that God was not angry with me, I would stand on my head for joy.

One simple biblical truth changed that monk’s life and ignited the whole Protest. It was the realization that God's righteousness could become the sinner's righteousness and that that transaction happens through the means of faith alone.

Martin Luther learned this truth from a verse which had previously stumbled over, Romans 1:17.

For in it (the gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith."

Luther had always seen "the righteousness of God" (or "the justice of God") as an attribute of the sovereign Lord by which He judged sinners, not as an attribute sinners could possess. He described the breakthrough, his "tower experience," and how his unrelenting study of the historical-grammatical context of that passage was used by the Spirit to bring light to the dark ages:

I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, “the justice of God,” because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant.

Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that “the just shall live by his faith.” Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the “justice of God” had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven….

Both sides agreed that salvation or justification was impossible apart from grace or apart from Christ or apart from faith. But, Catholic teaching demanded something more, namely, that men must cooperate with grace and Christ and faith. The works that men do join forces (not entirely replace) with God and produce righteousness.

All of this is why the sola in sola fide is so necessary. He was teaching through Psalms and Romans and came to understand:

I also know that in Romans 3, the word "solum" is not present in either Greek or Latin text — the papists did not have to teach me that — it is fact! The letters s-o-l-a are not there. And these knotheads stare at them like cows at a new gate, while at the same time they do not recognize that it conveys the sense of the text — if the translation is to be clear and accurate, it belongs there. (Luther, An Open Letter on Translating)

But he was too busy at the time to fight much (quoted in Bainton):

In October, 1516, he wrote to a friend: I could use two secretaries.

I do almost nothing during the day but write letters. I am a conventual preacher, reader at meals, parochial preacher, director of studies, overseer of eleven monasteries, superintendent of the fish pond at Litzkau, referee of the squabble at Torgau, lecturer on Paul, collector of material for a commentary on the Psalms, and then, as I said, I am overwhelmed with letters. I rarely have full time for the canonical hours and for saying mass, not to mention my own temptations with the world, the flesh, and the Devil. You see how lazy I am.

The Roman Catholic Church was critical of this teaching. Justification by faith alone would have major consequences, especially if for anyone teaching that people needed to give money, do penance, pay to see relics, etc., if they desired to cooperate with Christ to get the righteousness necessary for justification. Sin was good for religious business.

The Church's teaching was that after a person had received the grace of Christ at their baptism (making baptism itself necessary for salvation), if they sinned after that, they could be restored to a state of grace (a state of justification) by following the steps of confessing sin to a priest, making an act of contrition, receiving priestly forgiveness, and then performing what were called "works of satisfaction."

It was these "works of satisfaction" that initiated much of the controversy in the sixteenth century. The works of satisfaction earned merit, even though the church affirmed it was technically merit rooted in grace. One work of satisfaction a penitent person could perform was to give money to the church and purchase an "indulgence."

For example, in the 16th century Rome embarked on a huge building project involving St. Peter's Basilica. Pope Leo X made special indulgences available for purchase to those supported this work with their money. These particular indulgences were for people already in purgatory where they were working off the temporal consequences of their sin. The pope was granted the authority (through apostolic succession) to draw on the "treasury of merit" and apply it to the needs of those in purgatory. This "treasury of merit" was in heaven and was filled by those who had already died whose merit was above and beyond the merit required to enter. So an indulgence could be purchased and the merit applied to the account of a departed loved one. “They were the bingo of the sixteenth century” (Bainton).

One man in particular, Johann Tetzel, scandalized Luther by his crass method (unauthorized by Rome) of peddling indulgences. Tetzel marketed indulgences with the ditty, "Every time a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs." He gave peasants the impression that they could purchase salvation for departed friends and relatives simply by giving alms, with or without the spirit of penitence.

It was the selling of indulgences that provoked Luther's Ninety-Five Thesis which he nailed to the Castle Church doors on October 31, 1517. However,

Luther took no steps to spread his theses among the people. He was merely inviting scholars to dispute and dignitaries to define, but others surreptitiously translated the theses into German and gave them to the press. In short order they became the talk of Germany. (Benton)

Luther caused quite an uproar. He began to attract attention and found himself with some powerful enemies. Though he was gaining popularity among many lay people who were reading his German pamphlets, the Church's officials rightly saw his protest as a threat.

Newly elected Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V summoned Luther to Worms in 1521 where he was demanded to renounce or reaffirm his views. When he appeared before the assembly on April 16, Johann Eck acted as spokesman for the Emperor. He presented Luther with a table filled with his own books. Eck asked Luther if the books were his and if he still believed what these works taught. Luther requested time to think about his answer.

On the next day, Eck countered that Luther had no right to teach contrary to the Church's tradition and interpretation, and asked again, would Luther reject his books or no? Luther replied:

Since your Majesty and your Lordships ask for a plain answer, I will give you one without horns or teeth. Unless I am convicted by Scripture or by right reason (for I trust neither in popes nor in councils, since they have often erred and contradicted themselves) - unless I am thus convinced, I am bound by the texts of the Bible, my conscience is captive to the Word of God, I neither can nor will recant anything, since it is neither right nor safe to act against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.

Before we move on to the final point, let me add just a few more biographical things about Luther.

Luther was not only the father of the Reformation, he was also the character of the Reformation. We don't have enough time to talk about how he loved talking theology over beer and pretzels (brewed by his wife). We haven't talked about how he would pass gas at the devil. We haven't talked about his book on The Bondage of the Will, written in response to Erasmus, filled with references calling Erasmus' book a “girl.”

On Sundays in Wittenberg there was the 5AM worship with a sermon on an Epistle. At 10AM there was a sermon on a Gospel, and then an afternoon message on the Old Testament. Monday and Tuesday lectures were on the catechism. Wednesdays on Matthew; Thursdays and Fridays on the Apostolic letters; and Saturday on John.

Between 1510 and 1546 Luther preached approximately 3000 sermons. For example, he preached 117 sermons in Wittenberg in 1522 and 137 the next year. His average was one sermon every two and a half days.

He was a family man; at least from age forty-one to his death at sixty-two. Katie von Bora, a converted nun, bore him six children. As one of his biographers wrote, “Katie cleaned house.” She did so in more ways than one.

His translation of the Bible helped to develop a standard version of the German language and added several principles to the art of translation. His hymns sparked the development of congregational singing in Christianity.

One more thing about Luther's temperament. Luther said of himself:

I own that I am more vehement than I ought to be; but I have to do with men who blaspheme evangelical truth; with human wolves; with those who condemn me unheard, without admonishing, without instructing me; and who utter the most atrocious slanders against myself not only, but the Word of God....A mind conscious of truth cannot always endure the obstinate and willfully blind enemies of truth. I see that all persons demand of me moderation, and especially those of my adversaries, who least exhibit it. If I am too [hot], I am at least open and frank; in which respect I excel those who always smile, but murder.

One of the problems we see today is an emasculating (take away what makes it faith; deprive of strength or vigor) faith, cutting away at the content and removing any expectation for fruits of faith. A few years ago this was called “cheap faith.”

Of course, when Luther declared that justification is by faith alone, serious questions arose about the nature of saving, living, true faith. The one Scriptural argument Rome had appealed to James 2 to repudiate the doctrine of sola fide.

Sola fide has never meant that a person could be, as Luther said, "justified by a barren, dead faith that is not Spirit-borne nor accompanied by all the rest of the work of God in His redeemed people.” The “alone” has always referred to the denial of any additions to faith that speak to merit, but it has never meant works don't flow from faith.

Roman view: faith + works = justification

There is another problem that we sola-loving Reformed Christians need to guard against, and that is acting as if a man who confesses “justification by faith alone” is a better Christian.

It is wickedly ironic that we would use sola fide as a measuring stick of spirituality and as a defense for dualism. Justification by faith alone is itself the doctrinal battering ram against the dualism of secular and sacred work. If sola fide is true then there is no such thing as sacred work, sacred in the sense of earning special favor from God.

God does not justify any man according to the biblical doctrines he holds, but by faith alone. God does not justify any man according to his “spiritual” works, and certainly not according to his “religious” vocation. Being “Reformed” doesn’t justify us. Avoiding earthly relationships like marriage or earthly responsibilities like making profit doesn’t justify us. Being a pastor or missionary or orphan worker doesn’t justify us. Those are attempts at modern monasticism, but they cannot make us better believers. We cannot save our souls by anything we do.

The gospel frees us from defining our righteousness by depth of quiet time, length of praying, frequency of fasting, percentage of money given as offering, consistency of church attendance, let alone pursuing a particular vocation. We are saved by faith alone. Sola fide doesn't mean that faith is the only important thing about a man, it actually allows for every thing to have meaning, just not in a saving way.

Luther had problems. He condemned the Anabaptists to death. He counseled a prince to lie. He spoke too harshly against the Jews. But he is not condemned for any of these things, he is justified by Christ.

We must fight for sola fide today.

Here is Luther’s hymn, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” in a different translation than most of us know.

A mighty bulwark is our God

By our own strength is nothing won.

And though the fiends on every hand

That word they never can dismay.

The intensities of dysfunction were at danger levels in Jacob’s house, like trying to thread a needle when the thread and the needle are both on fire; it’s not if you’re going to get burnt but how big will the skin graft need to be. His wives envied each other into a baby race, which included Leah and Rachel giving Jacob their servants to be his wives as well. In around seven years Jacob fathered eleven sons and (at least) one daughter. This not a Brady Bunch comedy, the antics are not fun as in Cheaper by the Dozen. This was heavy duty bitterness and bartering over whose bed Jacob would sleep in.

About the same time that Rachel had her first son Jacob was finishing his bridal contract with his father-in-law. Jacob completed fourteen years of work in which he got more than he bargained for. But now that his contract was ending, his favorite wife now had a son, and Esau had to be less angry, it was a good time for Jacob to start thinking about going home.

But he had more mouths to feed than when he made the trip from Canaan to Haran and, if he left now, no provision to feed those mouths.

He approaches his uncle to announce that he’s leaving anyway because he’s tired of being under his uncle’s control and also eager to return to the land the LORD promised him. But Laban doesn’t want him to go. Jacob has been good for business. Laban suggests that if Jacob stays a little longer, then Jacob could leave without being empty-handed. He could earn something for his own household.

There are two parts to the last half of chapter 30, Brokering Another Deal (verses 25-34) and Breeding a New Flock (verses 35-43).

Because Rachel gave birth to Joseph about the same time as the second seven years was coming to an end, Jacob felt as if the latch unlocked on the door to his cage. As soon as Rachel had borne Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, “Send me away, that I may go to my own home and country. Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you, that I may go, for you know the service that I have given you.” Jacob is not really asking for permission, he is telling his superior to send him away. It’s sort of his two-weeks’ notice. He puts his imperative in “Let me leave and let me have” terms because he’s living under Laban’s conditions, but he doesn’t even say “Please.” This begins a back and forth negotiation through verse 34.

Laban is not ready to let go. But Laban said to him, “If I have found favor in your sight, I have learned by divination that the LORD has blessed me because of you. Name your wages, and I will give it.” First, this has nothing to do with Laban loving his family, this is all about his finances. Second, this is patronizing. Laban doesn’t care if he’s found favor in Jacob’s eyes. Laban isn’t making a humble request in return, he’s asking Jacob to indulge him while he refuses to give a straight answer. The name your wages comment comes because he knows that his daughters were the only wage Jacob had earned in their previous contract. Another deal is required if more wages are to be paid.

Third, this was pure selfishness on Laban’s part. The ESV translates, I have learned by divination, in other words, other spirits revealed to Laban that Yahweh was responsible for the Laban’s profit by Jacob. Some have translated it, “I have learned by experience,” but experience doesn’t reveal Yahweh. I don’t have a problem thinking that Laban learned the truth through his false worship. And if he did, why did he wait till now to say so? How about a service award? How about just a “thank you”?

Jacob affirms that Laban didn’t need supernatural help to count the sheep. ”You yourself know how I have served you, and how your livestock has faired with me. For you had little before I came, and it has increased abundantly, and the LORD has blessed you wherever I turned. But now when shall I provide for my own household?” When Jacob said wherever I turned, the Hebrew could be translated, “at my foot,” so wherever he stepped there were good things popping up. But all those good things were accounted as Laban’s assets. When could Jacob claim his own dependents on his own paycheck? This is Jacob’s concern before he heads home.

Everything Jacob said is true, and it’s all understandable from his perspective. But it’s also true that Laban didn’t agree to give anything else to Jacob. Jacob got what he agreed to: two wives. And actually, Bilhah and Zilpah were Laban’s servants that he gave to Jacob, and now there were twelve children, too. So was Laban being generous to Jacob? No. But was Laban cheating Jacob out of anything he promised. Technically, no.

Laban knew he had the upper hand. He said, “What shall I give you?”

He must have said it like Jacob was a child, though Jacob was around 90 years old. Jacob said, “You shall not give me anything.” Jacob got Laban’s attitude. Laban wasn’t going to give Jacob anything else, he already gave him what he worked for. Jacob would have to work more if he wanted anything more.

Jacob said, “You shall not give me anything. If you will do this for me, I will again pasture your flock and keep it: let me pass through all your flock today, removing from it every speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb, and the spotted and speckled among the goats, and they shall be my wages. So my honesty will answer for me later, when you come to look into my wages with you. Every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and black among the lambs, if found with me, shall be counted stolen.” (Genesis 30:31–33)

According to some studies, 20% ownership of the flock would be a good wage for a shepherd, and the speckled and spotted sheep usually didn’t account for that much, and every black lamb is probably just another way to say it. A similar percentage applied to the goats. Jacob was negotiating for a less-than-usual wage; he knew Laban was the kind of man who only bothered to look at low bids. Jacob would keep shepherding two flocks, Laban’s pure colored and his own piebald (i.e., those with patches of two colors). At any given time the solid could be distinguished from the spotted without any funny business.

Laban said, “Good! Let it be as you have said.” But he wouldn’t agree that easily, right? He didn’t.

But that day Laban removed the male goats that were striped and spotted, and all the female goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white on it, and every lamb that was black, and put them in the charge of his sons. And he set a distance of three days’ journey between himself and Jacob, and Jacob pastured the rest of Laban’s flock. (Genesis 30:35–36)

This was not the agreement. Laban separated the striped, speckled, and spotted rather than Jacob doing it, and Laban gave them to his sons. They were supposed to be Jacob’s. When Jacob came to go through the flock, there weren’t any for him. He had to start from scratch, which required him to stay much longer than he intended. Laban even set a distance of three day’s journey between himself and Jacob. You can never be too careful when you hired a deceiver. As John Calvin remarked, “dishonest men are wont to measure others by their own standard; whence it happens that they are always distrustful and alarmed.”

Jacob got to work and, according to Genesis 31:41, this paragraph of work took six years. It involves three things: 1) superstition, 2) good sense, 3) time.

“The flock tended by Jacob had only monochrome animals in respect” to the observable characteristics. But in respect to the unobservable characteristics, that is, the genetics of the lambs, some of them had genes for only one tone and others had genes for multiple tones. If Jacob could breed those with genes for multiple tones together, some of them would be spotted according to the laws of heredity (Hamilton).

The superstition was in Jacob’s belief that whatever a sheep viewed while that sheep was mating determined the color of the baby sheep’s wool. There are a number of problems with that. Do sheep see colors? Some experiments suggest that they do react differently to different colors. Okay, then how do their eyes relate to their eggs? Isn’t this more “white magic,” an old farmer’s tale, similar to Rachel’s hope in fertility fruit?

Jacob does exert a lot of effort to make it happen; it’s described in verse 37-38 and again in verse 41. He thought it was doing something.

He also took care to identify the stronger and the weaker. This was not natural selection, though it was selection based on natural qualities.

Was Jacob right to do this? He had agreed to pastor Laban’s flock, and he was technically, though not he isn’t exactly working for their flourishing. He will tell Laban in the next chapter that he protected them from being eaten and, of course, feebler is comparative. So it doesn’t mean that the were sickly, just that they weren’t the strongest. Jacob bred the strongest for himself.

All that took time, though sheep can give birth approximately every five months. But it was working.

Thus the man increased greatly and had large flocks, female servants and male servants, and camels and donkeys (verse 43). The description increased greatly could be translated “spread out,” the same as in 30:30. He is “exceedingly prosperous” (NASB, NIV).

We’ll see in the next chapter that it wasn’t Jacob’s pastoral ministry that caused him to increase so greatly, it was the LORD. “God did not permit [Laban] to harm me” (31:8) followed by descriptions of striped, spotted, and speckled births. The “angel of God said…’Lift up your eyes and see, all the goats that mated with the flock are striped, spotted, and mottled, for I have seen all that Laban is doing to you” (31:11-12). God gives increase and God get the credit.

What do we learn from this passage?

Though not the primary point, we do see that some characters are ugly. How do we treat those around us—in our business arrangements, financial contracts, family relationships? That reveals who we are. Laban in particular is an unpleasant man, and we ought not to act like him even if we are “technically” right.

We also learn that receiving the promises of God does not always feel awesome. Was God fulfilling His word to Jacob in all of this? Absolutely. Jacob is “spreading out” as God said he would in 28:14; that word is used only there and in 30:30 and verse 43 in Genesis. But it took 20 years. Jacob could read from his journal: “by day the heat consumed me; cold by night, and my sleep fled from my eyes” (31:40). And it wasn’t just physical inconvenience and pains, it was relational burdens, between his wives and with his boss. “If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been on my side, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed” (31:42).

But now he had wives, offspring, and he had “increased greatly.” It didn’t feel awesome while he was going through it, while he was working but by grace God caused Jacob to prosper. Let us be thankful for all the grace we can spot.

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Good evening. Well, as a former Catholic, I find it a privilege to actually be able to speak, speaking to you tonight on this particular topic of sola fide. That seems to be the sticking point when I have conversations with my hundreds of Catholic relatives. I'm, in particular, I'm thinking of one particular friend that I grew up with, Dave. Dave was and is a very good friend. We were childhood friends. I first met him in seventh grade and then just pretty much ever since then we've just maintained a friendship. Dave and I actually made a profession of faith. I mean, what we would call a profession of faith. We both made a profession of faith back when we were in between our junior and senior years in high school.

It's a longer story, but God being the way he is orchestrated it, get this, God orchestrated it so that a Presbyterian youth pastor was teaching inside of my Catholic CCD class on the Catholic Church campus when in fact he wasn't teaching Catholic doctrine, that might need us to say, but sharing the gospel with us straight up. And I and Dave and several others actually made a profession of faith at that time. Now since then, God has led me out of the Catholic Church through various means. It was a few years after I got saved that I actually left the Catholic Church and have now been part of the Protestant group ever since.

Dave had elected, has elected to stay within the Catholic Church. Dave today is actually an ordained deacon and that's a very involved process to the Catholic Church. almost equivalent to becoming a priest. He's gone through a lot of rigorous theological training. And so Dave and I, Gail and his wife Shelley, we all got together about eight or nine months ago. We were down in Sacramento visiting my mom and we went out for some ice cream. And so I said, okay, Dave, I gotta ask again. I mean, you're saying all the right words. I says, but we still have this issue of faith. You know, aren't Catholics, aren't you saved by faith?

And Dave again, as he's always told me before, says, yes, I am saved by faith. But then he threw in. He says, but we do not believe in saved by faith alone. The Catholics do not accept Sola Fide. They do not accept Sola Scriptura. Those are the issues that caused the Reformation to happen in the first place. And so once again, we spent some more time talking about that. Gave him some questions that he wasn't sure how you could answer. I threw some of the canons. And I'm going to share some canons with you from the Council of Trent back in the 1500s. Dave wasn't able to actually answer those, because when I throw those out to him and others, I find out that many Catholics don't really even understand Catholic theology today and what still stands.

