This past Sunday, I had the privilege of preaching for a special five-part series at our church. Each week a sermon has been devoted to one of the Five Solas of the Reformation. In English, the Five Solas are: Christ Alone, Scripture Alone, Grace Alone, Faith Alone, and to the Glory of God Alone. This is also the order we are using for the sermon series. Our pastor has opened the series and will finish it, and two other men and I are privileged to contribute one of the messages for the set.
My sermon from this Sunday was on Sola Gratia, or Grace Alone. I was especially burdened by this topic which is so all-encompassing. My sermon highlighted the role of Grace in salvation — we are saved not on account of our works (praise God!). And I also emphasized how grace opposes legalism, in both its doctrinal and practical forms. Finally I was able to touch on Sovereign Grace just a bit as well.
My text was Titus 3, and I was pleased to discover that Martin Luther preached a pair of sermons on Titus 2:11-4 and Titus 3:4-7 for Christmas of 1522. Those sermons were epsecially pertinent to my theme and I included some quotations. (You can find Luther’s sermons on Titus here and here).
I’m sharing my sermon notes and audio in this post and welcome any feedback. You can also find all my recent sermons from The Heights Church, St. Paul, here.
If you don’t have time to listen to the entire sermon (52 minutes), please do look over my notes.
This Fall marks 500 years since the start of the Protestant Reformation. October 31, 1517 is the date that Martin Luther nailed his “Ninety-five Theses” on the church door in Wittenberg. His Reformation ideas quickly spread over all of Europe by means of the movable-type printing press… and the rest, they say, is history.
In honor of this anniversary, I am re-posting my teaching series entitled, “A Survey of the Reformation: Its History and Doctrine.”
I developed this teaching series in 2012 and have taught through it for adult Sunday School classes in two different churches. The audio files are primarily from 2012, but one of the lessons had corrupted audio and so I made a replacement recording in 2014 the next time I taught the material.
My goal in this series is two-fold: to introduce people to the history and ideals of the Reformation, and to give an introduction to the doctrine known as the five points of Calvinism or the doctrines of Grace. I have found that understanding and appreciating the doctrines of Grace is easier when one is led to understand the history of the Reformation as a whole. Also stressed in this study, are the Five Solas, and the Reformation emphasis on God’s sovereignty.
The Reformation doesn’t stand or fall with the doctrines of Grace, but that understanding flows directly from the heart of the Reformation. And while Luther may not have agreed on all the particulars of how the five points came to be articulated, he is in fundamental agreement on God’s role in salvation — as were all the original reformers.
Feel free to use the .pdf and .mp3 audio files freely, I just ask to be credited as the source of this presentation. May God grant the spirit of the Reformation and its doctrine, to continue to occupy a warm place in the hearts and minds of God’s people.
Why the Reformation Matters Today • No audio (see note below) ∼ View the Slides.
Note: You may notice that the audio deviates from the slides more and more as the lessons progress. This is due to the fact that the slides match the 2014 audio, which is unavailable. The 2012 audio files line up closely with my older slides available here.
I used a variety of resources for this series, but the four I recommend to my SS class are listed here below:
How can one process utter tragedy, such as the loss of dozens of lives in Moore, Oklahoma from yesterday’s monster tornado? How can we respond with grace and not despair? How can we still believe in an awesome God who is love, and see evidence of such apparent random carnage coming down from the sky? Where was God? Where is He?
Some will blame God, and others will say He couldn’t have stopped this and hurts as much as any of us over this loss. Either response is unbiblical, and doesn’t correctly assess the true nature of our great God. I shared the following thoughts in a post that I put up following the tragic massacre of children in Newtown, Connecticut last year.
Scripture’s teaching on evil and suffering is that God permits it, and works behind it, to accomplish His purposes. For those who love God and believe in Him (the elect), God works everything together for their good (Rom. 8:28). And ultimately, God “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11). God “does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” (Dan. 4:35). He “has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble” (Prov. 16:4). And Amos 3:6 declares soberingly, “Does disaster come to a city, unless the LORD has done it?”
If God is truly sovereign, then, why did He choose to allow such sin and suffering in this world?
