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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 for your goodness and we thank you for your grace, and that's what we're talking about today, Lord, your grace.

Grace is something that's often misunderstood.

And we ask today that as we take a stab at it, that you would open our hearts and minds, Spiritual things are spiritually discerned, and we ask that you would give us the Spirit of God so that we will understand.

Alright, so we have started the battle cries of the Reformation, which are the 5 solas.

The last time that we met, we took a look at sola scriptura, which is a very basic belief of Protestant churches, and it's a belief of our church as well.

Sola scriptura simply means the Bible and the Bible alone, which is separate from solo scriptura because solo scriptura would mean that the only authority in our lives is the Bible.

Solo scriptura recognizes that the Bible is the ultimate authority, although there are other authorities in our lives that are subservient to biblical authority, right?

So for instance, in some of the Adventists, we believe that Ellen White was a prophet, but we also recognize that the Bible is the ultimate authority.

So Ellen White goes here in the authority aspect.

There's other people in your life that has authority as well.

For me, my wife has some authority over me, but that is also under the Bible's authority.

Jesus also said that we should obey governmental authorities to a point as long as they don't cross biblical authority, right?

So we have these authorities that we work with in our lives that we're supposed to obey and be good citizens and good spouses and good church members and all this stuff, but only as long as they agree with the ultimate authority, which is of course, the Word of God.

So the Word of God is the ultimate authority.

Now today, we're going to be taking a look at the second sola of the Reformation and that is in Latin, solo gratia, which in common everyday English is by grace alone.

That's what we'll be talking about this week.

We're probably going to talk about it next week as well.

And then the following ones that we're going to break down over the course of the next several weeks is, sola fidei, which is by faith alone.

And finally, sola Deo gloria, which is the glory of God alone.

So hang on tight if you've missed the last message.

It's already up on our church Facebook and YouTube.

If you miss 1 in the future and you don't want to miss it, you can catch up there as well.

But before we understand grace of God, we have to understand the sinful human condition.

From the words of Jesus himself in John chapter 6, Jesus says something that's quite interesting and also quite troubling.

Jesus says, no 1 can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.

He says that no 1 can come to the Father or God at all unless God draws that person to him.

So with our sinful hearts and our sinful minds, there is nothing within us that desires after God.

There's nothing in the sinful mind that says, you know what?

The only way that you think, huh, I would like to become more like God, or I would like to become a better person.

That is evidence that God is working in you.

That is evidence that God is wooing you towards him.

This is why Jesus says, no 1 can come to me unless God is working with them.

We'll look at a few more verses to talk about this as well.

So Paul says here in 1 Corinthians, the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are a folly to him.

Or the King James says, foolishness to him.

So the unconverted person, when they read or they listen to spiritual things, it's complete foolishness.

Because it doesn't make sense to the sinful mind.

And We'll talk about why in just a minute.

For they are foolish to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

So without God working in your life, none of this will make sense to your carnal heart or your mind.

And by the way, you won't even have an inclination to explore these things because your carnal heart and mind only thinks about 1 thing, and that is yourself, right?

That's making sure that you get to do what you want to do.

And we'll talk about what that means in just a minute.

But I think Romans 8 probably puts it the best way.

It says, for the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.

The sinful heart and mind is hostile to God for a specific reason, and that is this.

The carnal heart and mind knows that if a person submits themselves to Jesus, the carnal mind is going to die.

If someone submits themselves to Christ, then the carnal heart and mind is going to be killed by the grace of God.

So the natural human being senses that God is going to put to death the old man.

And so the old man says, we don't want anything to do with that, right?

We want nothing to do with his goodness because it's a death sentence for our sinful natures.

So our sinful natures revolt against spiritual things out of wanting to survive.

Those who are in the flesh, it continues to say, cannot please God.

Now, I'd like to show you something here, And I hope it works because it's a video that I embedded in and it doesn't need any sound, by the way, Greg, I just want to see the video itself.

And it's by someone called Sun Yun and Peng Yu.

It was on display in the Guggenheim for a long time.

It's a robot, and this that it's mopping up here is the hydraulic fluid that makes the robot work, and it's leaking out, and it's dyed blood red.

The only way that this robot can continue to function is if it constantly is getting the hydraulic fluid back into its central system.

So for years, this robot's entire job was to try and keep its blood, or hydraulic fluid, into its central core.

Alright, just take a look at that for a minute.

This is what it did 24 hours a day for years until it couldn't do it anymore.

It's just putting the blood back in, hoping to survive another minute or another second of the day.

And I don't want to be like 1 of these fufu modern artists, but what does this mean to you?

What do you see when you take a look at what this robot is doing.

Anybody want to share what they see here?

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Series

The Five Solas

Sola Gratia

Transcript

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