And so they have actually learned to pick up the jargon of the Protestant movement. And so when you talk to many of your Catholic friends today who really do seem to love Jesus, you'll walk away thinking, wow, they really sound saved. And I do believe there are some within the Catholic Church that are truly saved. But you have to be very careful with your terms. And that's what we're going to do tonight is talk a little bit about terminology so that when you are having conversations with your Catholic friends, you can make sure you are on the same page. Because sometimes you can use the same words, the same terms, but they don't mean the same thing.

But anyhow, in preparation for tonight, I actually read a pretty thick theological book. I could recommend it to you if you want to study this subject more. The book is called Faith Alone, the Doctrine of Justification by Thomas Shriner. He's a professor of New Testament interpretation and biblical theology down at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I didn't know who he was. I mentioned to my son Chris, who was a seminarian, and he says, oh yeah, he's a big gun in those circles, and so the guy knows what he's talking about. So he helped me dig in a little deeper and understand this issue. When you're talking about sola fide, there's basically a really big question that we're trying to answer.

It's the question that every human being is going to have to answer, and they better get the answer right. And that is, how can sinners be justified in the eyes of the holy God? That's a question that Martin Luther agonized over. Martin Luther, as a Catholic monk, was taught that justification before God depended, in part, on human effort. In Luther, though, he was keenly aware of his own inability to live a perfectly righteous life. And the Book of Romans, as he studied it, only added to his frustration. For example, he'd hit passages like Romans 3, 10 through 12. None is righteous. No, not one. No one understands.

No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good. Not even one. Passages like that drove Luther to actual despair. He came to actually say that he hated the Book of Romans because to him, it seemed to only heap on more and more condemnation the more he studied it. He was particularly hung up on Romans 1.17 and backing up to verse 16 that says, for I am not ashamed of the gospel for it's the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. And here's the part that really tripped him up. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.

As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. And then in here's in Luther and his own words how he felt about that passage before the lights went on. He says, though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he, God, was placated by my satisfaction, works. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God and said, as if indeed it's not enough that miserable sinners eternally lost through the original sin are crushed by every kind of calamity by the log of the Decalogue, the 10 commandments, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteousness and wrath.

He was a confused man there. Thus I rage with a fierce and troubled conscience. Nevertheless, I beat importunately upon Paul at that place most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted. So Luther, he could not escape the fact that no matter how righteously he tried to live, he could never reach the level of perfection that God required. And so as he was reading those passages in Romans to him, it just sounded like God was holding up this impossible standard. And he just saw the righteousness of God and took it to infer to that standard that humans must somehow try to measure up to but could never possibly do so.

He knew that just one sin creates an infinitely wide chasm between God and man, and so he felt like Romans was just tormenting him with a requirement that he could never possibly hope to meet. Later he describes then the moment when he finally understood what that passage was saying. He writes, at last by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, in it, the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed as it is written, He who through faith is righteous shall live. Therefore, I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning, the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith as it is written, He who through faith is righteous shall live. Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. There a totally other face of

the entire scripture showed itself to me. Thereupon I ran through the scriptures from memory. I also found in other terms an analogy as the work of God. That is what God does in us. The power of God with which he makes us strong. The wisdom of God with which he makes us wise. The strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God. All of a sudden the light bulbs went on and all of a sudden he had been interpreting the scriptures one way that was just heaping condemnation to all of a sudden he saw what really the gospel was all about which was a message of liberty and freedom from human effort, human works. Luther's breakthrough came when he finally understood that the scriptures were not setting up a gauntlet for men to run towards salvation but rather God by way of the gospel was extending his grace to helpless sinners to bring them to salvation.

In order to better understand the doctrine of sola fidei then, and why there's still a disagreement between the Catholics and the Reformed Protestants, we're going to need to define some terms. Probably one of the best passages that really succinctly states and supports sola fidei is found in Ephesians 2, 8, and 9. It says, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, the gift of God, not as a result of works, lest any man should boast." Now if it were up to me, we'd just take those two verses and stick a fork in this conversation and call it done. But since the debate still exists today and since I still have some time on the clock, I'm going to go ahead and dig in a little bit deeper.

But I think that those two verses alone, I think, are killer. There are four theological terms that these two verses raise. Saved, or we can also use the word justified, grace, faith, and works. What do these terms mean and what do they have to do with getting us to heaven? First, what does it mean to be saved? A saved person is one who is righteous or just in the eyes of God and therefore not under the condemnation that awaits the ungodly. To be saved requires one to be just before God. But what does that mean, to be just? We can look at question 33 of the Westminster's shorter catechism for an answer. It asks and answers that question.

It says, justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed in us and received by faith alone. So a lot of words, a lot of fancy words. God's free grace pardons our sins, accepts us as righteous on the basis of what Jesus Christ did for us, and received by faith alone. So it almost sounds like a restatement of Ephesians 2, 8, and 9. That's a pretty good definition for reformers, but would be totally unacceptable and totally denied by the Roman Catholic Church. This definition, then, does bring up another term that is at the heart of our disagreement with the Roman Catholic followers and others.

And that term, if you heard it in there, was imputed. Now, we're going to take a look at what imputation means and the alternatives to that view in a few minutes. For now, being saved means that God sees us as completely righteous or just in his sight. When he looks upon us, we are, we have the righteousness of Christ Jesus. We are just, fully just in his eyes. If this, though, is what it means to be saved, be fully just, as Luther wrestled with, who can be saved? We've already seen that there's none righteous. Jesus himself astonished his disciples by declaring it virtually impossible for men to save themselves. You remember Luke 18, 25-27, he says, For it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Those who heard it said, Well then who can possibly be saved?

But he said, what's impossible with man is possible with God. So then, how can a person ever be righteous enough to be saved from a terrifying judgment? If we can't grab our bootstraps and lift ourselves up and achieve that, how does it happen? Brings us to our next term, grace. Grace in its most simple definition is God's unmerited favor towards man. The emphasis is on merited. There's nothing we can do to earn it. God gives grace as an act of His will and is born out of His love, and it's not a payment for anything that we've done. There's nothing we can do to earn any merit from God. In January, Jonathan's gonna be teaching on sola gratia or grace alone, so I'm not gonna define grace any more than that for now.

But suffice it to say that without God's grace, salvation would be impossible. Third term, faith. Faith is the pipeline, if you will, that carries God's grace to the believer. Faith is belief and action. I like thinking of it this way. Belief, to say I believe, belief thinks a chair will support your weight. I can look at a chair all day long and say, I think that chair will hold me up. That's belief. Faith rests heavily in the chair. With regards to sola fide, faith faith accepts God's determination that Christ's death on the cross is the satisfaction the law demands for our sins. Faith accepts this decree and rejects any attempts to earn merit with God through good works.

Ephesians 2.9 again tells us that even our faith is a gift from God and not of ourselves.

So God extends His grace, He makes a way, He gives us the faith to believe the plan of salvation, the gospel message. It's all God, it's nothing to do with us. Now this raises a problem that we have with our many friends. They would say that a person can choose to accept or reject God's offer of salvation. But this implies that man is a player when it comes to faith. In order to accept God's offer, I have to have some spark of faith within me to receive God's gift. If I can accept it or reject it, I have to have something inside of myself to recognize that an offer is being made. This wrong view means that man has to cooperate with God in order to be saved. There's at least a couple of problems with this idea. First, if salvation depends on a faith that we muster, then one could argue that that's a kind of work. Basically, I have to recognize a good deal when I see one and accept it. Do you see how this could leave room for a person to boast and say, and hey, I heard the offer, I recognized it as a good offer, a good deal, I accepted it,

it gives me a basis for boasting. I wasn't stupid like the other person over there who rejected it. But again, we see in Ephesians 2, 8, 9 that there is no works involved, lest I would have any reason to boast. And the second problem is that it's just not biblical. We've already seen in our passage that faith is not of ourselves, it is a gift of God. And in addition, the Bible teaches that we were all spiritually dead. Colossians 2, 13-14, and you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

he set aside, nailing it to the cross. This is a dead, dead. This is not a princess bride, mostly dead kind of dead. This is a dead, dead. Dead people do not respond to offers. They can do nothing for themselves. They need to be regenerated, made alive again.

And that's what God does for us. And then finally works. The final term we need to see is works. This refers to the good things that we do in this life. If we talk about works as a way of meriting God's favor, that would be heresy. Our salvation is not a result of works lest any man should boast. On the flip side though, good works, the ones that please God, are evidence that we've been saved and have the Holy Spirit resonate inside of us. And we're going to dive a little bit more into that concept a little bit later. Just to support that idea that good works still are important is after Ephesians 2.8.9, which is telling us it's faith alone, it goes on to say in verses 10 and 11 that we were created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand for us to do.

It would be heresy to say that works are necessary for our justification, but it's also heresy to say that works are irrelevant to the Christian faith. And I'm gonna talk again more about that in a little bit. It's this debate about the role of works in a believer's life that sparked the Reformation and has kept Catholics and reformers for reconciling for the past 500 years. And I could have gone into all of the attempts to bring about an ecumenical, you know, an effort to bring Catholics and Protestants back together. There's been several major pushes even in this last century, but they keep getting stuck on these core important doctrines.

So now that we have some basic definitions down, we need to then look exactly at how justification occurs in a believer. I've already said only the justified are saved. You can also say only the righteous are saved. It'd be two synonymous terms. You have to be completely righteous, you have to be completely justified. It's the only people who are saved. But how are we justified or how do we become righteous? That's the $64,000 question and eternity, our eternity rests upon it. Well, there's three main views, three main theological interpretations as to how that process of becoming justified in God's eyes, how does that happen?

Depending on who you ask, the righteousness that's necessary onto salvation is either imputed to us, imparted to us, or infused in us. There's probably other flavors out there too, but those seem to be the three major ones out there. Another way, asked another way, when God looks at a believer, is the righteousness he sees in us forensic or transformative? Does God declare believers holy righteous at one point, or are they made righteous over time? Okay, at this point, you're thinking, Jim, imputed, imparted, infused, forensic, transformative. Okay, it's a real soup. There's a lot of things to consider when thinking through this doctrine, and we're really only scratching the surface.

I mean, I'm just giving you a primer on a primer of this theology tonight. We're going to cover those terms on touch, so you can understand them better. Because when you get into the debate and you're looking at the discussions, you're going to run into these terms, and so you might as well have a basic understanding. When you hear the word forensic, what do you think? Think of those detective shows, and they're looking for evidence, all this. This is forensic evidence. What do they mean by that? Forensic basically refers to what is. It is a fact. There's no denying it. It's the best kind of evidence you can find in the case because there's just no disputing it.

Either it's his DNA or it's not his DNA. It's his hair sample, it's not his hair sample. It's forensic. It is what it is. When they talk about the idea of something being transformative, that implies something that's changing, transforming from something to something over time, going from one state to another state. So is our righteousness forensic, or is our righteousness something that is transformative? Do we start off at salvation sort of like, that puts righteousness and then God builds that righteousness and makes us more and more justified over time. We'll take now then a quick look at the three proposed ways, these imputed, imparted, and infused, and we'll see and try to understand from the scriptures which ones seem to hold water, which ones don't, what are the problems with them.

Let's start off with the infused righteousness. Roman Catholics hold to this view. In this view, the process of salvation starts with God extending his grace to man. This is why my buddy Dave can say we are saved by faith. They recognize God's mercy, God's grace extended to them and they understand the role of faith but when he talks about it, it's just the starting gate. He has not yet accomplished, or he's not yet received the full righteousness of God at that point in time. So he's just at the starting gate. The steps following after that is where we get into trouble. We would agree with him up to that first step that the grace of God, it starts with God extending something to us by grace.

So so far us and the Catholics are shaking hands. The steps following though require man to muster the faith within himself to respond to God's grace. That's where we started having the problem. This initial step for the Catholic is taken through the act of baptism. Typically, this act is done by proxy through the parents until the child comes of age. Later, when the child gets old enough, they can make their own declaration of faith. That's what happened for me. My folks took me down to the baptismal when I was a baby. They sprinkled the water over my head. I had no idea what was going on, but the parents said on behalf of Jim, he's going to be in the church, be in the faith, we're going to raise them that way.

And then when I got to be seventh grade, I think it was, then I got to go through the sacrament of confirmation, a big deal, a lot of preparation. Got in the church. They had the bishop for our archdiocese came. Big row, big, funny hat, the staff, the whole nine yards. We got to go up there and make a vow and kiss his reign and do the whole nine yards. That was me making my official declaration of faith that I was accepting the Christian faith.

Catholicism, if you know anything about it, is what we call a sacerdotal system, meaning it's based, they believe that God's grace flows to man primarily through the observance of various sacraments. So we, whereas Sean talked this morning during the communion time, how we believe we have direct access to God, the Catholics saying on a timeout, that God's grace is coming to you through the sacraments which are administered to you by way of the priests. Those sacraments they've identified as baptism, communion, confession, confirmation, marriage, holy orders, and anointing of the six. Let's see, I've got five out of seven so far.

I'm not trying to get dead or two. But they believe in those sacraments that God's grace flows. And so it's in this system, the priest is the administrator of these sacraments, and thus he becomes a necessary mediator between God and man. The Catholic Church teaches that at the moment of baptism, man begins a process of becoming increasingly righteous as he exhibits faith through the practice of the sacraments and his good deeds. You want to be a good Catholic? Observe the sacraments and do good deeds, and you will be a good Catholic. And you will grow in grace. You will grow in sanctification in their thinking.

You can think of the doctrine of infusion as transfusion, if you will. It's the transfusion of the righteousness of Christ to man. Through God's grace and man's effort, the righteousness of Christ is slowly transfused into the believer. The hope is that by the time they die, they will be made mostly righteous. Since most don't reach the level of perfection, necessary, and they do believe it's possible to get to perfection before death, but most of us aren't gonna do that, and most Catholics aren't gonna do that. That's why then they have set up this system of purgatory. Have you ever wondered why they got purgatory, why purgatory is necessary?

They would recognize that you have to be fully righteous in order to enter into heaven, but they say, well, the people died are not perfect, so they need to go into purgatory to continue the purification process and to be made totally righteous in God's eyes. And if you get into heaven mostly righteous, then you'd only spend a little bit of time on purgatory. And if people like us will pray for them, we can shorten their sentence in purgatory and get them into heaven sooner.

Yeah, obviously they're making this up because you can't find it in scripture. But that's the idea of why purgatory is necessary in their system to do more penance in order to be made righteous and perfect. So again, it works oriented. So how does that view stack up a scripture? It doesn't. Romans nine talks about God's sovereign right to elect or reject whomever he pleases. The decision has nothing to do with human will. In the Catholic system, human will plays a huge role in our sanctification. Romans 9, 14 through 16, what shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means, for he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I'll have compassion on whom I have compassion.

So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. Romans 3.20, because by the works of the law, no flesh shall be justified in his sight. Romans 3.28, for we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. These verses and others make it pretty clear that good works have nothing to do with being justified in God's eyes. If you talk to most devout Catholics today, they will likely argue that they are saved by faith and not by works. Very few, though, will be familiar with the official church dogma on the matter. In response, and so again, if you have Catholic friends, what I'm about to share here, you ask them these questions, you show them what I'm about to share with you, and they're going to walk away scratching their head and say, huh.

And they're either going to just walk away, or in some case, then they send you big, long articles to try to read that sort of try to wave their hands and dismiss this stuff. It's like they wish the canons would go away from the Council of Trent. Well, in response to Luther and the rise of the Reformation, the Catholic Church convened a council that met in Trento, Italy. Today, we just call it the Council of Trent. It actually lasted for 18 years, 1545 to 1563. Off and on, they would get together and they would discuss theology and specifically, how are we gonna address all these crazy Lutherans running around now and deal with that problem?

And so out of that, then they would issue these rulings canons outlining where the church stood on key doctrinal points that the reformers were challenging. And so I've chosen just three brief canons that I'd like to read to you right now so you can better understand where the Catholics are coming from and again trying to just oppose this against the idea of Sola Fidei versus what the Catholic system. Now as I read these be asking yourself the next time your Catholic friend says we believe that we are saved by faith, you ask, you know, see if that holds water. Canon number nine, if anyone says that by faith alone, the impious is justified in such a way to mean that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will, let him be anathema."

Canon 12, if anyone shall say that justifying faith is nothing else than confidence in the divine mercy pardoning sins for Christ's sake, for that is that confidence alone by which we are justified, let him be accursed. That was a direct dart at Sola Fide. 30, if anyone says that after the grace of justification has been received to every penitent sinner, the guilt is remitted and the debt of eternal punishment is blotted out in such wise that there remains not any debt of temporal punishment to be discharged either in this world or in the next in purgatory before the entrance to the kingdom of heaven can be opened to him, let him be anathema."

Did you get that? to these doctrinal view, our works are a necessary act of cooperation with God in order to be justified. Confidence in Christ's work alone for our justification is anathema. The grace of justification from God does not by itself remove all of our guilt and even requires that we spend time in purgatory to be fully cleansed. Anyone who believes other than is anathema. You can see that the doctrine of infused righteousness repudiates the doctrine of sola fide. It offers no possibility of the assurance of salvation and it contradicts the scripture in numerous places. Relying on the works of the law to be justified is not just wrong, it's anti-gospel. Galatians 5 through 6, you are severed from Christ, severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law, you have fallen away from grace.

For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly await for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love." So that's the infused view of how one receives the righteousness of God. Next up is the imparted view. This view to me is the hardest of the three to fully understand. Some equate it to infused righteousness and others align it more with imputed righteousness.

The Christian group often associated with this view would be followers of John Wesley and the Methodist denomination. Imparted righteousness argues that at salvation God graciously places within the believer a righteousness principle. So when we get saved God gives as a righteousness principle. This principle then gives true believers the impulse to want to strive for greater holiness. Now that doesn't sound bad so far. We would hope that a new convert would have a desire to grow in holiness. The question rises as to how this principle relates to a believer's justification versus their sanctification. Wesley did not outright reject imputed righteousness, which we haven't hit yet, which teaches that God forensically declares a believer to be righteous at the moment of conversion. Imputed, you're saved. God says, because of Christ, I see you now as fully righteous, fully justified.

The imparted view, it's not clear. It's a real mishmash there. But that's the question, is when you talk about imparted righteousness, what are they saying? Do they recognize that? And Wesley, from what I could read, didn't outright deny that, but he was nervous with that concept. His concern was that this could lead to antinomianism. Antinomianism is a whole other area you can study. And to be fair to the antinomians, although it was heretical, they're thinking, they would hold a sola fidei, but they were so uptight and worried about works of righteousness, about legalism, that they went to an extreme where they basically said, the believer is not bound by the Mosaic law.

The believer does not need to concern himself with necessarily following the law, because we're justified at the point of salvation. So the law and obedience to the law is really important. And we find in history that groups coming off of this shoot would then go to the point where in their lives you wouldn't see any practical holiness because well it doesn't matter anyhow, I can kind of live however I want because I'm already justified. One article I read said that early Methodist theology held to the Protestant view that the basis of justification is faith alone. However, Wesley broke with the Protestant reformers concerning the results of justification.

