Five Pillars of the Reformation — Sola Scriptura: The Scripture Alone Part 1

Let's take our Bibles and look at another treasure we have, the scripture itself, and let's turn to second Peter, Peter's second epistle, and that'll be our text tonight. We'll look at some verses in chapter 1 and again in chapter 3. We're going to begin tonight to look at the five pillars of the Reformation, which I'm sure by a very title is not one of the most exciting sermon series that you may think will engage in. I hope by the time we're done with these five messages that you will have sincerely changed your mind. We preach through these tonight, and by way of introduction, I want to warn you that I know it's the late hour, I know we've been here in the morning and some of us require practice, and we've had a long and yet a blessed day and a difficult hour, but I really want to encourage you, especially tonight, to put on your thinking caps for these will be I anticipate thinking men's sermons these next five weeks. I say that because these five pillars of the Reformation are likened unto us a building program, and I think that John Holt and the man that he knew who threw up this structure beside us to my ride in your left is a good illustration, a good picture study of what we're going to be looking at in the next few weeks. There are five pillars upon rich rest are evangelical and biblical faith. If you were to build a building and you were to establish that building, you would finally do probably do it this way. You would establish a slab or a foundation that was under the ground that could not be seen, and on that slab or foundation, you would put four corner posts or four pillars to which you would tie the rest of the structure and on which the whole way to the roof and the superstructure would rest. Well that is really what our faith is like. There lies under the surface and not obvious to many people, a firm foundation upon which four other pillars rest, the reformers chose to call these the five pillars of the Reformation since all five of them support the true faith once for all delivered to the saints. The one that we'll look at tonight is the one that is taken for granted, that is less visible perhaps than the other five pillars, but the other four excuse me, but is the foundation upon which the other four rest. Let me tell you what these five pillars are in the order that we will study them, and they are given to you in the order upon which they come in the Lord's building a faith in us individually and in the church. He begins first with the foundation, that is the scripture, solar scriptura, in Latin, that is trans means it means in English, scripture alone, that is the first pillar and that is the slab or the foundation upon which the other four pillars must rest. That is what we want tonight. The other four are in order, solafide, faith alone, solagrazia, grace alone, solacristus, chrysalon, and solideagloria for the glory of God alone. Now the way we arrived or the reformers arrived at these pillars, they didn't sit down to think of five quintessential truths, five tenets upon which to rest the faith, but as the Lord dealt in their lives and brought each one of them Luther and Zwingli and Calvin and Knox and others to a saving faith, they all began to find that they shared an experience and in their personal theologies and what they preached in front of their congregation these five pillars, and they experienced them in that order. They arrived at these five pillars because as I mentioned this morning, they had all been rooted and grounded in the metaphysical philosophical teachings of a man named Aaron Stottle. And in his metaphysics, Aaron Stottle says there are five causes that bring about everything that comes into existence and he's right. Even though he's a pagan by God's common grace, Aaron Stottle struck upon a great truth. He started his five pillars and it will help you to follow my train of thought, to follow the outline and to write down these things as I give them to you just by way of introduction. That first pillar, Solar Scriptura, the reformers call and theologians call the formal cause of the reformation. That's the formal cause of the reformation. They call it the formal cause because it's a form or a blueprint or a design that God uses to build a true faith. When John Holt began to build this building out here, he had a form. He had a blueprint, he had a drawing, a sketch, a design, a scheme and that he followed so that from nothing and just raw material came this structure, we know is the fellowship hall. We're the same thing with our king. What is the blueprint? What is the design? What is the sketch? What is the schema? That we follow in order to arrive at a big place. The reformer said it is the scripture and the scripture alone. So Solar Scriptura becomes the formal or we might say the designing cause out of this design or form comes a reality. Here's the second cause. And that is solar feedback. Faith alone, they call that the material cause. Not only do you need a form or a design, you need some matter or some material to build with. Here we're going to build this building. We use the brick and mortar and cement and iron and wood and steel and all sorts of material. And likewise, we need material to build a true faith. What is the material of a genuine faith? What is faith alone? It's not faith in works. It's not faith in tradition. It's not faith in mysticism. It's faith alone. So the material cause, the method of stuff out of which God builds a saving faith is faith. Now the third cause is called the instrumental cause and that is Solar Grazia. There has to be certain instruments that we use. We use hammers and hyper whatever, kinds of tools and machinery to empower us. We couldn't just build this building with our hands. We had to have hydraulic and pneumatic and all kinds of machinery to do stuff. We had to have things in our hands