But such manifestly biblical teaching can sometimes seem chilling and unfeeling in light of tragedies such as the tornado in Moore, Oklahoma. How are we comforted in knowing that God was not surprised by what happened in Moore? And how should Christians respond and think about such natural evil as terrible twisters that leave carnage and destruction in their wake?
Sam Storms, a pastor and writer in Oklahoma, has a response which I commend to my readers. His post is titled “Tornadoes, Tsunamis, and the Mystery of Suffering and Sovereignty.” It’s worth a quick read on a day like today. May you read it and contemplate how to respond biblically to tragedy.
Reformation Gems are excerpts from selections contained in the Reformation Commentary on Scripture, a new commentary series from IVP which gathers the best Reformation-era comments on the text together all in one set. The volumes in this commentary series resurrect long-forgotten voices from the Reformation age and in so doing they recover the piety and vivacity of that era. I hope that by sharing some excerpts from this series, I will edify my readers and promote this important commentary series. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Today’s selection comes from the Reformation Commentary on Scripture: Volume X (Galatians, Ephesians). Wolfgang Musculus, whom I’ve quoted before, made some observations about questioning God’s wisdom and God’s plan. Believers in every era grapple with questions about God’s fairness when it comes to the fate of those who never hear the gospel. People in today’s skeptical age are all the more eager, it seems, to question God’s actions and judgments or even doubt his very existence. Musculus displays a confident trust in the goodness of God and I think his comments are worth repeating for people in every age.
Here is the excerpt from Musculus’s work originally published in 1561 (with key sentences bolded for emphasis):
God Chose to Save People by the Preaching of the Gospel.
Wolfgang Musculus: Some people ask whether God could not call his elect by a secret and hidden breath of his Spirit, without uttering a word. My answer is that nobody doubts that he can. So in that case, why did he choose to use preaching? Because that is what he wanted to do. Because the world in its wisdom did not know God, he wanted to save believers by the foolishness of preaching. If you ask why he chose to give the law of the letter to his people at Mount Sinai, inscribed on tablets of stone, rather than put the law of the Spirit in their hearts, what better answer could be given to you than to say that that is what he wanted to do? If you want to call the will of God into question and think that he ought to explain it to you, ask the devil to be your judge, because he will side with you against God and you will appear to be wise and righteous with him while God is condemned for being stupid and unjust. This is my answer to those who ask what becomes of people who have not heard or who lived before the preaching of the gospel was spread throughout the world and think that it should not have been deliberately delayed until the last days. A godly and faithful person adores what God has said and done and does not get upset or call him into question. He gives glory to God’s wisdom and righteousness even when he does not understand why God has done things one way and not another…. (pg. 259-260)
About the Reformation-era author: Wolfgang Musculus (1497-1563). Viennese pastor, reformer and theologian. Musculus was an advocate and writer for the cause of reform, producing translations, biblical commentaries and an influential theological text, Loci communes sacrae theologiae (Commonplaces of Sacred Theology), outlining a Zwinglian theology. Musculus began to study theology while at a Benedictine monastery; he departed in 1527 and became secretary to Martin Bucer in Strausbourg. He was later installed as a pastor in Augsburg, eventually performing the first evangelical liturgy in the city’s cathedral. Though Musculus was active in the pursuit of the reform agenda, he was also concerned for ecumenism, participating in both the Wittenburg Concord (1536) and discussions between Lutherans and Catholics. (pg. 429-430)
This Fall, I’ve been teaching a 10 part Adult Sunday School series called “A Survey of the Reformation: Its History and Doctrine.” We finally have the audio up for the final four lessons in this series. I finish out the Five Points of Calvinism over the course of these lessons, and in the final session I make room for answering objections and wrap up the series looking at why all this matters.
The lesson plan for the entire series (which has changed some) is below, and you can download the audio or view the slides from the lessons as they are completed.
This past Sunday, I had the privilege of preaching for a special five-part series at our church. Each week a sermon has been devoted to one of the Five Solas of the Reformation. In English, the Five Solas are: Christ Alone, Scripture Alone, Grace Alone, Faith Alone, and to the Glory of God Alone. This is also the order we are using for the sermon series. Our pastor has opened the series and will finish it, and two other men and I are privileged to contribute one of the messages for the set.