While Wesley did not adopt Catholic theology, neither did he accept the majority Protestant view that the Christian is at once just and yet a sinner. While Wesley saw himself within the Protestant denomination, he disagreed with Luther's conclusion that the Christian is at the same time just and yet sinful. Luther had taught that when a person is saved, they are at once fully just, fully righteous, in God's eyes. That doesn't mean that they are living a fully righteous life, standing before God, they're fully just, fully righteous, but they were also still fully sinners. I've messed with Wesley's mind and other people like him. How can that possibly be? Luther went on to say these Christians, they are unknowingly righteous and knowingly sinners. They are sinners in fact, but righteous in hope. This dual status is what drives them, the anti-imputation folks, They don't see how it's possible to be completely righteous in the eyes of God and a sinner at the same time.

How could that possibly be? Talking about impartation gets tricky because it seems like those who hold to this view are talking about it as a means for justification one minute and then about using it in terms of sanctification at another point in time. It is proper to refer to God imparting righteousness if you're talking about sanctification. God over time does supply the grace through faith, mainly by the gift of the Holy Spirit, to cause believers to mature into the righteousness He's already declared them to have. Does that make sense? I get saved if in fact I have, if God declares me righteous on day one, well my life, I mean what changed in the last nanosecond?

I'm still the same sinner I was a nanosecond earlier. But God, working through the Holy Spirit, He begins the process of changing me and transforming me. So who I am, who you see and know Jim Martin to be, becomes more and more consistent with the righteousness of Christ Jesus. We call that sanctification. That has nothing to do with are we justified in God's eyes or not. But to muddy the issue further, Wesley wrote, I believe God implants righteousness in everyone to whom he's imputed it. You got that? I believe God implants righteousness in everyone to whom he's imputed it. Now, I'm not totally sure what Wesley was getting at, but I think what he means is that if God has in fact imputed or declared someone to be righteous, then he has also implanted in them the impulse to pursue righteousness.

Where the trouble comes in with the implanted righteousness view is that many of its supporters seem to believe that a believer's degree of righteousness increases as they pursue greater and greater holiness. That is, again, in God's eyes, they aren't 100% justified. They aren't 100% righteous at the point of salvation, but they are growing in that. This would infer that God does not see a believer in that state. other offshoots of the holiness movement and others believe that this imparted righteousness makes for the possibility of Christian perfection. Other terms that you might have heard with these particular groups of believers is Christian holiness, entire sanctification, perfect love, baptism with the Holy Spirit, and the second blessing. But all of these, you know when you dive into them, they all seem to be dangerously close to the idea of of relying on human effort to become more righteous in God's standing.

Reformed churches reject then all of these teachings associated with this Christian perfectionism because we realize that there's no way this side of heaven that we're ever in the flesh going to achieve this perfect righteousness. And so we do not generally like this view, at least in the reform camp. Now if by imparted righteousness one means that a believer will strive by the power of the Holy Spirit through faith to increase in holiness such that their life increasingly matches their already justified standing before God, then I don't have a problem with that particular view. And that's kind of what I was just describing a moment ago.

If they're saying you are justified on day one, fully justified in God's eyes, now let's just get you in the flesh to look like who you are in Christ position. Then I don't have a problem with it. on the other hand it means that one can become more just before God over time as one pursues holiness then that's a problem because it again gives man control with God, co-control with God over his justification. So that's imparted and if that was confusing it's confusing to me too so don't feel bad. Imputed, the third one, third option. This view believes that at the moment of salvation God declares the believer as fully justified in his eyes.

God can do this because he imputes the righteousness of Christ Jesus to the believer. Earlier we read in Ephesians, for by grace you have been saved through faith, it is not of your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one can boast. To be saved, remember, requires that we are justified or declared 100% not guilty. We have been saved according to this passage, past tense. How can Paul use the past tense if we are not already fully justified at the moment of salvation when making sense to say you have been saved? Notice again how the justification happens by grace through faith. Whose grace?

God's. Faith in what? Faith in God and the gospel message. Where does this faith come from? God. works have no role whatsoever in causing us to be justified in God's eyes. Justification is by faith alone or sola fidei. It would be wrong to think that all that happens in salvation is that we're pardoned from our sins. This would mean that we still stand before God without any merit. Okay, we've been forgiven, but still again, there's more to it than that. When God justifies a believer he imputes divine righteousness. Christ's own merit becomes the ground on which the believer stands before God. Romans 5, 18-19, Therefore as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men. For as the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience, that many will be made righteous.

First Corinthians 1, 32-31, and because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. And then Philippians 3, 8-9, indeed I count everything is lost because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for his sake I have suffered the loss of all and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith."

So is righteousness infused, imparted, or imputed to man? The scriptures, I believe, seem to make it pretty clear that it's imputed to man by God's gracious extension of love and through the means of faith which even that he supplies. There's just nothing in it where man initiates it. Man decides to accept it or not accept it. God says so. He says you. God reached down into my family, one of 11 kids, only one who is a professing believer. Why did God do that? God simply chose. It wasn't because I heard a Presbyterian youth guy with a guitar give me a good message. decided to reach down and grab me that day. It's certainly not something we deserve, and there is absolutely nothing we can do to merit it.

The doctrine of sola fidei is so outrageous, it's no wonder that Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1, 18, for the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are saved is the power of God. You try to explain sola fidei to a nonbeliever, that's insane. There's just no way that can possibly be. Well now I'd like to take a moment and respond to one of the biggest criticisms of sola fide. If you hold to the imputed view of righteousness, you are in the minority, but you're in good company. While the term sola fide was first used by Luther, a survey of the early church fathers shows that many are held to this idea, although the doctrine wasn't really as well defined as it is today.

And I'd refer you back to that book that I mentioned at the start of the talk today to give you that historical background. The point is this, this is not a new doctrine that was unknown until Martin Luther came along. He wasn't just a disgruntled Catholic who said, I'm tired of this doctrine, I'm gonna come up with a new one. He was basically calling the church to return back to what had been believed and taught from the beginning of the church. It wasn't a new theology he was coming up with. I mentioned earlier that one of the most common criticisms of this view is that it would lead to antinomianism, the idea that works have no correlation to one's standing before God and thus is wrong to stress the importance of good works.

That seems to be even among other Bible believing people who don't hold to sola fidei, don't hold to the idea of just being justified. They hold to sola fidei, they don't hold to being justified at one point in time. criticism is you're just going to, you're saying that works are totally unimportant. And to be fair to their criticism, there have been groups in the so-called easy-believism camp and I've heard people use these arguments, they would say that once a person prays the prayer, God is bound to deliver them from hell even if they live like the devil all their lives. And their argument is that God made a promise to save them if they pray their prayers, they're saved, and so God's got to honor His promise so it doesn't matter how they live, they're still going to go to heaven. This would be a modern day example of antinomianism at its worst. Critics say that sola fide leads to this sort of thing.

And it's true that Psalm and an aversion to work's righteousness place too little significance on works. Jesus gave his disciples an analogy in Matthew 7, 16, and he said, So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. One's deeds or fruit is among the best evidence that we have when confirming a person's profession of faith. We often talk about it.

We can't judge a man in terms of deciding if he's going to heaven or hell, but we can be fruit inspectors, and we should be, to see if their life matches up with our testimony. So works are still very important, not for achieving righteousness, not becoming justified in God's eyes, not to earn merit, but as unnecessary evidence that in fact there's a Holy Spirit work. To deny any value of good works in the believer's life is plain wrong and its own brand of heresy. Calvin, while responding to the canon number two from the the Council of Trent, wrote, it is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet faith which justifies is not alone.

Now the Catholics like to defend their infused theology by citing the book of James, specifically James two, 18 through 20, which says, but someone will say you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe in shudder. Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, what faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works and faith was completed by his works and the scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness and he was called a friend of God.

You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Whoa, and that just totally trashed everything I've just been saying for the last 40 minutes. This passage taken by itself might seem to support the idea works are a necessary part of our justification, but then that would be a massive contradiction with the other passages we've already looked at. Consider Romans 4, 1 through 5, where Paul uses Abraham also to make his point about how righteousness comes about. So James has just used Abraham as an example, right? Now Paul is going to use Abraham as an example. What then shall we say was gained by Abraham our forefather according to the flesh?

For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. skipping down to verse nine. Is this blessing then only for the circumcised or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised?

It was not after, but before he was circumcised, before any works. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who would believe without being circumcised so that righteousness would be counted to them as well. So was Abraham justified by faith alone or was it faith plus works? If you put the whole counsel of God together, you can't escape the fact that our justification before God has nothing to do with works. However, we also, we good Reformed Protestants, we would also go back to James chapter 2 as proof that a person who has been truly justified by God, i.e. saved, will live a life trending towards more repentance, obedience, and good works, not as a way to earn merit, but as the natural outcome of one who is indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

If you see a person who claims to have prayed the prayer and is living like the devil, it's It's quite reasonable to doubt that person's salvation. A true believer who is living with unconfessed sin will always be internally miserable. That's because the Holy Spirit's at work convicting them of sin, righteousness, and judgment to come. If a person claims to be a Christian but is living with unconfessed sin in their life and is undisturbed by it, then one of two things is true. And I've run into people like that and I've asked them this question.

brother you're in gross sin, you claim to be a believer, how do you sleep? Well I sleep like a baby. I says well that tells me one of two things are true. Either the Holy Spirit is impotent or the Holy Spirit is not in your life. Which one do you think it is? I'll give you a hint. It's not the first option. If they can sleep like a baby and be living in gross, unconfessed sin, they're not a believer. What do we teach here at TEC? In closing, I'd like to read for you from section 10.1 of the TEC's, what we believe document. And hopefully as I read through it, it's just a short paragraph or two. Hopefully it will make sense now as you hear some of these terms and things and the light bulbs will hopefully go on and it'll be a clear statement of what we believe.

And hopefully it won't disagree with anything I've just been saying for the last bit of while. We believe that justification and sanctification are both brought about by God through faith, but not in the same way. Justification is an act of God's imputing and reckoning. Sanctification is an act of God's imparting and transforming. So you're starting to hear those terms again. Thus the function of faith in regards to each is different. In regard to justification, faith is not the channel through which power or transformation flows to the soul of the believer, But rather, faith is the occasion, the one and done, of God's forgiving, acquitting, and reckoning as righteous.

But in regard to sanctification, faith is indeed the channel through which divine power and transformation flow to the soul. And the sanctifying work of God through faith does indeed gradually change the soul more and more into the likeness of Christ. There you have it, short, sweet, and to the point. When you consider that every other religion in the world is trying to build a staircase to heaven built out of human effort, it is glorious to know that God has a better idea. And we wholeheartedly agree with the Apostle Paul in Romans 1, 16 and 17, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you as we consider back our own heritage as believers, trace our roots back to the Reformation in men like Martin Luther, who agonized for much of their life struggling with the idea that somehow they by their own effort had to pull themselves up and achieve their own righteousness and had to measure up to a perfect standard knowing that that was impossible. We can only imagine the torment that Luther went through in his soul as he wrestled with that. Thank you though that you did show him and you did reveal in your word that that in fact is not what is going but that it is soul of Fide.

And it's a Fide, it's not of ourselves, it's a gift from you even in that. You loved us so much that you made a way through your son and then you knew even before the foundations of the earth about each and every one of us, and you gave us the faith to be able to see and believe and understand and to stand before you fully righteous, fully justified. And not only that, but you now continue to, through faith extend to us, Father, your grace to change us and to transform us and to make us more and more into the image of Jesus Christ. It's all about you. It begins with you, it ends with you. It's for your glory. Thank you, Father, for this tremendous gift. And I pray that we will, well, next time we hear sola fidei, we will not yawn or just say, oh, how many have heard that before? But it will get us on our knees. And once again, praising you and thanking you for the tremendous gift of salvation that you have given us.

Please pray this now in your son Jesus' name, Amen. Okay, I think there's a youth after goal, and the rest of you have a great week, and see you midweek or later.

It’s hard to imagine that a family would have problems if that family started out with a business arrangement to work for a bride who was then switched for the older sister on the wedding night when the groom was probably drunk who realized what happened the morning after and then married the younger sister eight days later and gave her all his attention. No, that would cause no problems at all.

It’s a true story, and it’s also just and introduction. Jacob fled from home and came to Laban, Laban (and Leah) deceived Jacob, Leah and Rachel became Jacob’s wives. Jacob already worked seven years and he’s about to begin his second seven year tour.

Jacob left his home when he was around 77 years old. He met the younger of Laban’s daughters, Rachel, at the well outside Haran and the 2555 days he worked for her “seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her” (Genesis 29:20). Rachel was “beautiful in form and appearance” (verse 17) and he offered to work for her because he loved her (verse 18). It’s why he was upset at the switch, and the final thing we saw last week was that Jacob “loved Rachel more than Leah” (verse 30).

As offspring are born to Jacob in Genesis 29:31-30:24 (note that the first and last paragraphs in the section begin with God opening wombs) we’ll see that each sister wanted what the other sister had. Neither of them were content, and Jacob did nothing to help. Leah and Rachel were in a race of envy, and the fruit of their wombs struggled with the consequences of that envy for generations. Jacob could have written his own soap opera script, “These Are the Days of My Wives.”

Five stages of the race:

Leah deceived Jacob to become his wife. It may not have been her idea, but she was complicit. Regardless of her looks, we understand why Jacob wouldn’t feel attached to her.

But she was his wife and he did not treat her appropriately. The one who noticed was God. When the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. As we’ve already learned in Genesis, the womb is the LORD’s to open or close as He wills. He does not always close it as discipline, but He always controls it.

Here the LORD disciplined Jacob for his favoritism. Obviously Jacob shared a bed with Leah but apparently not much else.

And Leah conceived and bore a son and called his name Reuben, for she said, “Because the LORD has looked on my affliction; for now my husband will love me. Leah seems both sad and hopeful. She’s sad because she’s unloved and she knows it. Yet she’s hopeful that this child, this son, will turn Jacob’s heart toward her. She believed this was the LORD’s doing; it’s interesting that she never gives credit to her father’s household gods (see Genesis 31:19). Reuben sounds like a thankful exclamation: “See, a son!” Reuben was a gift from God.

Did Reuben unite Jacob’s heart to Leah? Leah keeps having sons in quick succession but does not start having more connection with Jacob.

She conceived again and bore a son, and said, “Because the LORD has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also.” And she called his name Simeon. Again she conceived and bore a son, and said, “Now this time my husband will be attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.” Therefore his name was called Levi. And she conceived again and bore a son, and said, “This time I will praise the LORD.” Therefore she called his name Judah. (Genesis 29:33–35)

Simeon sounds like “heard”; God saw and God heard her struggle. Levi sounds like “attached” which she still hoped Jacob would become. Judah sounds like “praise.” Maybe Leah has given up and is worshipping God regardless of how Jacob treated her but, based on what’s yet to happen, I think this is just a crescendo of her expectation. All these boys from the LORD would have to make her husband more affectionate toward her. Leah names each son, and each time she talks by herself, Jacob appears not to be around. That said, every time he called a son by name he would have to think about why.

When the LORD saw (29:31), now When Rachel saw (30:1).

Rachel had Jacob’s love but no babies. At some point certainly before Leah’s fourth son was born, she envied her sister. Leah wanted what she didn’t have and visa sister. Rachel said to Jacob, “Give me children or I shall die.” Of course this is dramatic. She might feel useless, she might be teased by her friends at parties, but she wouldn’t die from barrenness. Things could be worse. Yet she vents her envy-anger onto Jacob, although it’s not as if he was impotent; he had already fathered four sons.

Jacob out-angered her back. Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel and he said, “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” His theology is right, but his bedside manner was not tender. The anger of man doesn’t produce the righteousness of God. He’s not leading, he’s leaving her to deal with it. He loved her, but he wasn’t looking to God in prayer (like his dad had done for his wife) for her or helping her to trust God and be patient.

“To think that after the beautiful, gentle love story of 29:1-20 this angry exchange is our first and only experience of their marriage!” (Westermann quoted in Wenham).

Her response is impulsive. If she can’t bear a child then she will get one through her servant Bilhah and count that child as her own; on my behalf translates “on my knees,” a reference to parental rights. Jacob’s uncle on his dad’s side (Ishmael) was born in a similar manner when his grandmother Sarah was in a barren state.

Jacob had not learned from history, so he repeated it. God opened Bilhah’s womb and she bore Jacob a son. Rachel acted as if she’d been vindicated as a victim. The first son for Rachel through Bilhah was Dan which sounds like “judged.” She meant that God heard how awful her situation was and now He proved her right. The second son’s name makes it even more clear that the criminal—from Rachel’s perspective—was Leah. Naphtali sounds like “wrestling.” Rachel claims that she’s been wrestling with her sister before God to be blessed. This is a competition, a race, and she wants to win.

The LORD saw (29:31), Rachel saw (30:1), now, Leah saw that she had ceased bearing children (30:9). Pregnancy came early and often for her; her first four came one right after the other. She was more aware of not being pregnant because she had been for almost four years in a row.

It must not be that Jacob stopped being with her altogether, since that would provide the explanation for why she wasn’t getting pregnant, even though in the next paragraph we see that Jacob didn’t spend much time with her. Leah is still unloved and, if she didn’t before, she realizes the competition. She’s still in the lead, but she could get further heads.

She took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife.. Jacob came to Haran for one wife and now he’s got four. Zilpah gave him two sons. Gad which sounds like “fortune,” as in, this is good fortune to have another son. And Asher which sounds like “happy.” Happy am I! For women have called me happy.” She’s given her husband five sons and this must be when he will see how good she’s made it for him.

For the first time we overhear the sisters interact directly. Moses includes this part of the story to show how low things had gotten in Jacob’s household.

Reuben was probably five or six years old by now. He wasn’t working, he was playing or just out with the men in the fields while they worked. He found mandrakes which is a tomato-looking fruit, and fruit thought by some (old wives’ tales) to have fertility powers. They were also called “love fruits” or “love apples.”

The news of his find spread throughout the house so Rachel came to Leah and made a request. Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes. Mandrakes were hard to come by, and Rachel was desperate enough to ask her sister, her competition, for help.

But Leah exploded. ”Is it a small matter than you have taken away my husband? Would you take away my son’s mandrakes also?” Leah is still bitter and can’t imagine giving to the one she felt had already taken from her.

Rachel counters with an offer. ”Then he may lie with you tonight in exchange for your son’s mandrakes.” Jacob hadn’t been spending much, if any, time with Leah, either because she wasn’t producing more children or just because he didn’t care for her. Rachel acts as if she has the power to decide whose bed Jacob slept in. Leah must have said, “Fine.”

When Jacob came in from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, “You must come in to me for I have hired you with my son’s mandrakes.” She’s eager and not going to depend on her sister to tell Jacob. He doesn’t argue. His relationship with Laban became one based on payment, and now his relationship with his wives turns into something similar.

And God listened to Leah. She must have been praying, and without the mandrakes she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son. Issachar sounds like “wages.” She hired her husband for a night and she got paid with a son.

And Leah conceived again, and bore Jacob a sixth son” whom she named Zebulun which sounds like “honor.” Jacob would have to honor her now, right? And afterward she bore a daughter and called her name Dinah. Daughters aren’t always named, but Dinah is mentioned now because of what happens to her in chapter 34.

When God “remembers” it isn’t that something’s been out of His mind, it’s that He’s committed to act. From our perspective it seems that He’s remembered. God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb. Mandrakes didn’t open her womb. Her own strategies didn’t enable her to become pregnant. As God did for Leah in 29:31, God enables Rachel to conceive. Rachel has been humbled, at least to some extent, and has been crying out to the LORD.

She conceived and bore a son and said, “God has taken away my reproach.” She called his name Joseph, saying, “May the LORD add to me another son!” Let’s say that this is out of faith not out of immediate discontentment and desire for another son. Joseph sounds like “add.”