to form that matter around that design to build the building. The instrument that God uses to build true faith. It's grace. And grace alone is this tool. That's the only instrument he needs and that's the only instrument he uses. Solar Grazia, the baseless and the fundamental cause of the reformation and the reformed or the true faith. Here's the fourth pillar and the fourth cause and that is what we call the efficient cause. Someone has to be the chief agent to bring around an effect. Who is that efficient agent? Well in building the building here it was John Holt. Any add assistance and we might say the contractor or the builder was one but there was someone who was in charge of the project and brought it about. Who is the chief agent informing our faith? Who is the efficient cause of the reformed and biblical faith? Solar is Christus. It is Christ alone. It is Jesus who said I will build my church. I'll do it by myself and the gates of hell shall not prevail against me. So Christ becomes the efficient cause of the reformation and therefore the fourth pillar. Finally there's the last cause which is called the final cause. It is the final reason or purpose or intent of the building project in the first place. Why do you build that building? Well have fellowship in. To have progress in. To use the rest through men. To have classes in. To go to the kitchen in. Why do you build your house to live in? Why would you design some beautiful piece of sculpture? Well to admire. Everything that is built by someone has a purpose. What is the purpose of the true faith? It is a sunny day of glory. It is only and purely for the glory of God. That is the final cause, the driving purpose. That's why our reformed confession, the Westminster Confession of Faith says, what is man's chief end or primary purpose? Man's chief end or his primary purpose is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. Those five causes became five pillars and upon those five pillars rest saving faith. Listen to me carefully. Without any one of them, the true faith will run on.

You will not experience salvation and receive the gift of eternal life. That's how important they are. Scripture, faith, grace, Christ and the glory of God alone. Now you might why do we have to study this? If you'll notice in our bulletins, if you turn to page one, you'll notice that in the next few weeks beginning this morning, we're going to be publishing parts of something called the Cambridge Declaration. I want us just to read the bottom two paragraphs. I'll read it to you. I want you to follow with me on page one. In the course of history, words change. In our day, this happened to the word evangelical. In the past, it served as a bond of unity between Christians from a wide diversity of church traditions. Historic evangelicalism was confessional. It embraced the essential truths of Christianity as those were defined by the great ecumenical councils of the church. In addition, evangelicals also shared a common heritage in the soul laws of the 16th century Protestant reformation. Those soul laws are what I just mentioned to you as the five pillars of the faith. Last paragraph. Today, the light of the reformation has been significantly dimmed. The consequence is that the word evangelical has become so inclusive as we've lost its meaning. We face the peril of losing the unity it has taken centuries to achieve. Because of this crisis and because of our love of Christ, his gospel and his church, we endeavor to assert a new our commitment to the central truths of the reformation and of historic evangelicalism. These truths we affirm, not because of their role in our traditions, but because we believe that they are central to the Bible. Rather than this thing we call the evangelical or the reformed faith is receiving a lot of attack from different quarters. There was a magazine that I meant to name or called Serzum Korda, the Roman Catholic magazine dedicated to the revival of the Roman Catholic religion and its spread. In a special edition, Elizabeth Altham wrote an article entitled, Protestant Pastors on the Road to Rome. In fact, the cover of that special edition had a picture of the Gordon Conwell seminary in the in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, one of the leading evangelical seminaries of our country. And on the front cover were these words, the best kept secret in the church, Protestant seminary manufactures Catholic converts. That article told the story of what Elizabeth Altham says in the past 10 years at least 50 Protestant pastors have resigned their posts and found their way to Rome. They told the story of six different individuals, they let them give their own testimony. One was a fundamentalist Baptist missionary couple from out west who was working in the Mission Field Guatemala. One was a Lutheran mentor of the conservative Lutheran Missouri Synod. There was an independent evangelical youth minister who was down in Florida and three PCA pastors, all of whom renounced the reformed faith and have joined the Roman Catholic Church. Marcus Grote, one of those PCA pastors, had this to say as his reason for leaving Protestantism and joining the Catholic Church, listen carefully. He says, I could no longer trust the scriptures alone, but I knew that if I could trust the authority of the magisterium, that is the pope and the councils of the church, centered on the sea of Peter, that is the papacy, that everything else would fall into place. Every one of those six people in their own words in that article gave this testimony every single one I read the article twice myself and underlined it to make sure, while weeding their intent, every one of those six people said that the fundamental reason that caused them to leave evangelicalism and go to Rome was the issue of authority. They could no longer trust Solascriptura, the scripture alone is their authority. They wanted three sources of