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Three Angels Fellowship SDA Church

The Five Solas

Garhett Morgan

Why Protestant?

The Protestant in Me

Sola Scriptura

Sola Gratia

Sola Fide

Father in heaven, Lord, we thank you again for your goodness.

Lord, there is a lot of people today claiming to have different kinds of truth.

Today, Lord, as we explore what that means, we ask that you'd be with us, give us understanding.

Over the next few weeks, and when I say few weeks, I mean 7, including today, We're going to be taking a look at a topic that I think is really important and 1 that I think many of us have forgotten or maybe you've never even been taught at all.

As some of the Adventist Christians, we identify with a certain type of Christianity.

So Christianity in and of itself is a religious type.

And then underneath that, you have subsections of different types of Christians.

And we identify ourselves as Protestant Christians, right?

Well, it's actually kind of an uncomfortable conversation to have.

And over the next few weeks, we may be having some uncomfortable conversations even starting today.

We're gonna be looking at the 5 solas of the Reformation.

How many of you are familiar of the solas that came out of the Reformation?

Just by a show of hands, just out of curiosity.

Let me give you 1, probably the most popular 1, and then there'll be a few more of you that recognize it.

How many of you have heard of sola scriptura?

So out of the Reformation, there were 5 battle cries, if you will, that were looked at as absolute truth.

1 of them being sola scriptura, or in modern day in English, the Bible alone, right, as source of truth.

There's a few others that we'll be looking at as well.

We'll be defining them and showing how these things are absolutely critical to our understanding of God and our relationship with him.

But before we get there, I want to define this morning and probably next week too what it even means to be a Protestant at all.

Yes, we might know what it means to be a Seventh-day Adventist, But what does it mean to be a Protestant Christian?

There's a lot of other Protestant denominations out there as well.

These are all different examples of Protestant Christian churches, and we call those other denominations our brothers and sisters in that.

But if you would go to different denominations across the country and ask different individuals what it means to be a Protestant, you would probably find many blank stares.

And don't be ashamed of that, because sometimes it's hard to answer when we don't know.

And so the next few weeks we're going to be exploring what it means to not only be a Protestant, but finding these God-given mantras that come out of the Protestant Reformation.

At the core of the Protestant Reformation, there is 1 question.

And this question is probably the most important question that any human being can ask.

It's 1 that you have probably asked yourself, and you might even continue to ask yourself.

It's at the heart of Christianity, and it may be at the center of your Christian walk with God as well.

It's a pretty important question, isn't it?

How does 1 know where they're going to end up when they die?

How does 1 make sure that they have salvation?

These are all important questions and they all revolve around this 1 central theme How does 1 get right with God if you enter it into a church or a religious?

Institution and you ask this question to the membership of that church or the pastor of that church, and you ask the question, how does 1 get right with God, you would expect a good answer, right?

I would expect that if someone came into these doors here at our church and someone walked up to you and said, how does 1 get right with God?

I hope that we would have a good answer, right?

And as Christians, it's our job, it's our God-given duty to have an answer for this very simple question.

You know, Jesus, this is 1 thing I love about God, God is never complicated in His message to people.

Now, human beings are complicated all the time, but Jesus made the answer to this question very simple.

John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but that all should have everlasting life." Does that answer that question about how to be right with God?

I will send my son so that he can offer salvation however It hasn't always been this clear Not because of God being unclear but because of some other things that have taken place.

In Jesus' day, if you were to ask the question, how does 1 get right with God, and you went to a synagogue or religious institution, you would not have been given a clear answer.

Instead, you would have been answered with a lot of religious tradition, maybe even some mysticism and some superstition.

If you went to a synagogue and you approached a priest or a Jew and asked, how can I be right with God?

How do I know that I will live for eternity with God?

You probably would have been given 613 laws.

And that's not a number I pulled out of my hat, that is the pharisaical laws.

You would have been given the sacrificial system, not only the 1 that God had put in place, but you have been given even more sacrificial laws as well.

You would have been given laws on cleanliness.

You would have been given so many different things for you to do so that you could quote unquote know that you were right with God.

Brother and sister, that's not how God works.

God is very clear on how we can have a relationship with him, but the problem is that lots of religious institutions have muddied the waters, And that's what these next few weeks are going to be about.

Now, you might say to yourself, now wait a minute, when it comes to religious institutions, we have the Seventh-Davenist Church, we have always talked about going against the grain and our view of the Antichrist and the papal power and all of those things.

Absolutely, any human institution leans towards tyranny, even religious ones.

And over the course of the next few weeks, we might find that yes, there's lots of religious traditions that our church have cast aside, but could it be that even our beloved religious denomination, Seventh-day Adventists, have grown with some of our traditions as well?

So we'll be looking at that over the next few weeks and finding out what's important.

So when Jesus went to the synagogue, he saw people around him going and asking the priests and the Pharisees, how do I get right with God?

And the answer to that question was clear as mud.

As Jesus approached the synagogue and the most holy place on earth to the Jew, he went to the temple to sacrifice to God as God had asked him to do.

And as he goes to his beloved temple, he finds perversion everywhere.

The answer to the question about how to be right with God was not being made clear at all.

In fact, that question was being used for profit.

Matthew chapter 21, if you'd like to go there.

Before we get into some Protestant Reformation stuff, I think it's important that we take a lesson from Jesus.

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The Five Solas

Why Protestant?

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