In the next scene Jacob starts talking about going home (Genesis 30:25).

Does there need to be an explicit statement against polygamy? If Sarah and Hagar didn’t convince, isn’t this story enough? This house is a mess.

Leah was unloved and envious of Rachel. Rachel was barren and envious of Leah. Jacob was in the middle and, at least in this part of the story, not much of a husband or father. He doesn’t name any of his children. He doesn’t help his wives. He’s worked 14 years for his brides and, at least in this episode, doesn’t offer much more to them than breeding services.

The envy in Jacob’s household was transferred to the next generation. The brothers, with one more to be named later, got along when they were allied against another one. For later generations of Israelites to be proud of their origins is ignorance and arrogance. The only good they had was by grace. Such is true for us.

On his way to see his mother’s family in Haran, the LORD met Jacob in a special place and assured him that he would be blessed with offspring and land that he did not deserve. God did not tell Jacob at the time that he would also get some of what he deserved.

Saving grace does not eliminate all consequences. In fact, saving grace gives us a Father (though the Hebrew patriarchs didn’t refer to God as “Father”), and every loving father disciplines his children. So does our Father in heaven. Yahweh will be Jacob’s God. Yahweh will go with Jacob and guard him. And Yahweh will also mature Jacob. Each of them will be associated with the other forever, and all the families of the earth will be blessed in Jacob, so he has some growing up to do.

The LORD would discipline Jacob with more than he bargained for, including a crazy, selfish, deceitful uncle. Jacob wouldn’t realize how deceitful Laban was until later, but that’s part of the problem with deception. Also, what goes around comes around. Jacob deceived, now he is deceived, and ironically ruined under the pretense of priority for the firstborn.

The blessing of finding family is mixed with the nature of the family he found, or at least the head of that household. The blessing of finding work is mixed with a steep price paid by that work. The blessing of finding a wife is mixed with finding one but getting two. It was more than Jacob bargained for.

In verses 1-14 Jacob meets family and in verses 15-30 Jacob marries sisters.

Then Jacob went on his journey is an unfortunately flat translation. The Hebrew says that “Jacob lifted up his feet” (Tyndale’s accurate translation) which is a comment on his resolve to keep going based on the LORD’s reassurance, or at least his eagerness to increase the distance between himself and Esau.

He came to the land of the people of the east, though Haran is more north than east. So far in the book of Genesis, going to east is less preferable, and often an sign of separation. For Jacob he will find what he was looking for and some of what he wasn’t.

Jacob came upon three flocks of sheep near a well with a large stone across it. Somehow he could identify the separate flocks, perhaps by their positions or by the fact that there were too many shepherds for it to be only one. The flocks were near a well that was protected by a stone that usually took more than one man to move.

When Jacob saw them he said to them, “My brothers, where do you come from?” He plays up the politeness, though they don’t give him much more than the minimum reply. ”We are from Haran.” This is encouraging. So he asked, ”Do you know Laban the son of Nahor? How big was Haran? Or is this the eternally human response? “Oh, you live there? Do you know So-and-so?” Their reply is too short to get a definitive sense of their perspective, but enough to get a hint. They said, “We know him.”” What else did they want to say? Laban was not the kind of man who could avoid a reputation.

Then Jacob asked how Laban was doing? Did he have shalom? This wasn’t being well in the peace-of-soul in God way, but a general, “is he alive?” He was. And the shepherds were happy to have a way out of the conversation because, as “luck” would have it, ”see Rachel his daughter is coming with the sheep!” From this moment Jacob’s attention was distracted for at least the next 14 years.

Jacob saw enough that he knew that he wanted a little alone time with his cousin. So he tells the men to get back to work. They were waiting around when they could have been letting their flocks graze. It was too early in the day to fold them together; that was done for the night for warmth and protection. Jacob tells them to give the sheep a drink and go back at it for a while which would give him a chance to speak with Rebekah.

They resisted, saying that they couldn’t do as Jacob proposed because they couldn’t get the stone off the well. They would have to wait, maybe until another flock with another shepherd arrived and enough men were present to open the well. They aren’t in a hurry, nor do they have any reason to listen to this outsider.

So there would be an audience, so what? Rachel came with her father’s sheep, for she was a shepherdess and as soon as Jacob saw Rachel and the sheep…Jacob came near and rolled the stone from the well’s mouth and watered the flock. With the strength of ten men, well, maybe four, Jacob performs the feat by himself. Hopefully Rachel was watching.

Note the three-times repetition in verse 10: his mother’s brother, his mother’s brother, his mother’s brother. He found people who knew his mother’s family, now he found the family, and possibly his future wife. He knew the story of his Grandfather who sent a servant who met Rebekah at a well. Here Jacob does the watering rather than the woman.

And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father’s kinsman, and that he was Rebekah’s son, and she ran and told her father. It’s deja vu but for real.

Laban had been through this before, and last time he got a lot in the deal. This time he would get less up front and far more in the end. As soon as Laban heard the news…he ran to meet him and embraced him and kissed him and brought him to his house. He did probably wonder, “Where are all the camels?” But that was answered soon enough. Jacob told Laban all these things. All what things? All the things that brought him to Haran. Unlike the servant who prayed and then retold the entire story to praise God, Moses demonstrates that he can summarize. Jacob explains why he’s alone and has nothing: he is on the run. Did he say why? I think so, especially since Laban uses the story against him later. Did he say he was looking for a wife? I also think so. If he wouldn’t have told Laban the story, would Laban have allowed him to stay? If he knew how Laban would use the story against him later, would he have told the story more carefully?

Laban said to him, “Surely you are my bone and my flesh! Which could mean, “And I’m so glad you’re here!” or “I am satisfied that you are who you say you are” or “You have family problems that I’m very familiar with.” Regardless, Jacob stayed with him a month.

Laban had been watching Jacob for a month and had already heard Jacob’s verbal diary. Jacob had told him his heart. Ever the shrewd man, Laban proposes a deal.

“Because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing?” Tell me, what shall your wages be?” However generous this may sound, in two sentences Laban turned a relationship based on family into a relationship based on money. The argument assumes that Jacob, as a relative, should not receive anything or serving. Laban wanted to be the boss more than a relative, though he did suspect that he would be getting a son-in-law in the package.

The answer comes in verse 18b, but two and a half verses come in between describing Laban’s two daughters. First was Leah, a name that meant “cow.” She was older, unmarried, and her eyes were weak. It’s not a lazy eye, one that doesn’t move with the other. It’s a set of “soft” eyes. What does that mean? Who knows. Some suggest it meant that her eyes were light rather than bright. She was less attractive because of it.

The other daughter Jacob met at first, Rachel, a name that meant “ewe.” She was beautiful in form and appearance, a real looker (with strong eyes?). And Jacob loved Rachel. Had they been talking? Or was it love at first sight?

Jacob makes an extravagant offer. ”I will serve you for seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.” He had no money to pay a dowry as was common so he offers to work for her. Later in the Law the bride price is fixed at fifty shekels. If Jacob earned one shekel a month, then he was offering 84 shekels (Denham). She becomes an (expensive) commodity over which the men bargain. As for the many years, there was nothing for him back home but a brother eager to murder him.

Laban was getting the better deal, though his response is not positive or perspicuous, that is, clearly expressed and easily understood. ”It is better that I give her to you.” Some have pointed out that Laban doesn’t use Rachel’s name, so he may have had someone else in mind when he said “her.” If so, that is low.

Jacob got to work and the seven years seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her. Awwwww.

Between verse 19 and 21 seven years go by! And strangely, Jacob has to initiate. ”Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.” Laban had to be aware of it. Rachel had to be aware of it. Who in the house wasn’t counting down the days?

So Laban gathered together all the people of the place and made a feast. At least he did something nice for the couple. But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and he went into her…And in the morning, behold, it was Leah!. Brides were veiled, but that’s some veil. It was night, so it was dark, but that’s some darkness. Either love is blind, or Jacob must have been drunk. The word feast in Hebrew typically referred to a drinking party. “Feast” is mišteh, from šāṯá, “to drink” (Hamilton). Moses doesn’t say it explicitly, but Jacob wasn’t aware of who he was with until the morning. You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s dawn.

Why did Leah agree to the deception? Where was Rachel? Tied up in a closet?

Jacob doesn’t love the one he’s with. He said to Laban, “Why then have you deceived me?” Did Jacob hear what he was saying when the word came out of his mouth? Deceived is the same word Esau used about what Jacob did (27:35).

Laban answered, I imagine in such a way that his tongue hurt his cheek, ”It is not so done in our country to give the younger before the firstborn.” Ouch. Note that he said firstborn not “older” as in 29:16. He’s using Jacob’s own story against him, and casts stones from the moral high ground that such a thing just isn’t done in his country. Society falls apart if this kind of thing is allowed. He could have told this to Jacob before agreeing to the terms. What goes around comes around. (Of course Laban is also doing doublethink. Is he really arguing that deceit is fine as long as it protects the firstborn rather than undermines the firstborn?)

But Laban does add something, ”Complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also in return for serving me another seven years.” The wedding feast often lasted seven days. “The week of feasting (see 29:22) toasts Laban’s wit and the humiliation of Jacob and of Laban’s daughters” (Waltke). Jacob had to endure the looks and laughs of the people the entire time. Did he see Rachel? What did he say to Leah?

Both daughters were given a handmaid, Zilpah (to Leah, verse 24) and Bilhah (to Rachel, verse 29). They are inserted here because they will become mothers of tribes of Israel.

For now, Jacob gets his second wife in eight days. Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved her more than Leah. He didn’t learn from seeing familial favoritism in his home growing up. He couldn’t have known the sort of conflict that would come from this arrangement. Love did not set him free, from serving or strife. He got more than he bargained for.

Nothing Laban did was right, and Jacob still got what he deserved. He also got better than he deserved. The LORD disciplines those that He loves, and Laban was a tool in God’s arsenal.

Leah, though we sympathize that she was unloved by Jacob, gets a measure of what she deserves for her willful part in deceiving Jacob. She is not guiltless. Though she will become the mother of Judah, so of David, and so of Jesus. She receives consequences of her actions and also gracious blessing from the LORD.

It takes wisdom for us to know how not to be like Job’s counselors with others, or make assumptions in our own lives, that if a bad thing happens then it must be discipline for a sin. Jesus Himself said about the man born blind that it was not because of his sin or his parents’ sin. We can endure difficulties to show the grace of God already present or we can experience difficulties to discipline us to seek grace to become more like Him. Without being Job’s counselors we must still recognize that the Father disciplines those whom He loves.

My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline

One Book of matches lit the fire of the 16th Century Reformation. Without the return to the Bible, we might still be in bondage to the dark imaginations and cold commandments of men.

Dave did a fantastic work a couple weeks ago to define the different approaches to Scripture taken by Christian groups today. How do Presbyterians relate the Bible to creeds and confessions, what role do Charismatics give to the Holy Spirit alongside the Bible, who is allowed to interpret the Bible in Roman Catholicism? All of these, and more, concern our relationship to God’s Word. But what is so significant for us to consider tonight is that English speaking believers didn’t even bother with those debates because they didn’t have a Bible to read.

I think it’s possible to identify a particular reformer who best embodied or fought for each sola. All of the reformers believed in all of the solas (even if they never put them all together as such). And of the reformers we’ll talk about, the one that history (and the other reformers themselves) looked to first was Martin Luther. He was the initial lightening bolt, and lightening rod of the Reformation, so that those who came after him were tainted as “Lutherans.” More criticism came from him and to him than the others. His recovery of justification by faith alone overturned kingdoms.

But the doctrine of sola fide comes from reading the Scripture and William Tyndale lived and died for us to have our own copies of God’s Word in English.

Sola scriptura is called the formal principle of the Reformation, meaning that it stands at the very beginning and gives form or direction to the content (or material) of Christian belief. Without this doctrine, no Reformation would have occurred.

Sola scriptura (Latin for "Scripture alone") is a statement about Scripture's authority, not merely its sufficiency. Saying that Scripture is sufficient means that we believe Scripture has all the answers we need. Saying that Scripture is authoritative means that we must follow all the answers. A restaurant menu is adequate to make a choice. It reveals the options and ingredients and cost for each dish. But a menu isn't authoritative: it doesn't say what choice to make. Scripture isn't a menu; it is a mandate.

You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for

“All flesh is like grass

And this word is the good news that was preached to you. (1 Peter 1:23–25, ESV)

The setting for William Tyndale was the early 1500’s in Europe, England in particular, where the Church kept the Bible from the people. The character of God, the nature of man, the way of salvation, the importance of the sacraments (baptism and communion), as well as the relationship between church and state, were all furiously debated. But at the root of every one of these disputes was the fundamental issue of authority. Who or what had the final say? On what basis could one assertion be proven true or better or more binding than another?

The popular church of the day (the Roman Catholic Church) recognized the authority of the Bible. But they also granted equal authority to the Church (through its popes and councils) as well as to personal, mystical revelations. Since none of the people had their own copy of God’s Word, they didn’t know better.

The Church's position was that tradition was the "unwritten word of God." Furthermore, "the church is the organ of tradition." The Church claimed that it was the "unerring teaching authority which can pass judgment on the Scriptures." You can see how this position actually grants higher authority to the Church since it is able to receive new unwritten revelation equal to Scripture and since it makes the final judgment on interpretations of written Scripture.

It is too simple to say that the debate during the Reformation was between tradition and Scripture, one or the other. The medieval church did recognize the Bible as an authority. At the time of the Reformation, both sides acknowledged the infallible authority of the Bible. The question was, "Is the Bible the only infallible source of special revelation?"

Also, it isn't that Protestants recognized no other authority than the Bible. Protestants did recognize other forms of authority such as church officers, civil and government officials, and even church creeds and confessions. But they saw these authorities as being derived from and--here's the marrow of the bone they kept picking—subordinate to the authority of God. None of these lesser authorities was ultimate because all of them were capable of error. God alone is infallible. Fallible authorities cannot bind the conscience absolutely; that right is reserved for God and His Word alone.

Sola scriptura is a statement about exclusive authority, fundamentally, and not just content. Sola scriptura means that all of the revelation is from God and must be obeyed. Without this doctrine there would have been no Reformation.

If the goal is to be the authority, you might imagine how the Church and her leaders were vehemently opposed to the Scriptures being available to everyone in their own language. The scales of power would certainly be tipped if not completely overturned. England took to burning English New Testaments and those suspected of owning them. This precedent was established dating back to John Wycliffe in the 1380's. Wycliffe and his followers (the Lollards) translated the Latin Bible into English manuscripts (handwritten copies) since the printing press had not yet been invented.

Two official policies threatened the development and availability of an English Bible. One was an act of Parliament passed in 1401 which decreed that all heretics must be burned. The second was a specific set of official church declarations made in 1408 called the Constitutions of Oxford. Under these, not only was the possession of an English Bible forbidden, but the possession of even a word of an English Bible was forbidden.

Some historians have called this the most violent repression ever in English history, lasting from 1408 to the 1530s. It overlapped the invention of movable-type printing and effectively prevented any kind of printed Bible translations in England until Tyndale.

Even though the Church spun her reasons, there is really only one explanation for her vehement opposition to the Bible being available to everyone. The Scriptures in English would allow every man, even the farmer and the housewife, to test the church, its doctrines and practice, for themselves. And that would be disastrous to the status quo.

Tyndale's translation of five (just five!) Greek words especially angered his enemies. If you are familiar with Catholicism at all you’ll quickly see the issues. In each case Tyndale’s translation was accurate to the Greek, and a direct challenge. For example: he translated the Greek word πρεσβύτερος as "elder" whereas the church had always translated it a "priest." He translated ἀγάπη as "love" instead of "charity" (a word of works). He translated ἐκκλησία as "congregation" rather than "Church." He translated ὁμολογέω as "acknowledge" rather than "confess."

And above all he translated the Greek word μετανοέω as "repent." μετανοέω is a classical and NT Greek word meaning "change in mind." It referred to an internal change that changes the direction of life. The Church always translated this word as "do penance.” To do penance typically involved paying money, so they weren't in favor of a NT translation calling for repentance instead of penance.

For example, in Acts 2:27-38, the people ask Peter "what must we do to be saved?" And he answers, μετανοήσατε "Repent." The church had always said, "Do penance."

Dr. Edward Lee, a British official for the king, wrote Henry from France in 1526:

I need not advertise to your Grace what infection and danger may ensue hereby if it is not withstood. This is the nearest way to fill your realm full with Lutherans. For all Luther's opinions are grounded upon bare words of Scripture....All our forefathers, governors of the Church of England, have with all diligence forbidden English Bibles....The integrity of the Christian faith within your realm cannot long endure if these books may come in.

The danger today involves our reluctance, if not resistance, to any authority. At best we ignore or are suspicious about absolute claims, even absolute truth claims in the Bible (and those who speak those claims). At worst we scorn/mock or oppose authority, including the authority of God Himself.

Our culture's authority questioning and authority despising has infiltrated the church. The Christian community is uneasy with the idea of authority. We dismiss (shrug off) assertions of authority as arrogance; we despise (open disrespect, intense dislike, look down on with contempt) authority; and we defy (show unwillingness towards) assertions of authority.

First we act like truth is something to be chosen by the individual. The standard is left up to the individual and how he feels or what he thinks, what he chooses to accept. This is individualism with a heavy does of subjectivism. And honest subjectivism births relativism. If there is no truth apart from the individual, then no person can be judged or measured by another person's truth. This is relativism. And relativism butchers authority. If everyone's opinion of truth is equal, then no one has the right or position to claim absolute authority, even God.

That's certainly true in our culture, but what about in our churches? Most of us affirm that the Bible is God's Word, and therefore pay lip service to its authority. But many professing Christians have abandoned the authority of the Bible all the same because because they do not even read it, they do not read it honestly, or they do not obey what they read.

Our decisions stand on clouds of emotions and whim and fancy. We are held captive by philosophy and the empty deception of psychology, according to the traditions of men and academic scholars, according to the elementary principles of business structures instead of submitting to Scripture.

And when we do read it, too often we are careless with our interpretation, failing to follow the governing clues of context. But when we miss the point of the passage, we miss God’s point.

When we are ignorant about Scripture, when we give equal welcome to counsel from worldly authorities, when we are careless with the intended meaning of Scripture, and every time we disobey Scripture, we are resisting God’s authority as revealed in His Word.

William Tyndale devoted his life to these authoritative Scriptures. The precise date and place of birth of Tyndale is uncertain, though he was likely born around 1494. Likewise, little is known about his childhood and family background.

He registered at Oxford University in 1506 when we was only twelve years old. He learned the trivium: grammar, logic, and rhetoric, as well as the quadrivium: arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy), reading the traditional books by Aristotle, Boethius, Euclid, Ovid, and Quintilian (Daniell, 29, 45). He would go on to study at Cambridge University, at some point was ordained as a priest. John Foxe described him as one who

increased as well in the knowledge of tongues and other liberal arts as especially in the knowledge of the scriptures, where-unto his mind was singularly addicted

William Tyndale day by day and without reserve committed himself to the supreme authority of the Bible and insisted that would-be church leaders submit to the judgment of the sacred text. He said:

In the kingdom of Christ, and in his Church or congregation, and in his councils, the ruler is Scripture, approved through the miracles of the Holy Spirit, and men are only servants.

Tyndale employed a simple, but powerful, method of argumentation. It was a method which became a hallmark of all the leading Protestant reformers: he insisted that all doctrinal controversies be solved by appeal to the original source materials of Christianity, the Scriptures.