authority, the scripture, the pope and the council of the church and the tradition of the fathers. I will say this much for them. Then in the world in which we live today in evangelical Christianity and in Catholic Christianity and in liberal Christianity, and whatever you want to call these things, there are really only three logical choices for authority. One is the choice of reason, of popular opinion, of experience. That is the choice that the liberals and the neo-orthodox take and it is defunct and dead and most people know that it's going nowhere and it is losing membership by the millions per year. The other two sources of authority are scripture alone, the evangelical authority or the pope, tradition and the scripture, which is the Roman Catholic authority. Those are the only two logical choices left and you know what's interesting? Those are the two choices for this, the time of the great reformation and so we are back to the same battle of authority. That same foundation, the same question is this. The same question Luther and Calvin and Zwingli had the rest of it. What will I establish as the foundation slab upon which I will build a faith that will give me eternal life? What will I put my eternal and only hope in? The Bible alone or the Bible as interpreted by the pope in the church and the traditions of the fathers? That became the formal principle, the blueprint that the evangelicals and Catholics argue about and it is an argument even to this day. Look up here, if you don't do anything else, take this home with you. That argument has not been settled. It erages on with a white hot passion even to this day. And if I were to ask Wyn Kenyon, I think he would concur with me. I see a pastor over here nodding his head. Those of us who are reading these things realize that this battle is not diminishing but growing. It's more ferocious now than it's ever been in my lifetime. So let's look at why we say we believe in scripture alone as our source of authority and the designing formal principle of our faith. And let's do that by looking at the scripture alone. And I want to take this to second Peter and begin in chapter one and read some verses there in the go over to chapter three and then expound upon it tonight. Chapter one, beginning in verse 12. Therefore I shall always be ready to remind you of these things even though you already know them and have been established in the truth which is present with you. And I consider it right as long as I am in this earthly dwelling to stir you up by way of reminder knowing that laying beside of my earthly dwelling is imminent and also our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me. And I will always be and also be diligent that at any time after my departure you may be able to call these things to mine. For we do not follow cleverly devised tales and we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honour and glory from God the Father such as utterances as this was made to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven with me with him on the holy mountain. And so we have the prophetic word made more sure to which you do well to pay attention and lamp shining in the dark place until the day dawns and the blink of light always is your hearts. But know this first of all that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will that men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God chapter three verse fourteen. Therefore beloved sent you look for these things be diligent to be found by him in peace spotless and blameless in regard to the patience of our Lord of our Lord to be salvation just as also our beloved brother Paul according to the wisdom given him wrote to you as also in all his letters speaking in these of these things in which are some things hard to understand which the untaught and unstable distort as they do also rest of the scriptures to their own destruction. You therefore beloved knowing this beforehand be on your guard less being carried away by the air of unprincipled men you fall from your own steadfastness but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity amen. I want us to see that what Peter does is establish in this little pistol which by the way is written as a polemic against false teaching and false teachers he establishes the principle of Soda Scriptura the scripture alone is the infallible and final rule of faith and practice for all people who possess the true religion the faith saving faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. He knows great thing. He's the first one I give you a reminder about God's word secondly I give you the authority of God's word and thirdly I give you a challenge or a response to God's word that you want to follow. Now we're already about at the straight-up hour and I doubt sincerely that we're going to get finished with this sermon so we'll finish it next week it's important enough of all of the five pillars that we will belabor the points tonight because unless this foundation is laid and understood the other four pillars will not stand if John hold and the men who helped him out there did not level that ground pack it down drain it well make sure it perked and popped and did whatever else it had to do plain out that slab and make sure it was even Stephen all the way around that it wouldn't be long to one of those pillars to too much of the weight and the building began to shift and it began to split and crack in one day probably sometime we were all hitting the high C in this building the whole thing would fall down. Likewise unless we establish for ourselves both in our principle and in our practice the doctrine of solar scriptura I guarantee that there are people in this room who will go straight from the faith and I put up before you this challenge that if these men these 50 men who went through seminary the vast majority of them from the reformed ranks had deserted the true faith and gone