Tyndale never ceased to cite the Bible as the final court of appeal in all spiritual matters. He believed that the Scriptures are sufficiently clear to settle all controversies about truth. His method of exegesis was to compare Scripture with Scripture because he said, "the Scriptures, conferred together, expound themselves."

He was especially opposed to the practice of citing proof-texts in support of disputed doctrinal positions. He emphasized the constant need of first considering the context from which a given Scripture portion is taken. Surely he would have subscribed to the current hermeneutical proverb: "A text out of context is but a pretext." Tyndale said,

One scripture will help to declare another. And the circumstances, that is to say, the places that go before and after, will give light unto the middle text. And the open and manifest scriptures will ever improve the false and wrong exposition of the darker sentences.

He also said,

Seek the word of God in all things; and without the word of God do nothing, though it appear ever so glorious. Whatsoever is done without the word of God, that count idolatry." (The Parable of the Wicked Mammon, 1528).

Believe not every spirit suddenly, but judge them by the Word of God, which is the trial of all doctrine; and lasteth forever.

Or again, in reference to the church fathers he said,

Get thee to God's word, and thereby try all doctrine, and against that receive nothing.

But it was not enough to cry “Sola Scriptura” if everyone could not read the Scripture for him or herself. So Tyndale set out to translate it into common English, simple enough for--as he regularly referred to--the ploughboy.

I vehemently dissent from those who are unwilling that the sacred Scriptures, translated into vulgar (common) tongue, should be read by private persons...I wish that the husbandman may sing parts of them at his plough, that the weaver may warble them at his shuttle, that the traveller may with their narratives beguile the weariness of the way.

Before Tyndale, the Bible the Church used for a thousand years had been in Latin. The Latin translation of the original Hebrew and Greek was made in the 4th century AD by Jerome, and was known as the "common version" or Vulgate.

In Tyndale’s translating work he likely had no other English translation beside him for comparison, not even a handwritten copy of Wycliffe's Bible; whereas, according to some sources, Luther probably had multiple other German translations to consider. It is certain that Tyndale had Luther's German NT and he could use Jerome's Latin Vulgate. Apart from these two, Tyndale may have possessed no other text apart from Erasmus' GNT (published in 1516) which he used with great ability. When he sat down to his translation, he had no one to guide him, no vast library at his disposal, no friendly scholar to check and criticize his work, no books on the principles of Bible translation from which to learn.

Yet in Tyndale's work are found phrases which have reached the hearts of English readers across the world ever since, such as: “the salt of the earth,” “the spirit is willing,” “live and move and have our being,” “fight the good fight,” “a small still voice.” He came up with “God forbid” throughout Romans (for the Greek phrase “may it never be”). Some verses familiar to us would be:

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." (Matthew 5:8)

"He is not here, but is risen." (Matthew 28:6)

“Finally, my brethren be strong in the Lord, and the power of his might.”

He was a master wordsmith, a craftsman of language.

His first English NT arrived in 1524 (Luther’s first German NT came in 1522). One original complete copy remains of the initial 3000 published in The British Library. His 1534 revision was a 6x4x1.5 inch pocket-size book with 400 pages with inch margins around the outside (Daniell, 316). There about a dozen of these left.

His work made it possible for anyone to read the NT in English, particularly the Epistle to the Romans where people could see that almost everything the Church stood for was wrong, especially her emphasis on justification by works. His NT was earthy, certainly plain enough for the farmer.

But think about the context in which Tyndale’s work took place. Remember the official consequences of having even a word of the English Bible? Death!

As Henry VIII’s divorce dragged on in 1528, Tyndale was a hunted exile living under the shadow of arrest and the stake. But knowing that undercover agents were scoring the country for him, he turned his attention to the OT. Living hand to mouth and in constant expectation of arrest, he was learning Hebrew, translating and revising the NT, commencing his translation of the first five books of the OT.

All of this was very different from the comfortable (by comparison to Tyndale at least) married quarters into which Luther had recently moved with his newly-wed wife, Catherine. It was also very different from Luther's large university library with a sympathetic faculty and the strong protecting arm of the Duke of Saxony.

Foxe tells the story about how Tyndale, having reached Deuteronomy in his OT translation, set sail for Hamburg and a printer, but was shipwrecked and lost not only his translations, but all his texts and reference books, and had to start over again!

In 1530 he finally published his first translation of the Pentateuch, Genesis through Deuteronomy. These were the first translations ever made from Hebrew to English. He was the first one to pen:

“In the beginning God created heaven and earth. The earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the water. Then God said: let there be light and there was light.”

We owe him such familiar phrases as: “am I my brother’s keeper,” “turned into a pillar of salt,” and he coined words such as “mercy seat,” “Passover,” and “scapegoat.”

One of the greatest burdens upon Tyndale must have been the knowledge that he had precipitated cruel persecution by his translation and books and that many of those rotting in prison or dying in agony at the stake had willingly committed themselves to the great commission so close to his heart. One by one, Tyndale's loyal friends and men true to the Word of God were snatched away. The net was beginning to tighten around him.

At one point he talked with an emissary of the King, Stephen Vaughan:

“if it would stand with the king's most gracious pleasure to grant only a bare text of the scripture to be out forth among his people, like as is put forth among the subjects of the emperor in these parts, and of other Christian princes, be it of the translation of what person soever shall please his majesty, I shall immediately make faithful promise never to write more, not abide two days in these parts after the same: but immediately to repair unto his realm, and there most humbly submit myself at the feet of his royal majesty, offering my body to suffer what pain or torture, yea, what death his grace will, so this be obtained. And till that time, I will abide the asperity of all chances, whatsoever shall come, and endure my life in as many pains as it is able to bear and suffer.” (Daniell, 216)

In 1535 his enemies finally caught up to him. An Englishman named Henry Phillips, in the pay of some secret authority (not King Henry, since Phillips despised the King), worked his way into Tyndale's trust. After a short while he tricked Tyndale into arrest. Tyndale was imprisoned for sixteen months in a dungeon in the castle of Vilvoorde, outside Brussels. A letter from his prison-cell still exists, probably as winter approached in 1535.

He asks for a thicker coat, a hat for his head, and:

most of all I beg and beseech your clemency to be urgent with the commissary, that he will kindly permit me to have the Hebrew Bible, Hebrew grammar, and Hebrew dictionary, that I may pass the time in that study.

There is no cringing flattery, no frantic plea for mercy, no long protests of loyalty, faithful service, humble obedience and so on, all of which are so familiar in letters from others in 16th century prisons. Tyndale asks for his needs, determines to go on with his study, longs only for the salvation of his captors and is ready for whatever God's sovereign purpose may be.

A long list of charges were brought at his trial, including.:

First, he had maintained that faith alone justifies.

For all his labor he earned nothing. Royalties and copyrights were unknown until the 18th century. If anything, for his work, he was condemned as a heretic.

Tyndale's legacy to all English-speaking people is amazing. He knew eight languages and brought to his own language a formative understanding. He was a passionate scholar of the original Greek and Hebrew. His grasp of Bible theology, particularly the central thought of Paul in his epistles, is remarkable. Above all, he expressed the original words of Scripture in an English which still, almost five hundred years later, speaks directly to the human heart.

And yet he was, and is, largely ignored. When the Authorized Version was made three years after his death, 90% was Tyndale. The King James Version was prepared in 1611 and there was no mention whatsoever of Tyndale, even though computer figures show that 83% of the King James New Testament is Tyndale's.

He was the heart of the Reformation in England because he stopped beating Rome with the mere words of men and battled with the Sword of the Spirit--the Word of God. Tyndale's translation was changing the times and thus the whole course of English history. William Tyndale was the Reformation in England.

What motivated him to keep going? It was his understanding of the authority of God's Word. He knew that the NT spoke of the promises of God, and he knew that he must tell everyone about them.

Tyndale was certainly a sinner, but I have yet to read about his sins against another that required repentance. Of what I’ve learned about him, I don’t know that we have anything obvious to avoid doing like him. He respected authority as far as he could under God. He didn’t write criticism covered in scatological references. He wasn’t connected with another man’s capital punishment. He didn’t have questionable views about the Jews. Perhaps he was too trusting of Henry Philipps, but Philipps was an exceptionally malevolent man bent to destroy Tyndale. So, sure, we should be wise, but who of us will have been so courages to need to be so shrewd because others are seeking to trap us?

Philip Hughes, a respected Catholic authority on the English Reformation, said about Tyndale:

[H]e was the greatest English light in the heretical firmament. The bishops and the king rightly regarded him as the greatest menace to the established order of things.

The sun had barely risen on the horizon on October 6, 1536 when he arrived to see a large crowd positioning for a good view, 450 days after he was imprisoned. His feet were bound to the stake, the iron chain fastened around his neck, and the rope noose was placed at his throat. Piles of brushwood and logs were heaped around him. The executioner came up behind the stake and with all his force snapped down upon the noose. Within seconds Tyndale was strangled. The attorney stepped forward, placed a lighted torch to the tinder while the nobles and the commoners sat back to watch the fire burn before moving off to begin their day's work.

Every time I read anything about Tyndale I want to read my Bible more. Thank You, Lord, for W.T.

Although his enemies destroyed his life, they were powerless to defeat Tyndale's influence. He was a man under the authority of the Book. May God make many among us people of His Book as well.

One Book of matches lit the fire of the 16th Century Reformation. Without the return to the Bible, we might still be in bondage to the dark imaginations and cold commandments of men.

Dave did a fantastic work a couple weeks ago to define the different approaches to Scripture taken by Christian groups today. How do Presbyterians relate the Bible to creeds and confessions, what role do Charismatics give to the Holy Spirit alongside the Bible, who is allowed to interpret the Bible in Roman Catholicism? All of these, and more, concern our relationship to God’s Word. But what is so significant for us to consider tonight is that English speaking believers didn’t even bother with those debates because they didn’t have a Bible to read.

I think it’s possible to identify a particular reformer who best embodied or fought for each sola. All of the reformers believed in all of the solas (even if they never put them all together as such). And of the reformers we’ll talk about, the one that history (and the other reformers themselves) looked to first was Martin Luther. He was the initial lightening bolt, and lightening rod of the Reformation, so that those who came after him were tainted as “Lutherans.” More criticism came from him and to him than the others. His recovery of justification by faith alone overturned kingdoms.

But the doctrine of sola fide comes from reading the Scripture and William Tyndale lived and died for us to have our own copies of God’s Word in English.

Sola scriptura is called the formal principle of the Reformation, meaning that it stands at the very beginning and gives form or direction to the content (or material) of Christian belief. Without this doctrine, no Reformation would have occurred.

Sola scriptura (Latin for "Scripture alone") is a statement about Scripture's authority, not merely its sufficiency. Saying that Scripture is sufficient means that we believe Scripture has all the answers we need. Saying that Scripture is authoritative means that we must follow all the answers. A restaurant menu is adequate to make a choice. It reveals the options and ingredients and cost for each dish. But a menu isn't authoritative: it doesn't say what choice to make. Scripture isn't a menu; it is a mandate.

You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for

“All flesh is like grass

And this word is the good news that was preached to you. (1 Peter 1:23–25, ESV)

The setting for William Tyndale was the early 1500’s in Europe, England in particular, where the Church kept the Bible from the people. The character of God, the nature of man, the way of salvation, the importance of the sacraments (baptism and communion), as well as the relationship between church and state, were all furiously debated. But at the root of every one of these disputes was the fundamental issue of authority. Who or what had the final say? On what basis could one assertion be proven true or better or more binding than another?

The popular church of the day (the Roman Catholic Church) recognized the authority of the Bible. But they also granted equal authority to the Church (through its popes and councils) as well as to personal, mystical revelations. Since none of the people had their own copy of God’s Word, they didn’t know better.

The Church's position was that tradition was the "unwritten word of God." Furthermore, "the church is the organ of tradition." The Church claimed that it was the "unerring teaching authority which can pass judgment on the Scriptures." You can see how this position actually grants higher authority to the Church since it is able to receive new unwritten revelation equal to Scripture and since it makes the final judgment on interpretations of written Scripture.

It is too simple to say that the debate during the Reformation was between tradition and Scripture, one or the other. The medieval church did recognize the Bible as an authority. At the time of the Reformation, both sides acknowledged the infallible authority of the Bible. The question was, "Is the Bible the only infallible source of special revelation?"

Also, it isn't that Protestants recognized no other authority than the Bible. Protestants did recognize other forms of authority such as church officers, civil and government officials, and even church creeds and confessions. But they saw these authorities as being derived from and--here's the marrow of the bone they kept picking—subordinate to the authority of God. None of these lesser authorities was ultimate because all of them were capable of error. God alone is infallible. Fallible authorities cannot bind the conscience absolutely; that right is reserved for God and His Word alone.

Sola scriptura is a statement about exclusive authority, fundamentally, and not just content. Sola scriptura means that all of the revelation is from God and must be obeyed. Without this doctrine there would have been no Reformation.

If the goal is to be the authority, you might imagine how the Church and her leaders were vehemently opposed to the Scriptures being available to everyone in their own language. The scales of power would certainly be tipped if not completely overturned. England took to burning English New Testaments and those suspected of owning them. This precedent was established dating back to John Wycliffe in the 1380's. Wycliffe and his followers (the Lollards) translated the Latin Bible into English manuscripts (handwritten copies) since the printing press had not yet been invented.

Two official policies threatened the development and availability of an English Bible. One was an act of Parliament passed in 1401 which decreed that all heretics must be burned. The second was a specific set of official church declarations made in 1408 called the Constitutions of Oxford. Under these, not only was the possession of an English Bible forbidden, but the possession of even a word of an English Bible was forbidden.

Some historians have called this the most violent repression ever in English history, lasting from 1408 to the 1530s. It overlapped the invention of movable-type printing and effectively prevented any kind of printed Bible translations in England until Tyndale.

Even though the Church spun her reasons, there is really only one explanation for her vehement opposition to the Bible being available to everyone. The Scriptures in English would allow every man, even the farmer and the housewife, to test the church, its doctrines and practice, for themselves. And that would be disastrous to the status quo.

Tyndale's translation of five (just five!) Greek words especially angered his enemies. If you are familiar with Catholicism at all you’ll quickly see the issues. In each case Tyndale’s translation was accurate to the Greek, and a direct challenge. For example: he translated the Greek word πρεσβύτερος as "elder" whereas the church had always translated it a "priest." He translated ἀγάπη as "love" instead of "charity" (a word of works). He translated ἐκκλησία as "congregation" rather than "Church." He translated ὁμολογέω as "acknowledge" rather than "confess."

And above all he translated the Greek word μετανοέω as "repent." μετανοέω is a classical and NT Greek word meaning "change in mind." It referred to an internal change that changes the direction of life. The Church always translated this word as "do penance.” To do penance typically involved paying money, so they weren't in favor of a NT translation calling for repentance instead of penance.

For example, in Acts 2:27-38, the people ask Peter "what must we do to be saved?" And he answers, μετανοήσατε "Repent." The church had always said, "Do penance."

Dr. Edward Lee, a British official for the king, wrote Henry from France in 1526:

I need not advertise to your Grace what infection and danger may ensue hereby if it is not withstood. This is the nearest way to fill your realm full with Lutherans. For all Luther's opinions are grounded upon bare words of Scripture....All our forefathers, governors of the Church of England, have with all diligence forbidden English Bibles....The integrity of the Christian faith within your realm cannot long endure if these books may come in.

The danger today involves our reluctance, if not resistance, to any authority. At best we ignore or are suspicious about absolute claims, even absolute truth claims in the Bible (and those who speak those claims). At worst we scorn/mock or oppose authority, including the authority of God Himself.

Our culture's authority questioning and authority despising has infiltrated the church. The Christian community is uneasy with the idea of authority. We dismiss (shrug off) assertions of authority as arrogance; we despise (open disrespect, intense dislike, look down on with contempt) authority; and we defy (show unwillingness towards) assertions of authority.

First we act like truth is something to be chosen by the individual. The standard is left up to the individual and how he feels or what he thinks, what he chooses to accept. This is individualism with a heavy does of subjectivism. And honest subjectivism births relativism. If there is no truth apart from the individual, then no person can be judged or measured by another person's truth. This is relativism. And relativism butchers authority. If everyone's opinion of truth is equal, then no one has the right or position to claim absolute authority, even God.

That's certainly true in our culture, but what about in our churches? Most of us affirm that the Bible is God's Word, and therefore pay lip service to its authority. But many professing Christians have abandoned the authority of the Bible all the same because because they do not even read it, they do not read it honestly, or they do not obey what they read.

Our decisions stand on clouds of emotions and whim and fancy. We are held captive by philosophy and the empty deception of psychology, according to the traditions of men and academic scholars, according to the elementary principles of business structures instead of submitting to Scripture.

And when we do read it, too often we are careless with our interpretation, failing to follow the governing clues of context. But when we miss the point of the passage, we miss God’s point.

When we are ignorant about Scripture, when we give equal welcome to counsel from worldly authorities, when we are careless with the intended meaning of Scripture, and every time we disobey Scripture, we are resisting God’s authority as revealed in His Word.

William Tyndale devoted his life to these authoritative Scriptures. The precise date and place of birth of Tyndale is uncertain, though he was likely born around 1494. Likewise, little is known about his childhood and family background.

He registered at Oxford University in 1506 when we was only twelve years old. He learned the trivium: grammar, logic, and rhetoric, as well as the quadrivium: arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy), reading the traditional books by Aristotle, Boethius, Euclid, Ovid, and Quintilian (Daniell, 29, 45). He would go on to study at Cambridge University, at some point was ordained as a priest. John Foxe described him as one who

increased as well in the knowledge of tongues and other liberal arts as especially in the knowledge of the scriptures, where-unto his mind was singularly addicted

William Tyndale day by day and without reserve committed himself to the supreme authority of the Bible and insisted that would-be church leaders submit to the judgment of the sacred text. He said:

In the kingdom of Christ, and in his Church or congregation, and in his councils, the ruler is Scripture, approved through the miracles of the Holy Spirit, and men are only servants.

Tyndale employed a simple, but powerful, method of argumentation. It was a method which became a hallmark of all the leading Protestant reformers: he insisted that all doctrinal controversies be solved by appeal to the original source materials of Christianity, the Scriptures.

Tyndale never ceased to cite the Bible as the final court of appeal in all spiritual matters. He believed that the Scriptures are sufficiently clear to settle all controversies about truth. His method of exegesis was to compare Scripture with Scripture because he said, "the Scriptures, conferred together, expound themselves."

He was especially opposed to the practice of citing proof-texts in support of disputed doctrinal positions. He emphasized the constant need of first considering the context from which a given Scripture portion is taken. Surely he would have subscribed to the current hermeneutical proverb: "A text out of context is but a pretext." Tyndale said,

One scripture will help to declare another. And the circumstances, that is to say, the places that go before and after, will give light unto the middle text. And the open and manifest scriptures will ever improve the false and wrong exposition of the darker sentences.

He also said,

Seek the word of God in all things; and without the word of God do nothing, though it appear ever so glorious. Whatsoever is done without the word of God, that count idolatry." (The Parable of the Wicked Mammon, 1528).

Believe not every spirit suddenly, but judge them by the Word of God, which is the trial of all doctrine; and lasteth forever.

Or again, in reference to the church fathers he said,

Get thee to God's word, and thereby try all doctrine, and against that receive nothing.

But it was not enough to cry “Sola Scriptura” if everyone could not read the Scripture for him or herself. So Tyndale set out to translate it into common English, simple enough for--as he regularly referred to--the ploughboy.

I vehemently dissent from those who are unwilling that the sacred Scriptures, translated into vulgar (common) tongue, should be read by private persons...I wish that the husbandman may sing parts of them at his plough, that the weaver may warble them at his shuttle, that the traveller may with their narratives beguile the weariness of the way.

Before Tyndale, the Bible the Church used for a thousand years had been in Latin. The Latin translation of the original Hebrew and Greek was made in the 4th century AD by Jerome, and was known as the "common version" or Vulgate.

In Tyndale’s translating work he likely had no other English translation beside him for comparison, not even a handwritten copy of Wycliffe's Bible; whereas, according to some sources, Luther probably had multiple other German translations to consider. It is certain that Tyndale had Luther's German NT and he could use Jerome's Latin Vulgate. Apart from these two, Tyndale may have possessed no other text apart from Erasmus' GNT (published in 1516) which he used with great ability. When he sat down to his translation, he had no one to guide him, no vast library at his disposal, no friendly scholar to check and criticize his work, no books on the principles of Bible translation from which to learn.

Yet in Tyndale's work are found phrases which have reached the hearts of English readers across the world ever since, such as: “the salt of the earth,” “the spirit is willing,” “live and move and have our being,” “fight the good fight,” “a small still voice.” He came up with “God forbid” throughout Romans (for the Greek phrase “may it never be”). Some verses familiar to us would be:

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." (Matthew 5:8)

"He is not here, but is risen." (Matthew 28:6)

“Finally, my brethren be strong in the Lord, and the power of his might.”

He was a master wordsmith, a craftsman of language.

His first English NT arrived in 1524 (Luther’s first German NT came in 1522). One original complete copy remains of the initial 3000 published in The British Library. His 1534 revision was a 6x4x1.5 inch pocket-size book with 400 pages with inch margins around the outside (Daniell, 316). There about a dozen of these left.

His work made it possible for anyone to read the NT in English, particularly the Epistle to the Romans where people could see that almost everything the Church stood for was wrong, especially her emphasis on justification by works. His NT was earthy, certainly plain enough for the farmer.

But think about the context in which Tyndale’s work took place. Remember the official consequences of having even a word of the English Bible? Death!

As Henry VIII’s divorce dragged on in 1528, Tyndale was a hunted exile living under the shadow of arrest and the stake. But knowing that undercover agents were scoring the country for him, he turned his attention to the OT. Living hand to mouth and in constant expectation of arrest, he was learning Hebrew, translating and revising the NT, commencing his translation of the first five books of the OT.

All of this was very different from the comfortable (by comparison to Tyndale at least) married quarters into which Luther had recently moved with his newly-wed wife, Catherine. It was also very different from Luther's large university library with a sympathetic faculty and the strong protecting arm of the Duke of Saxony.

Foxe tells the story about how Tyndale, having reached Deuteronomy in his OT translation, set sail for Hamburg and a printer, but was shipwrecked and lost not only his translations, but all his texts and reference books, and had to start over again!

In 1530 he finally published his first translation of the Pentateuch, Genesis through Deuteronomy. These were the first translations ever made from Hebrew to English. He was the first one to pen:

“In the beginning God created heaven and earth. The earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the water. Then God said: let there be light and there was light.”

We owe him such familiar phrases as: “am I my brother’s keeper,” “turned into a pillar of salt,” and he coined words such as “mercy seat,” “Passover,” and “scapegoat”

One of the greatest burdens upon Tyndale must have been the knowledge that he had precipitated cruel persecution by his translation and books and that many of those rotting in prison or dying in agony at the stake had willingly committed themselves to the great commission so close to his heart. One by one, Tyndale's loyal friends and men true to the Word of God were snatched away. The net was beginning to tighten around him.

At one point he talked with an emissary of the King, Stephen Vaughan:

“if it would stand with the king's most gracious pleasure to grant only a bare text of the scripture to be out forth among his people, like as is put forth among the subjects of the emperor in these parts, and of other Christian princes, be it of the translation of what person soever shall please his majesty, I shall immediately make faithful promise never to write more, not abide two days in these parts after the same: but immediately to repair unto his realm, and there most humbly submit myself at the feet of his royal majesty, offering my body to suffer what pain or torture, yea, what death his grace will, so this be obtained. And till that time, I will abide the asperity of all chances, whatsoever shall come, and endure my life in as many pains as it is able to bear and suffer.” (Daniell, 216)

In 1535 his enemies finally caught up to him. An Englishman named Henry Phillips, in the pay of some secret authority (not King Henry, since Phillips despised the King), worked his way into Tyndale's trust. After a short while he tricked Tyndale into arrest. Tyndale was imprisoned for sixteen months in a dungeon in the castle of Vilvoorde, outside Brussels. A letter from his prison-cell still exists, probably as winter approached in 1535.

He asks for a thicker coat, a hat for his head, and:

most of all I beg and beseech your clemency to be urgent with the commissary, that he will kindly permit me to have the Hebrew Bible, Hebrew grammar, and Hebrew dictionary, that I may pass the time in that study.

There is no cringing flattery, no frantic plea for mercy, no long protests of loyalty, faithful service, humble obedience and so on, all of which are so familiar in letters from others in 16th century prisons. Tyndale asks for his needs, determines to go on with his study, longs only for the salvation of his captors and is ready for whatever God's sovereign purpose may be.

A long list of charges were brought at his trial, including.:

First, he had maintained that faith alone justifies.

For all his labor he earned nothing. Royalties and copyrights were unknown until the 18th century. If anything, for his work, he was condemned as a heretic.

Tyndale's legacy to all English-speaking people is amazing. He knew eight languages and brought to his own language a formative understanding. He was a passionate scholar of the original Greek and Hebrew. His grasp of Bible theology, particularly the central thought of Paul in his epistles, is remarkable. Above all, he expressed the original words of Scripture in an English which still, almost five hundred years later, speaks directly to the human heart.

And yet he was, and is, largely ignored. When the Authorized Version was made three years after his death, 90% was Tyndale. The King James Version was prepared in 1611 and there was no mention whatsoever of Tyndale, even though computer figures show that 83% of the King James New Testament is Tyndale's.

He was the heart of the Reformation in England because he stopped beating Rome with the mere words of men and battled with the Sword of the Spirit--the Word of God. Tyndale's translation was changing the times and thus the whole course of English history. William Tyndale was the Reformation in England.

What motivated him to keep going? It was his understanding of the authority of God's Word. He knew that the NT spoke of the promises of God, and he knew that he must tell everyone about them.

Tyndale was certainly a sinner, but I have yet to read about his sins against another that required repentance. Of what I’ve learned about him, I don’t know that we have anything obvious to avoid doing like him. He respected authority as far as he could under God. He didn’t write criticism covered in scatological references. He wasn’t connected with another man’s capital punishment. He didn’t have questionable views about the Jews. Perhaps he was too trusting of Henry Philipps, but Philipps was an exceptionally malevolent man bent to destroy Tyndale. So, sure, we should be wise, but who of us will have been so courages to need to be so shrewd because others are seeking to trap us?

Philip Hughes, a respected Catholic authority on the English Reformation, said about Tyndale:

[H]e was the greatest English light in the heretical firmament. The bishops and the king rightly regarded him as the greatest menace to the established order of things.

The sun had barely risen on the horizon on October 6, 1536 when he arrived to see a large crowd positioning for a good view, 450 days after he was imprisoned. His feet were bound to the stake, the iron chain fastened around his neck, and the rope noose was placed at his throat. Piles of brushwood and logs were heaped around him. The executioner came up behind the stake and with all his force snapped down upon the noose. Within seconds Tyndale was strangled. The attorney stepped forward, placed a lighted torch to the tinder while the nobles and the commoners sat back to watch the fire burn before moving off to begin their day's work.

Every time I read anything about Tyndale I want to read my Bible more. Thank You, Lord, for W.T.

Although his enemies destroyed his life, they were powerless to defeat Tyndale's influence. He was a man under the authority of the Book. May God make many among us people of His Book as well.

Having a “special place” could be a silly thing, a spot that produces sentimental feeling and provides justification for discontentment and being a jerk to others if they keep you from getting to it whenever you want. A special place could be where you go to be godly with ungodly motivations, such as lusting for the perfect Instagram quiet time backdrop. As long as the lighting is right and the chai tea cup full, the open Bible looks great; reading it is fondant.

Some of the problem could be the word “special.” We’ve gotten to the point where too much that is special is special, precious, pretentious.

And yet, because we are creatures of time and space, there are special occasions and locations. They need not become idols, but they can be received as gifts from God and enjoyed with thankfulness to Him. Some special places are so called because that’s where we first fellowshipped with God or where we frequently meet with Him. He is omnipresent, so we can fellowship with Him wherever we are, but some spots are different from what is usual.

Such a place became special to Jacob though he could not have known it ahead of time. Unlike taking advantage of his brother or deceiving his dad to get what he wanted, Jacob didn’t cook up a scam to position himself for this encounter. The blessing that he gets in this place didn’t come from his scheming but from God’s grace.

Moses is the one who emphasizes the place: “a certain place,” stones “of the place,” “in that place” (16), “how awesome is this place” (17). Jacob named “the place” (19). This is a special place, one that Jacob will return to, one that he never forgot.

There are two things that happen here. We could outline it by what happened at night (verses 10-17) and what happened in the morning (verses 18-22), but I prefer to consider God’s Revelation (verses 10-15) and Jacob’s Response (verses 16-22).

This is a traveler’s story, or more specifically, a fugitive’s story, since Jacob is running for his life. He stole his brother’s blessing and Esau comforted himself by rehearsing plans to kill Jacob. Rebekah heard it and, with her own ultimatum about who Jacob needed to marry, persuaded Isaac to send Jacob away with his blessing. It seems that’s all he sent Jacob with; no servants or supplies are mentioned.

Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. This homebody (Genesis 25:27) left home and family in Beersheba to go toward where Rebekah’s family lived. The distance was between 500 and 600 miles, so it would have taken Jacob more than a month to get there. We’re only told about one night for the whole journey.

And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. This wasn’t a planned stop, he stopped because he didn’t have enough daylight to see where he was going. And there weren’t any accommodations. Taking one of the stones of that place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. He was under the stars, not in a house or even a tent, apparently not near a city where he could have asked to spend the night more comfortably. As for the stone, it seems that he used it as a sort of pillow. Maybe he was trying to keep his spine straight.

This may be the most famous dream in the Bible, at least to have an ’70’s rock band sing about (thanks, Led Zeppelin). This is Jacob’s ladder, the stairway to heaven.

And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the LORD stood above it (Genesis 28:12–13a)

Jacob has a vision of a ladder as the ESV translates (as well as the KJV and NASB), but notes it could be a “flight of steps” or a staircase. The Hebrew word is only used here in the entire Old Testament, and steps of some kind seem more appropriate if the angels are ascending and descending on it at the same time. That seems harder to do on rungs of a ladder as we think of.

We might also wonder, why are they coming and going? And maybe even more than that, why do they need stairs? There isn’t any other explanation that they need apparatus to go back and forth.

As for ascending and descending, “perhaps the ascending angels are those responsible for Jacob’s homeland and descending ones are those responsible for the foreign land to which he is going. In other words, this vision of the angels is an assurance of God’s protection of Jacob even though he is leaving home” (Wehnam). But if angels are responsible for particular territories, why does it matter where Jacob is?

As for the stairway, this is why the place is so special. It is the place where God meets Jacob. Behold, the LORD stood above it, or perhaps more likely, the LORD stood “by” it or even “beside him,” on earth with Jacob.

More important than the stairway and the vision of angels is the word of the Lord.

“I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (Genesis 28:13–15)

What might Jacob have expected God to say at this point? Was Jacob surprised not to be rebuked? That the LORD does not reprove Jacob does not mean the LORD approved of Jacob’s lies. It means that there is more than one way to humble a sinner.

Yahweh’s self-identification is personal, and disconcerting. He is the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. With your father after Abraham, God connects Jacob back to the original covenanter. With the God of Isaac, God reassures Jacob that his father’s blessing was legit. But, would God now judge Jacob for how he deceived the one chosen by God?

There is no confrontation, even if Jacob still fears. From the LORD there is confirmation. As Jacob flees for his life, only stopping because it was too dark to continue, God said the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Both covenantal pieces are included: land and offspring. Jacob heard it from Isaac (Genesis 28:3-4). Now he hears it directly from the God of Isaac. The offspring will be like the dust of the earth. Their boundaries will extend in every direction and then the covenant kicker, in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. His own family will be prosperous, but their family is given to be a “fountain” (Calvin) for the life of the world.

How would Jacob know this? How could he put together leaving the land that the LORD was promising him? Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you. Note Yahweh’s initiative: “I am with you,” “I will keep you,” “I will bring you back,” “I will not leave you,” “I have done,” “I promised.” Jacob was not alone. He would not go into exile to fend for himself. He did have to go, God wasn’t eliminating the journey, a journey we find out takes twenty-plus years, including sleepless and cold nights, family betrayals and bitterness. But God will give him a family, God will guard him, and God will bring him back.

He sought none of this. He didn’t have any idea that this is where God would be found. The LORD sought Jacob, and by grace the LORD wouldn’t leave him.

Jacob does not get wrapped up in what was promised to him but rather Who made the promises.

Still in the middle of the night, Jacob awoke from his sleep. He is both exhilarated and fearful. He said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it!” Jacob wasn’t denying the doctrine of God’s omnipresence, he was recognizing that the revelation came in an unexpected, out of the way place.

The dream unsettled him. And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” When the LORD reveals Himself to men, they are usually overwhelmed. Awesome could be translated “dreadful” (KJV) or “fearful” (LXX) or “intimidating”; it was a grave place. Whatever men think they know about God, they are undone in His presence.

Jacob calls the place Bethel which means “house of God.” Here is God’s dwelling place. The gate of heaven is interesting since the tower of Babel was built to get to heaven. Men can’t reach God, but He does come down to them.

Early in the morning Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. Later, the Israelites were prohibited from putting up pillars such as this, and they were also required to tear down the Canaanite pillars when they entered the land.

Jacob is not worshipping the pillar as an idol, he is consecrating it, anointing it withoil as a future memorial for himself and for others that this is a special place.

He called the name of that place Bethel, the “house of God.” Later Israelites are caught worshipping false gods in Bethel (for example, Jeroboam in 1 Kings 12-13). The name of the city was Luz at the first, but this was to locate the place for future readers. When Jacob was there, there was no city.

Vows are promises to God usually made during a crisis. “Vows are not contracts or limited agreements, but yieldings that reorient life” (Brueggemann quoted by Waltke). If God helps, then the vower will give thanks back in a particular way. Jacob’s vow could be read in a way where he’s basing whether or not to serve God on whether or not God fulfills His promises.

It’s better to understand the vow as one of faith. Jacob had already responded in praise, he wasn’t pulling back from it now. Jacob recognized that God’s promise will mark him as God’s man. He believes, by repeating what the LORD said, that God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go and will provide and make it so that I come again to my father’s house in peace. If all that happens, and he trusts that it will, then the covenant between them will be obvious and Jacob will worship God in that exact place and offer a tithe of his possessions. Jacob does just that in Genesis 35:1-15.

In addition to seeing God’s eternal story of redemption step forward on the timeline, we see that God moves forward by grace. God chose Jacob before he was born, before he (or Esau) had done anything good or bad. In fact, once out of the womb, we know more about the bad, questionable behavior of Jacob than anything good he did. Even Esau tried something to appease his dad when he realized that he was out of favor.

Jacob is on the run, with a word from his father, but nothing else to show for it. He was out of plans, out of schemes and away from everything he’d known in his life for 77 years. That is the place where God met him. That is the kind of place that grace finds us.

Jacob isn’t finished maturing, but his trajectory isn’t the same after this place. We also may still have difficult decades ahead, maybe even as a result of our own sin, but God goes with His people in every place.

Augustine once asked, “Who ought to be, or who are more friendly than those who live in the same family?” He answered that question with another question, “Yet who can rely even on this friendship, seeing that secret treachery has often broken it up, and produced enmity as bitter as the amity (friendliness) was sweet?” With friends like this, who needs holiday get-togethers?

Family can be the worst. We expect that family members will care for one another instead of cheat or criticize one another. Sometimes it seems as if things would be better if a certain family member would just leave, and they won’t even do that. It’s like having your feet stuck in relational concrete while trying to dodge cars. You know you’re going to get hit, the best you can hope for is that the collision won’t be head on.

The relational dynamics in Isaac’s house were impaired, and it started with the head of the house. Isaac preferred one son over another. He preferred that son’s cooking over his wife’s. When it seemed to Isaac that he was nearing his time to die, he called his favorite son to make some barbecue for him and then he would give a blessing back.

Isaac schemes to deceive Jacob, and it seems mostly driven by his desire for “delicious food, such as I love.” Both of his boys, Esau and Jacob, were in the inheritance line. By law the firstborn deserved more, but by law every legitimate son deserved some. By law Jacob now owned the birthright of the firstborn since Esau sold it to him. Against the law and the prophecy (see Genesis 25:23) Isaac conspires to cheat Jacob out of anything and Esau agrees.

Rebekah overheard and came up with her own idea to cheat the cheaters. She found her favorite son and instructed Jacob how he could deceive his dad and get the blessing he “deserved.”

Did he “deserve” it? No, but it was promised to him (even “though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue” Romans 9:11). Was Rebekah acting out of trust in God’s word to her about the older serving the younger? Perhaps in one way, but not all the way. Rebekah becomes an example in a long line of wives who try to “help” their husbands do the right thing by doing the wrong thing. It isn’t respectful to deceive your husband even with a verse to prove what you want.

Jacob follows his mom’s lead, kills a couple kids, that is, goats. She made the “tasty morsel” and repurposed the skin onto her son for sake of making him more hairy. Then Jacob took the food to Isaac. Isaac tested him in a number of senses, then pronounced the blessing: “Let peoples serve you, / and nations bow down to you. / Be lord over your brothers… / Cursed be everyone who curses you.” Jacob got what he lied for and left.

There are three more parts to the episode, Esau’s Discovery (27:30-40), Jacob’s Escape (27:41-28:5), and Esau’s Attempt (28:6-9).

Esau is not too late, he’s just a second too late. As soon as Jacob Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, when Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of his father, Esau his brother came in from his hunting. I imagine the hanging-bead door was still swinging when Esau arrived.

Esau killed his game and it seems that it didn’t take very long. He prepared delicious food and announced, ”Let my father arise and eat of his son’s game, that he may bless me.” How high must Esau have been feeling? What goes up, must get deflated by a brother.

If this were being performed on stage, when Isaac answered, the crowd gasps. ”Who are you?” Esau said it was him. What other son with food was his dad expecting? Then Isaac trembled violently and said, in our way of expression, “Oh no! Someone was already here and I blessed him and I can’t take it back! What’s done is done.”

Esau responded loudly in return. He cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry and said to his father, “Bless me, even me also, O my father!” As if he said, “This can’t be! You’ve got to have something for me!”

But there was nothing, at least nothing positive (see verses 39-40 upcoming). Isaac realized what happened: Jacob deceived him. Esau jumps on the blame-train. ”Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has cheated me these two times. He took away my birthright and behold, now he has taken away my blessing.” One of these complaints is legit, but Esau sold his birthright in full awareness. He was hungry, but no one was twisting his arm. Esau won’t take any blame; his brother is his problem.

Esau again asks for a blessing, maybe something from the reserve tank only to be used in special situations. But his dad explained that he gave it all to Jacob. Isaac rehearsed the dominion and abundance given away in verse 37. ”What then can I do for you, my son? Esau still doesn’t give up, and whines again, ”Bless me, even me also, O my father!” And Esau lifted up his voice and wept. This is desperate, not manly, all selfish.