back to the faith of the pre-reformation era if they did that your pastors and teachers and theologians how much more dangerous might it be for you unless you grab a hold of tonight the next Sunday night this principle of scripture alone well let's not be in a hurry and don't worry about the time I'll quit faithfully at 715 we can go home and we'll come back and finish this next week let's look at this first paragraph chapter one verses 12 through 15 where Peter talks about over in modern times word Peter tells the church that he is bound and determined before he dies on a number of occasions to remind them of the ground the foundation the basis of their faith he gives them first of all a reminder about the apostolic faith he says I want to remind you of these things that's what he says look again in verse 12 therefore I shall always be ready to remind you of these things well what well the things he lists in chapter 1 verses 1 through 11 that precede verse 12 those are the things that he refers to as these things that he's reminding them about and let's look at him he says sign in Peter a bond-served and apostle of Jesus Christ to those who have received the faith of the same kind as ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ he reminds them in verse 1 of this thing that they have the same kind of faith that he and the other possible they have an apostolic New Testament Christ-centered faith he also says that they have it by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ they have been justified by Christ justified through faith the righteousness of Christ has been imputed to them the reward of Christ has been given to them the name of Christ has been placed upon them they've been adopted as the sons of God and the daughters of God following their older brother who is the only begotten son of God they have the same righteousness that Christ possesses which God by grace through faith has graciously given to them verse 4 he says this for by these things he has granted to us his precious and magnificent promises in order that by them you might become partakers of the vine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world lust he points there in verse 4 to this thing that he reminds them of that his precious and magnificent promises are none other than the word of God that they have apostolic faith and is Jesus Christ and his work on the cross and they have been able to be united with Christ and to tie into his righteousness and justification and reward and blessing because of the precious and magnificent promises in the old and New Testament that comes to them as the word of God look what he says in verse 10 that the purpose you have this word of God he says in verse 10 therefore brethren be all the more diligent to make certain about his calling and choosing a view for as long as you practice these things you will never stumble he says the reason I'm reminding you of these things is that you might make your election and calling sure that you might be absolutely sure that you have been chosen and converted called by God through grace and responded to that call so that you're absolutely sure that you are saved he says in the last verse verse 11 for by this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ be abundantly supplied to you in other words you'll be sure if you follow these things that I'm talking about in verse 12 that I told you about in verses 1 to 11 that you will find your way from this simple place into the kingdom of God in heaven you'll see what things the apostolic faith justification in Christ spoken of and given you in the word of God which is to make your election and calling sure and to give you the blueprint the roadmap the instructional manual to get from here to heaven that's what I'm reminding you about when I say therefore I shall always be ready to remind you of these things look even though you already know them and have been established in the truth which is present with you Peter says I know that I'm not telling you anything dude quite frankly rather than I know I'm not telling you anything new tonight there's nothing I've said tonight that you already didn't know except maybe some metaphysical stuff from Aristotle you knew all these things and yet Peter says it's necessary that you'll be reminded of these things well why well why do you think if I wanted to tear down the building the John Holt Holt just built how successful would I be if I got a shiny new hammer and climbed up on the roof and began to hammer away at whatever materials up there on the top well probably in about a million years I'd work my way down to what really mattered but if I really wanted to tear the building down quickly I'd just shove some dynamite under the foundation blow it to pieces and gravity would take care of the rest so if the devil's going to attack things he doesn't attack the doctrines that are at the cream and the top of our theology he goes down to the very root of the issue and he attacks the foundation of them all what was the first attack the enemy ever gave the human race it was an attack upon what the word of God yeah half God said to thee thou shall not eat nor even touch of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he questioned God's word he went for the jugular vein and he was successful Peter says I know you know these things here and I know you possess these things here but I also know that you're being a cack here and there all the time by the enemy and I want to remind you I want to be as faithful to remind you as he is faithful to attack you every time he reminds you that that's stupid to believe in some old holy dusty book I'm going to remind you that it's the word of God Paul said or Peter says look they will always be ready to remind you of these things and why does he say that look at verses 13 and 15 I consider it right as long as I am in this earthly dwelling to stir you up by way of