Isaac feels bad and gives a blessing, but it is more of an anti-blessing. Esau will not have prosperity or power like his brother.

Then Isaac his father answered and said to him:

Esau will be away from the dew and fatness and plenty. By your sword you shall live means that he will always be at odds, always on guard or on attack. The battles between Israel and Edom are many as described later in the Old Testament. Esau will not have peoples or nations bow down to him, but he will serve his brother until some point he gets tired of it and breaks his yoke from the neck. This is prophetic but not flattering. Esau may have wished his father had kept his mouth shut after all.

Of course Esau was mad. Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.” Esau is not only like Cain, he may be worse than Cain, premeditating what and when. If he can’t have the blessing, neither will his brother.

Why wait? Is there some possibility that Isaac will change his mind after all? Why not kill the brother and take the blessing? For some reason, like every pause of the bad guy before shooting the good guy, Esau waits.

Somehow word got out. He must have told someone else, so the words of Esau her older son were told to Rebekah. And like before, she went immediately to Jacob, not her husband, and told him what she thought he should do. She knew that Esau wanted revenge, ”he comforts himself about you by planning to kill you.” But like before, she has a plan for Jacob, this time to manipulate Isaac with a half-truth rather than deceive him with a full-lie.

Rebekah wanted Jacob to go to the land of her brother, not for a marriage but for a refuge, ”until your brother’s fury turns away—until your brother’s anger turns away from you, and he forgets what you have done to him.” She doesn’t mention that the reason Esau wanted to kill Jacob was her idea, of course. It’s the old, “time heals all wounds.” She doesn’t want to lose both sons in one day, one murdered and the other executed for murdering. But she miscalculated Esau’s commitment level. She thought things would blow over sooner than later, so she would send and bring you from there. But that never happened. She did lose Jacob that day.

Rebekah didn’t tell Isaac about Esau’s plan to kill Jacob, he may not have believed her anyway since he favored Esau. She doesn’t invent a reason, but she certainly exaggerates her reasoning. ”I loathe my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women like these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me?” Esau’s wives made life bitter for the both of them (Genesis 26:35). She plays off of, and plays up, the problem in order to make it seem like it’s Isaac’s idea to send Jacob away. She steers him with a sensitive and subtle threat.

Chapter 28 continues the scene. Rebekah foreshadows her future misery, and implied that she would be a relational terrorist, and Isaac can’t have that. So he calls Jacob, actually knowing who it is this time, and affirms things from the Abrahamic covenant in a much more explicit way than in 27:27-29. Unaware that Esau intended to kill Jacob, Isaac commissions Jacob to go and get a family wife, to the house of Bethuel, your mother’s father, and take as your wife from there one of the daughters of Laban your mother’s brother.”

God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples. May he give the blessing of Abraham to you and to your offspring with you, that you may take possession of the land of your sojournings that God gave to Abraham!” (Genesis 28:3–4)

God Almighty is El Shaddai. Here is offspring and land, the two key elements of Yahweh’s commitment to Abraham, a commitment reaffirmed to Isaac and now passed on to Jacob. Isaac knows who he’s blessing this time.

It was also of the greatest importance that now, at length, Jacob should be blessed by his father, knowingly and willingly; lest at a future time a doubt, arising from the recollection of his father’s mistake and of his own fraud, might steal over his mind. (Calvin)

He sent Jacob away thinking that he would be back.

The section started in 26:34-35 with Esau’s wives. It’s far too late now, but Esau still holds onto hope that he can get something. He saw that (his dad) had blessed Jacob and sent him away…and directed him, “You shall not take a wife from the Canaanite women.” It seems that the light bulb over Esau’s head didn’t turn on until right now. Maybe there was still some blessing left if he took a wife from family.

But Esau couldn’t even do that right. Esau went to Ishmael and took as his wife, besides the wives he had, Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebaioth. “Oh, I see! These wives are bad, let me add one that will please you!” Except Ishmael and his line were out. They were family, but not part of the covenant with the LORD. Esau is late and close, but not enough. One commentator “describes Esau as the family member always beside the point” (quoted in Waltke).

At the end of this scene Isaac is more alone. The son he wanted to bless get’s nothing; it was Isaac’s fault. What was his relationship with Rebekah like going forward? Even the second helping of “delicious food” wasn’t a consolation.

Esau is more angry, more desperate, and more troubled. How did his Canaanite wives respond to the new addition? If Esau had desired true blessing, he would have grieved over his sin, submitted himself to his brother, and sought more than temporal blessing. Esau is a case study of bad repentance, knowing only the fruit of self-sorrow.

Rebekah lost the only son she really cared for, not to death, but to exile; she never saw him again. She herself isn’t mentioned again in Genesis until her burial. Rebekah models the strong temptation and an often justified pursuit to seek God’s blessing some other way than obedience. “I know he said don’t do this, but I know He wants me to be happy.”

And Jacob has the blessing, to take with him on the run. He has to escape from his brother. What did he think was going to happen?

No one got everything they wanted. Though there were some good intentions, those intentions were mixed. Faith and flesh do not bring about the righteousness of God, even if we know that the sovereign will of God is unfolding.

It is ironic that in Psalm 24:3-6, "the God of Jacob” only receives those who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully. Our hands are clean and our hearts are pure only by grace, only those who seek Him first shall stand in His holy place. May we be those who desire the blessing of desiring His blessings the right way.

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

7th 2nd Timothy 3 16 through 17 All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching for reproof for correction and for training and righteousness that the man of God may be competent equipped for every good work Pretty much says it all right so tonight. I'm going to give you a history of of Sola Scriptura, and I'm going to tell you things maybe you didn't know and maybe some things you did know, but to fit it together over the past 2,000 years, how we've gotten to where we are now, and why it's even more important today than maybe even was back then to keep this flame alive. So the five Solas are Sola Gracia, Sola Fide, Sola Christos, Sola dea Gloria, and Sola Scriptura. The Solas were not systematically articulated together until the 20th century. They never were totally put together in one book or one manuscript until the 20th century. But Sola Gratia and and sola fide were used in conjunction by the reformers for themselves. For example, in 1554, Melanchthon wrote, sola gratia justificamus at sola fide justificamur. Only by grace

do we justify and only by faith are we justified. All of the solas show up in various writings by the Protestant reformers, but they are not catalogued together by any.

In 1916, a Lutheran scholar, Theodore Engler, published an article titled, The Three Principles of the Reformation, Sola Scriptura, Sola Gratia, and Sola Fide, Only Scripture, Only grace only faith. In 1934, theologian Emil Bruner, a Protestant theologian, substituted solo de glorium for sola scriptura. Substituted. Why would he do that? Hmm. In 1958, historian Jeffrey Elton summarized the work of John Calvin, wrote that Calvin had joined together the great watchwords. Elton listed sola fide with sola gratia as one term, followed by sola scriptura and sola deo gloria. Later in commenting on Karl Barth's theological system, Bruner added sola Christus to the litany of solas while leaving out sola scriptura. Interesting in that how they left out as they progressed through the 20th century. The first time the additional two solas are mentioned is is in Catholic theologian John Baptiste in 1965.

The Church and the World is the first book where all five solas were put together by a Catholic theologian. Why did he do that? To attack what? Sola. Sola scriptura. Because with that, you tear apart the Catholic system. So, Sola Scriptura, by scripture alone, Sola Scriptura, or scripture alone, literally, by scripture alone, asserts that scripture must be governed over church traditions and interpretations which are themselves held to be the subject to scripture. And all church traditions, creeds, and teachings must be in unity with the teaching of scripture as divinely inspired word of God. Sola Scriptura asserts that the Bible can and is to be interpreted through itself with one area of scripture being useful for the interpreting of others.

That scripture can interpret itself as a means by which to show the unity of scripture as a whole, as all doctrines are formed via scriptural understandings.

All doctrines must be found to align with scripture and as such are then subject to Scripture before the believer can begin to apply them. This particular Sola is sometimes called the formal principle of the Reformation. Since it is the source and norm of the material cause or principle, the gospel of Jesus Christ that has received Sola Fide through faith alone, Sola Gratia by God's favor, grace alone, the adjective sola and the noun scriptura are in the ablative case rather than the nominative case to indicate that the Bible does not stand alone apart from God, but rather that is the instrument of God by which he reveals himself for salvation through faith in Christ, solas Christus or solo Christo. Now that's like, amen we believe that. At the end of this I'm going to read our statement on what we believe about Scripture after we go through all of this. Now contrasting with Sola Scriptura we're going to see throughout the ages through the last 2,000 years how different denominations and

different sects have looked at this and perverted it. We ascribed to what I just read, now I'm going to read and tell you throughout history how it's faded away from that and then been brought back in some cases. Contrast with Sola Scriptura. Prima Scriptura is sometimes contrasted to Sola Scriptura, which literally translates by scripture alone. The former doctrine is understood by many Protestants, particularly evangelicals, is is that the scriptures are the sole infallible rule of faith and practice, but that the scriptures meaning can be mediated through many kinds of secondary authority, such as ordinary teaching offices of the church, antiquity, the councils of the Christian church, reason and experience.

Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. As soon as you start to introduce those things, you're starting to erode slightly What does the Bible say? Right? So that's a, your radar should go off when you hear those kind of things. However, Sola Scriptura rejects any original infallible authority other than the Bible. Amen. And this view, all secondary authority is derived from the authority of the scriptures and is therefore subject to reform when compared to the teaching of the Bible. Church councils, preachers, Bible commentators, private revelation, or even a message, a message allegedly from an angel or an apostle, are not an original authority alongside the Bible in the Sola Scriptura approach.

It's really important to remember, no apostle, no this, they passed it down, we've always done it this way, all that stuff goes out the window. What does the Bible say? And why are you doing this? If you can't get that answer here, like Strock says, if we don't answer you correctly or show you how we've arrived at what we're doing, turn around and walk out the door. Catholicism, the dogmatic constitution on divine revelation, the second Vatican Council, 1965, is clear on the total equality of scripture with sacred tradition when it says that both sacred tradition and sacred scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence, because together they form the one sacred deposit of the Word of God committed to the Church."

So in one sense, scripture has no primacy over tradition, but an ancient tradition holds that the Word of God, though equally authoritative in whichever form it comes, comes primarily in the form of sacred scripture, and thus we should seek for sacred doctrine primarily in the scriptures. Notice the fudge factor, primarily. All those words. One of the key things that I always look for when churches give a statement of faith, the Bible is our rule for faith and practice. That means what we do in the church, we kind of look to the Bible, but when we go outside the church, we don't have to worry about what the Bible says about how the world was created or any of that stuff.

We don't apply it there, just for faith and practice. That is a substandard approach to the scripture. Then the Catholics use this. As Thomas Aquinas said, sacred doctrine properly uses the authority of the canonical scriptures as an incontrovertible proof, and that the authority of the doctors of the church as one that may properly be used, yet merely as probable, for our faith Faith rests upon the revelation made to the apostles and the prophets who wrote the canonical books and not on the revelations, if any such there are made to other doctors. Pretty good. He realized there was a problem. This is in the 1500s. He's, he's saying to him, Hey, be careful here.

But then the council at Trent comes along and what was the council of Trent? That was Rome, the Roman Catholic Church, answered to the Reformation. Took them a hundred years to get it together, approximately a hundred years, but at the Council of Trent in 1563, the Roman Catholic Church embraced formally the two-source theory of special revelation that she still holds today. Both holy writ and holy tradition are considered infallible sources of divine revelation. The teaching office of the Church, the Magisterium, is charged with interpreting these two infallible sources for the faithful. Sometimes, like when the Pope speaks from the chair of Peter or ex-cathedra, the Church interprets these two infallible sources infallibly and adds to the infallible tradition.

Now, anybody that reads the history of the Catholic Church is going to go, whoa, is that a real snake pit? Because they go along for a hundred years doing this, then a pope decides to do that, then they change their mind over here. They got two popes, they got three popes, they got popes in France, they got popes in Italy. It's craziness. And yet they still stand that the great teachers, the magisterium, are able to interpret these things and bring the truth to the people. Straight from the pit. Eastern Orthodoxy. Eastern Orthodoxy, this is the split from the Catholic Church in 1,000 AD. Eastern Orthodoxy also teaches Prima Scriptura.

An analogy is made where the entirety of church life is compared to a jeweled necklace, of which the most precious gem is the large diamond in the center, representing the scripture.

The other gems, representing the other parts of the holy tradition, while none of the other jewels are equal to the diamond, they are nonetheless contribute to its beauty. The diamond looks best as a part of the whole necklace. Example. When viewed with the context of church tradition, Sola Scriptura, which analogous to ripping the diamond out of the necklace because one prefers it, it prefers to view it on its own only detracts from the Diamond's beauty and value. Very poetic, nicely stated, totally wrong. Anglicanism, the Church of England, which is basically the Catholic Church because Henry VIII could not get a divorce, right? He couldn't get a divorce so he declares the Church of England. That's a bad way to start a Church. Article 6, of the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for salvation, Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation, so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or

necessary to salvation. 39 articles of religion 1571. That's a pretty good statement right there that it says the gospel is contained in the scriptures and we can't mess with that. Now I'm going to read a paragraph from a modern day Anglican that wrote just in September of this year. On the other side of the divide, now he's speaking as an Anglican, on the other side of the divide stabbed the radical reformers. These took sola scriptura to the extremes. Not only does the Bible stand as the norm by which all other norms must be normed, but it stands as a definitive precedent and model for all institutions, secular and religious. In other words, for many of the radical reformers, nothing could be permitted or established in church or state unless a biblical model or precedent could be found. Many the Puritans followed this extreme form of sola scriptura. That's supposed to be a knock on us. I say to to that, I agree in some ways that we cannot force all the world to perform like Christians, but we need to form our base in what the Bible says. Okay? And

he's saying that the radical people want to create a theocracy, in other words Jesus reigns, which won't happen, we believe, until the millennium. But even then, when Jesus reigns on the earth for a thousand years, if our belief is correct. At the end, those in mortal bodies will still rebel against him after all of that time, which is like mind boggling. Okay. So Wesleyan Methodism is another version of how to interpret scripture. Another version of the prima scriptura approach may be in the Wesleyan quadrilateral for the Methodist, which maintains that scripture is to be the primary authority for the church, nonetheless, it is best interpreted through the lens of reason, personal experience, and church tradition.

Although the Bible remains the crucial and normative authority for Christians, according to the United Methodist Church, which adheres to this notion." So then in quotes, this is their statement, Scripture is considered the primary source and the standard for Christian doctrine. is experienced and the witness of development and growth of the faith through the past centuries and in many nations and cultures. Experience is the individual's understanding and appropriating of the faith in light of his or her own life. Through reason, the individual Christian brings to bear on the Christian faith, discerning and cogent thought.

These four elements taken together bring the individual Christian to a mature and fulfilling understanding of the Christian faith and requires response of worship and service. Talk about taking away right and wrong, right? Well, there are all those things in the middle and everybody can kind of believe what they want and we just can go along. Not a good idea. Look at what Methodism has brought to its individuals. Homosexual pastors, all kinds of crazy stuff. Okay? Presbyterian approach. This is Michael J. Horton, or Michael Horton, who's a spokesman for the Presbyterian side, a scholar, and written many books. Many critics of the Reformation have attempted to portray it as an invitation to individualism.

As people discover for themselves from the Bible what they will and will not believe, never mind the church. Away with the creeds and the church's teaching office. We have the Bible and that's enough. But this was not the reformers doctrine of sola scriptura, only scripture. Luther said of individualistic approaches to the Bible, that would mean that each man would go to hell in his own way. What do you think about that? I mean, he's saying that I can't give a Bible to somebody and they can't read it and they can't come to the Lord without the teaching magisterium or the teaching office. That's not the proper way, but I know I came to the Lord by hearing the gospel from another guy. He gave me a Bible. He forced me to read 1 John. I read it. It brought me to my knees when I got to 1 John 2.4. The power of the scripture is the thing that brought me to my knees. Now was I a perfectly informed Christian?

No. I was full of heresy. That was a rank heretic that got saved, you know, And then, as I learned, I started revolving around that. But it really is an interesting thing that he wants to kind of separate and now elevate the teaching office. On one side, the Reformers faced the Roman Church, which believed its teaching authority to be final and absolute. The Roman Catholics said that tradition can be a form of infallible revelation even in the contemporary Church. One needs an infallible Bible and an infallible interpreter of that sacred book. On the other side were the Anabaptist radicals. Uh-oh, those Anabaptists.

They read in the Bible, you have to believe and be baptized. Those are bad people. Who believe that they, not only did they not need the teaching office of the church, they really didn't seem to need the Bible either, since the Holy Spirit spoke to them, or at least to their leaders directly. Okay, he's taken a shot at some of the crazies in the Anabaptist movement and all our movements and all the things have crazy people in them, but the issue of the Anabaptists, how they got their name, is they negated infant baptism because they read in the Bible, believe and be baptized. All right? Now were there crazy people in that?

Yes. Were there crazy people in all these things? Yes. So, you know, there are problems in that. Uh, let me see here. Instead of one Pope, anabaptism produces numerous infallible messengers who heard the voice of God. This is the same problem that happens to any denomination that thinks they're getting a word from God. Pentecostals in the radical form can stand up. And today the Lord told me, Oh, how did he tell you? Did he call you on the phone or, you know, how did that happen? And so directly the run Pope so infallible message against both positions the Reformation insisted that the Bible was a sole final authority in determining doctrine in life. In interpreting it the whole church must be included including the laity they must be guided by the teachers of the church those teachers though not infallible should have considerable interpretive authority. The The creeds were binding and the newly reformed Protestant communions quickly drafted confessions of faith that received the assent of the whole church, not merely teachers.

Now in that section of that paragraph, we agree. That's what we did here. We got together. We had meetings with the men for over a year about deacons, elders, how our church should be governed, what the Bible says about it, all of that.

hours were spent with different people that wanted to meet with us and talk about that. I don't think it's wrong that you have a local church that goes through this process all the time. Now the Presbyterians say that's wrong because we have no outside governing authority. It's hard to find that outside governing authority in the Bible. They find it in church tradition and church history, okay? Keith Matheson, who is a scholar of the Presbyterian Movement, works in R.C. Sproul's ministry, says this, Among evangelicals there is a common misunderstanding of solo scriptura that views the Bible not only as the sole final authority but as the sole authority altogether. In other words, the church, the ecumenical creeds, and the confessions of faith are largely dismissed even as secondary authorities. It is the no creed but Christ or no creed but the Bible attitude that is so prevalent in the evangelical church today. Of course those who assert such slogans fail to realize that a statement as no such creed but Christ is

itself a creed, a statement that one believes. Amen. Is that a problem? And And they go after you because of that. Now, does that mean that we can't look at those creeds? We actually teach the Westminster Confession in our school. But, boop, boop, boop, there are problems when you get to certain paragraphs in there and you go, yeah, we're buying into all of this, we buy into all of that, but over here, we got a problem here. You know, we don't want to go there. But on the whole, is it good 80, 90 percent? Yeah. Is the Belgian Baptist Confession a good one? Yeah. But that's why our statement of faith goes on for as long as it does.

It tries to address those things and still keep it in what we believe. And as you look at the footnotes, they're all biblical sources. But when you start to look at church history and then read our statement, we're trying to take care of those places where we feel those different creeds and confessions go off a little bit. Now, were all of them necessary to get us where we are? Yeah, like Jonathan said this morning, when the church first started, I mean, they were talking about, is Christ all human? Is he all God? All of those basic things. So they're arguing over all that stuff. They come up with a statement to get you into the church.

If you believe this, then you can get in. And they're trying to do it. But what is their main authority always in that? It's not church councils, it's not the creed. The creed is trying to sum up what the word of God saying to give it a shortened form to say this is what we believe. So it's not the creed we believe in, it's the original source document that we're trying to get back to. Just as in our school we try to go back to the original source material. Don't talk about the Constitution and stuff if you haven't read the Federalist Papers. So anyway that's the way we're going. George Grant I think really put it up. We've been listening to a series of biographies that was done at a history conference that they had over in Moscow.

And his subject was Martin Booser, who he says is the party animal of the Reformation. He's a really interesting guy to listen to his biography and everything. He had contact with all these people, and he was a really happy guy that came in to try to solve problems and get people together to talk about it, love God and everything. So Booser, looking for the biblical pattern for the church order and particularly church government, looking first and for the most to the early church, the restoration of the original form of the church. Apostolic warrant is our order. The restoration of the tradition is what he was trying to get back to.

But the papus gave new meaning to that. They said they were doing, you know, this and then the tradition of the church dictating what is true is what you should follow. This is where the reformers said, no, no, no, we want to go back to what the original church did. But to know what the original church did, you go back to the church fathers of what they were doing right away after the Bible was written. But what's the original source for the church fathers? And I'm not going to have time tonight to go through. I've got 3,500 words here and I only have time for 2500. But the, the, I've got a list of church fathers that all they said right from the get-go was what does scripture say on the issue? Okay. Now we're going to get into maybe getting in and poking in some of our kitchens here. The Southern Baptists.

Southern Baptists in recent years have been accused of practicing bibliography, the paper Pope. This is our Pope. Oh my goodness, what a bad charge that is. The purging of the ranks that removed any professors who believed that the historical or archaeological findings might legitimately raise questions about a passage during the late 1990s. Hundreds of Southern Baptist seminarians and denominational officials were systematically removed from office for either claiming that cultural and archaeological findings could give a a better understanding of the context of the scriptures. That is classic Wikipedia misunderstanding of went on in the Southern Baptist Convention and in the Southern Seminary.

They're saying that these professors had all these discoveries. We need to study those and put them in complex with what the Bible is saying. No, they weren't. They were looking for things to disprove what the Bible is saying, those professors. They were arguing against inerrancy. Inerrancy is the big question. Luckily, and fortunately, providentially, not luckily, Al Mohler was put in charge of Southern Seminary in the mid-90s. He came in and cleaned house. He got rid of those people that didn't realize, or didn't believe that the Bible was inerrant and the sole source. he cleaned house and brought Southern Seminary back to its place where it should be.

They also took a shot at Mueller in this same article. Al Mueller recently stated that any belief system, any world view, whether it is Zen Buddhism or Hinduism or dialectic materialism for that matter, Marxism, that keeps a person captive and keeps them from coming to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, yes, is a demonstration of satanic power, whereas Jonathan would have said this morning, demonic power. Good old Al. He talks a lot sometimes and he gets, he's really a smart guy and can put a lot of words to stuff, but every once in a while he hits the nail right on the head and bangs it home. He is in a long line of the 20th century that's happened in America.

After the liberal Germans in the late 18th century in Europe started making those seminaries go south, they moved across the water to America. And the battle came to a head in the 1970s with Harold Linzel's book, Battle for the Bible. He wrote the book after attending Fuller and having battles over inerrancy that happened in the 50s and all of that. And it really rumbled through America. And in his book, Battle for the Bible, he goes through the Missouri synod seminary and how they had gone south and put the Bible was errant, and then they turned it around. Unlike most stories out there, they turned their seminary around and went back to that they believed in inerrancy. One of the few times, it really happened in a good way. The other story in the book is about North Park Theological Seminary, which which is the seminary for the Evangelical Covenant Church of America, which is one of the places that Gail and I first went after we got saved.

And we got right in the middle of this discussion because the seminary turned more conservative, but the church we were at had people that had graduated that were in the wavy part. And here I was saved at that point a year and a half, and I got right in the middle of arguing with those people. And it was fascinating to see that fight and how it divided that church in a good way. And those guys eventually, after a 10-year period, did not win out. And that church veered back to the right course and actually put in church discipline and things which the Evangelical Covenant Church doesn't do mainly across America. During this time in the 70s, 80s is the time when Talbot, Dallas, and Grace Seminary, Grace is the Brethren Seminary, Dallas is the Presbyterian Seminary in Dallas, Texas, and then Talbot is Biola Seminary, which was started by very conservative people, had really started to veer off the thing.

They changed their statement for professors to sign and put out inerrancy statements. During that time, there were certain professors that said, that's enough, we're not signing it, we're out of here. At that time at Grace Community Church, they had an extension of Talbot Seminary that Irv Bousnitz was teaching. He was a professor from Talbot that came out to teach in the San Fernando Valley. He was like 60 miles away from Biola. These professors came out to Grace Community Church because it's a big campus and had the buildings to do it and said, you have to create a seminary. We have no place to go. We've resigned from Talbot and we have no place to go.

And John MacArthur said, no way. I'm not ready to start a seminary. I got a church here. What are you talking about? And they said, we got these buildings. They're not being used during the week. Yada, yada, yada. Then all of a sudden people started coming from Dallas and Dallas had gone south. They didn't deny inerrancy, but what they did was they let counseling come in in an unbiblical way. The Minnerith-Meyer Clinic and stuff started really overriding biblical principles, and those professors started resigning, and they started coming. The same thing in counseling happened at Grace Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana, and those people started coming out.

So there was like 10 people from each of these locations that came and said, please start a seminary. And so MacArthur went, well, I guess God's doing this. I don't know what to do. So they started it. They didn't have the money to do it or anything. And out of the blue, a man shows up and said, I have a million dollars that I want to give you each year. Can you use it? And they used it. And that's how the master seminary got started. And it's interesting that over that issue, those good men that had been there for a long time, I mean, one of the guys that came over was Robert L. Thomas, who was John MacArthur's first year grade teacher.

Okay, this goes way back, these guys. And so that's how those seminaries got started over this issue, scripture alone, right? Is it an errand or isn't it? Then we have the Pentecostal view. While most Pentecostals and Charismatics believe the Bible to be the ultimate authority, it would not say that any new revelation can ever contradict the Bible. They do believe that God continues to speak to people today on extra-biblical topics, as well as to interpret and apply the text of the Bible. One of my favorite stories is when I was going to a great seminary west in the early In Long Beach, California, they tried to start a division of that.

We had two Filipino guys that were in class, and we were given an out-of-class assignment to write a paper on charismatic principles. They went to one of the biggest charismatic congregations in Long Beach, and during the time when people are talking in tongues altogether and everything, they stood up and ordered McDonald's in Tagalog, which is the Filipino language. And the lady who was deemed to be the one that was the filter to see if they were giving heresy or not stood up and went, thus saith the Lord and spouted some verse out of Isaiah, as these guys were ordering McDonald's, right, you know, one a hamburger, one french fries, in Tagalog. That was their paper, you know, to demonstrate how Wrong, that kind of thing he does.

So now we have the Quakers. The Quakers concept of the inner light or the charismatic views of the Holy Spirit as an attractive force in the life of the believer may be examples of the prima scriptura approach. So the Quakers, the general idea is you're moved within yourself and you follow your own inner being. It's tough to find a hardcore gospel statement. You can find it when you go back to George Fox and the early Quakers that came to America during its founding, but over the years the Quakers have really drifted away from that kind of thing. So they're more into how I feel and what the friends of the society in the meeting hall mean to you.

Seventh-day Adventists. Besides the Holy Scriptures, the Seventh-day Adventist Church holds that LNG White's writings to be a continuing and authoritative source of truth which provide for the Church. Yes, we are meeting in a Seventh-day Adventist Church. Yes, we've talked to Doug, who's the pastor here, about this very subject. He doesn't like it that LNG White is part of their history and thinks that they have some things wrong in their eschatology, but he also has some other errant things that we've talked with him about that he believes. So the main point is that if you don't keep going back to the Bible and keep guiding it, you can get off really quickly if you desert and have, oh, we can let this in or we can let that in. If you're not constantly running it through the grid of scripture, you're subject to big mistakes.

Others, now these people I don't consider Christians, but it is interesting how they view the Bible. The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, except the Bible is the word of God as far as it's translated correctly. And it's regard parts of the Apocrypha, some writings of the Protestant reformers and non-Christian religious leaders and non-religious writings of some philosophers, and notably, the Constitution of the United States of America to be inspired, though not canonical. That's an interesting mix. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the interpretation of the scripture and codification of doctrines is considered the responsibility of the governing body of the Jehovah's Witnesses, of course.

So there you go. That's what the world believes. Now, one of the things that is attacked when you have churches like ours that are reformed and still reforming, OK? We don't believe that the Reformation's over. We believe that we still need to keep reforming and keep making what we're doing closer to what God wants us to do. So why do we do that? because we keep retreating back to the scriptures. And one of the criticisms of us is that we don't look to the church fathers, we don't look to church tradition, we throw that all out the window. I would argue, no, we don't. We look at all that stuff, but we still grade it against what the Bible says.

You'll notice Jonathan used liturgy. I try to use it as much as I can. Sean will use it. We set our service to worship God in the morning certain way for very particular purposes. All the things we do, we're trying to make a statement. We're here to worship God, not to put on a show, not to have a slick presentation, but to worship God, all of us together, you know, at one point. So when you look back at the Church Fathers, who they say we need to go to them for the truth and read their writings so that because now we're closer to the Bible and they were taught by the Apostle John and things like that so they must be right. Those very people, Irenaeus 202, okay, we have learned from none others the plan of our salvation than from those through whom the gospel has come down to us which they did at one time proclaim in public and at a a later period by the will of God handed down to us in the scriptures to be the ground and pillar of our faith.

That's against Heresies 3.11. Tertilian of Carthage, 235's when he died, and defending the truth of the Trinity against the heretic paraxis.

It will be our duty, however, to adduce with proofs out of the scriptures as plainly as we do when we prove that he has made his word a son to himself. All the scriptures attest the clear existence of and distinction in the persons of the Trinity and indeed furnish us with our rule of faith." This is 235, okay? These guys are pounding this home and it goes on and on here. I don't want to read all of these because this is where a lot of words come in and I want to close out with what we have said. But Hippolytus is another church father 235, the last sentence in a long paragraph that I have of his, whatever things then the Holy Scriptures declare at these let us look and whatsoever things they teach these let us learn. It's a summation of his paragraph. Eusebius of Caesarea 339 he died, same thing he ends up the bottom paragraph or the bottom sentence, but that those who use the arts of unbelievers for their heretical opinions and adulterate the simple faith of the divine scriptures by the craft of the godless are far from the faith. What

need is there to say but to follow the scriptures? Athanasius of Alexandria 373, same thing. Cyril of Jerusalem 386, John of Christendom 407, and then Augustine. Long quotes from Augustine and it's fascinating the quotes that both sides use in Augustine. Augustine's an interesting character. We've spent a lot of time in omnibus going through him this year with the city of God and we went through the confessions last year or a couple of years ago. Most of the time Augustine gets it right and lands in the Bible. But Augustine has some peculiar ways of interpreting the Bible, where he allegorizes at certain points, starts to bring in numerology and other crazy things, and he brings in reliquies, miracles and stuff that go on. So you have to sort through it.

But the bottom line that Augustine does, as you notice, when he goes through these incredibly complicated arguments, that can go on for two or three pages about a certain thing. He reduces it back to what does the Bible say. So he's definitely trying to get back to the source material. So I look upon him as a good thing to see and look upon. But those are the general people that the Presbyterians and other Reformed types come to us and say, you guys are just wackos. You know, you're starting a church on every street corner, and you're not really going back to church tradition and trying to stay within the thing.

We are going to that, but we're trying to sort through it. And we want everybody in the church to be those people. We're not the only ones teaching here. We want you people to learn. We want you to be good students of the word, and the spirit will bear witness to you about what we're trying to teach you as you go through these things. And there's a great togetherness that happens. And a great part of the worship is that we are all learning and singing to God together. I think you can appreciate that as small as we are, how well we sing. And some of that, we're being taught how to sing. Now, is that in the Bible?

I don't see really a lot of that, except they had musicians come and play the things. But we're learning how to sing in unison together the great hymns of the faith. And we've been criticized because we want to sing a lot of the songs. Well, if we're singing the songs, it's pretty hard to get a mistake, right? If we're singing what the Bible says, it's pretty bad. You can't screw up there. So it's fascinating, I think, to see how the Spirit is uniting us in those things. So I want to close with the 287 words that we use to talk about this doctrine. OK? So this is what we say in our statement of what we believe. Scripture, the written word of, I mean, scripture, the word of God written.

We believe that the Bible consists of 66 books of the Old and New Testaments. It is the infallible word of God, verbally inspired by God, and without error in the original manuscripts, the original manuscripts. This is a translation. It is not the Bible. It is not the thing that we say is inerrant. Okay. This is a new King James. Most of you have ESVs. Some of you got NASVs. Some of you have ASVs or whatever King James. We're talking about the original manuscript and yes, it gets technical. How we get to that. I'll talk to that in a minute with this book. Okay. We believe that God's intentions revealed in the Bible are supreme, sufficient, and the final authority in testing all claims about what is true and what is right.

In matters not addressed by the Bible, determining what is true and right requires wise assessment by criteria consistent with the teachings of Scripture. Always through the Bible grid. Everything. We believe God's intentions are revealed through the intentions of the human authors, even when the author's intention was to express divine meaning of which they were not fully aware. As for example, in the case of some Old Testament prophecies, thus the meaning of biblical text is an objective, fixed historical reality rooted in the historical, unchangeable intentions of its divine and human authors. However, while meaning does not change the application that that meaning may change in various situations, nonetheless, it is not legitimate to infer a meaning from a biblical text that is not demonstrably carried by the words which God inspired.

Therefore, the process of discovering the intention of God in the Bible, which in its fullest meaning is a humble and careful effort to find in the language and the context of of Scripture, what the human authors intend to communicate. Limited abilities, traditional biases, personal sin, and cultural assumptions often obscure biblical texts. Therefore, the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit is essential for a right understanding of the Bible. And prayer for his assistance belongs to a proper effort to understand and apply God's word. I think that that's really been worked by a lot of people. We copied this from Piper's Church, and we altered certain phrases in it.

They gave us permission to copy it, and we contacted them with some of the things that we changed. They liked the changes, didn't disagree with it. But this is, we're standing 2,000 years after all this has started, looking at all of these statements of faiths and creeds and everything, trying to boil it down to where we are today. Now, I've talked a lot about the Bible. Some of you may not be really understanding how we got the Bible. You think you've got, you go to the Bible bookstore and you buy your Bible. And this is the Bible. I think that this is the best work to start you off in if you want to understand about your Bible.

It's called A General Introduction to the Bible. It's by Norman Geisler and William E. Nix. It was written back, I think, in the 60s, but it is really good. Talks about textual criticism, talks about the original sources, on and on and on. Every chapter gives you the background to how we got to this. Now, Geisler realized in the 1960s in America that something needed to be happening, Because what happened in the churches is that after this book became popular and seminaries realized they had to teach inerrancy, then it started to get a little quirky. They started shaving what inerrancy really was. So they got together and in 19, let me get the right date here, some of you may recognize this book that we're with us at Grace Bible Church when we taught through the syllabus at the master's seminary.

In appendix three of this document on bibliology, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy with Exposition, 1978 is when they all finally agreed to this. And the people that were there were Carl F. Henry, Harold Linzell, John Warwick Montgomery, Richard Nicole, J.I. Packer, Rod Mocker, Francis Schaeffer, R.C. Sproul, John Wyndham, all the Bayleywicks all came together to write this document on inerrancy. And it's like a, eh, like a 15 page document, articles boiling down what inerrancy means. Now, after they wrote that, churches went home and adopted it. Yeah, we believe in inerrancy. But then they realized, how do we interpret the Bible?

How do you go about your hermeneutic, when you look at this, how do you interpret it? It says this, but other people say, well, that word really doesn't mean that there. It means this because of this. Now we're into hermeneutics. So another six years went by, and in 1982, They came out with the Chicago statement on biblical hermeneutics.

And this was another knockdown drag out fight. And this one becomes more important actually than the inerrancy one, because you can say, Oh, I believe it's inerrant, but you don't understand how to interpret it. Let me explain. I have this secret decoder ring on how to explain this and you have your decoder ring, but I have the right decoder ring, right? So this is another document that was produced, and it's another 15 pages, but it's a little more complex and starts to get very pointed. And we stand on the grammatical historical approach. And the interesting thing is, when I get together with friends of mine that are Presbyterians and stuff, when you do that, they go, go, yeah, we believe that, but we don't believe it quite like you believe it.

And so you have to then start scratching your head, well, what do you mean by it? And so that's a whole discussion that you need to really think about, and that's how we come up with how we interpret the Bible, okay? And what it means, boiling it down to a simple thing, what it says is what it means. That's real basic. But the thing is, God chose those words and in some places there's figurative speech, in other places there isn't. A lot of places, scripture teaches scripture, all that kind of stuff. Now do good men disagree on this? Yes. Do good men disagree over the gospel? You get a mistake in the gospel, you don't get to go to heaven.

You can have a mistake in your eschatology and still go to heaven. But we want to stand for what we think it is. And that's a tricky business because together for the gospel is a gathering that we go to as a church. We invite the men to go and every two years we go. We're sitting there with 10,000 people singing all these songs, songs and I can guarantee you that I could probably get in a knockdown drag out fight with, I don't know, 80% of the people there over some doctrine thing. I mean, I can get in a knockdown drag out fight with people here in the congregation that we worship together, right? Right, Dave?

But that's not to say we can't know we're in God's family. And that's the joy in the thing that we want to do. That's why we pray for other churches that are preaching the gospel. We want them to preach the gospel. Now, do I think that somebody, once they learn the gospel, should stay in a church that maybe has an errant view of inerrancy or sola scriptura? No. I think that as they mature, that they will realize, Oh, I can't stay in that. I got to move away from that. And so that's a process. And hopefully if we've got things that are wrong, that we will change. And we welcome those criticisms and those discussions.

You know, those are the things that sharpen us and want to do that. So to close, the major thing is that the Bible is the formal principle on which the Reformation was started. Remember, Good old Martin was told to translate the Bible into German for the German people. Yes, sir. He goes up into his study and he starts translating. And he goes along and oh my goodness, it's by faith alone. This is incredible. I'm going to write to Pope. He'll change his mind right here in the scripture. So he writes off the letter, sends it off, and wham. The wreck is on. And so then he nails up his theses, and then the real wreck is on.

But going ahead, he thought, this is incredible. It's right here. This answers all my questions and the story of his life is really incredible And he's a flawed guy just like all of them are we're all sinners saved by grace, but He's the guy that put his foot down and said this is it here I stand right when he got at the diet of worms and What was that over what the scripture said now? But the church councils said they put his back against the wall and he said he would stand on the scripture and so will we So let's close now and a word of prayer and then we can go home. Father, we thank you that you have, through your general revelation, shown that there is somebody bigger than us, and then you gave us special revelation to give us great insights into who you are.

We thank you for that. We ask that you would specially bless us to be good students and to prepare our hearts to change those places where we're in error and to constantly grow and to grow into your son's image. And the great thing about that, no matter how flawed we are, you promise in 1 John 3.2 that you will conform us to your son's image. So we are all in process, those of us who believe. We thank you for that, and of course, we thank you most of all for your son, Jesus Christ, in whom we pray, amen.