reminder and I will also be diligent that by that at any time after my departure you may be able to call these things to mine he says look he's a good teacher he's a good pedagogue he says I know how people learn they learn by what will they learn by repetition that's why the new math never worked you know that I don't care how much fun it was to just kind of loosen the classroom and learn and play with apples and oranges and and a little tinker toys the best way to learn math is this two times two four three times three nine till you know it's just pure repetition until and you sleep you said two times two at four three times three is nine and if I have to do this anymore you know it's just but repetition is the key to learning he says I'm going to remind you and remind you and remind you as long as I'm in this earthly tent alive in this body and so that when I die and there comes an attack from the enemy about these foundational principles in the word of God you're going to say wait a minute Peter said such and such and you will be able he says to call these things to your own mind so he reminds them about this apostolic faith in other words he says as long as I'm alive I consider it my sacred duty and calling from the Lord Jesus Christ to remind you about the freedom and the responsibilities that you have that are in this apostolic faith and I will remind you until I drop dead I will not cease to bring these things to your mind again and again and again namely the faith comeeth by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Brethren I would remind you not to think about it that I'll be referring to that is what we call the faith once for all delivered to the saints we call it reformed because it has been rediscovered and restructured and restored and refurbished and reformulated and reestablished the little RE is important it's not something that Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and Knox and the Puritans invented it was already there it was given to us by Jesus Christ it was Peter and Paul and John and the others who formulated it the church got away from it and Paul and Peter and John of the Reformation the Luther's and Calvin's and Zwingli's they went back and reformed the faith to that formal model to that design to that blueprint to that picture that God has given us in his holy word Alistair McGrath and a little book called Reformation Thought Explains just how fundamentally important it is to use the scripture alone as the formulating the bowl of your faith listen to what he said at the heart of most religious system lie of core of written text which are regarded as being authoritative in other words as having some permanent significance in defining the shape of that religion in the case of Christianity the written text in question are those gathered together in the Bible and offered before to simply as the scriptures the Reformation saw a new importance being attached to the scripture or perhaps an ancient view of the importance of scripture being recovered the idea of solo scripture us scripture alone became one of the great slogans of the reformers as they sought to bring the practice and beliefs of back into line with those of the golden age Christianity if the doctrine of justification by faith alone was the material principle of the Reformation then the principle of scripture alone was the formal principle if the reformers dethroned the pope they enthroned the scripture every strand of the Reformation movement regarded scripture alone as the quarry from which the ideas and practices of the true faith were hidden they went down into the scripture and found in the scripture the jewels of that faith once for all delivered to the saints they were crusty and hidden and covered with all the gunk and traditions and superstitions and topary of thousands of years but these men dug down Audenfantès to the sources to the fountain and found as I reached down in the pit of human souls the word of God and they shook it off and it became a foundational principle of our faith there was a great struggle going on in the time of Martin Luther's life I mentioned it this morning you know what it's the same struggle that's going on today there were two schools of theology two ways of doing church business two ways of interpreting the scripture two ways of preaching one was called the Via Antiqua the old way it was rooted in the scholastics the school and Thomas Aquinas and Dunes, Scotus and all of these fellows and they taught really more of a philosophy of life there was Aristotelian in its order and in its thought that if they do it from Aristotle rather than from the Apostle and they took the word of God and jammed it through the mesh of that Aristotelian theology rather than the reverse but there were some men who rebelled against that and their school of thought was called the Via Moderna they were Renaissance men in a spiritual sense they happened to be at certain universities one of the universities that taught the Via Moderna was little old university out at the edge of nowhere called Erfurt Journey into that university at the age of 17s wrote a young fellow named Martin Luther and all of the sudden not knowing what was going on his teachers whose names we don't know began to teach them in order to find anything that was true and genuine you had to go ad frontes back to the sources and they told him the source of religion is the word of God not Aristotle not Saint Augustine not Thomas Aquinas the word of Peter and Paul and the prophets of the Old Testament and Luther said this was testimony I'm paraphrasing this but he said when I was 20 years old I had not yet seen a Bible but I discovered one in the library of Erfurt the university and I read it and I was never again the same man I brought the Pope down and did more damage to him than all the armies of Europe ever prayed they could do and yet not I it was the word of God I simply preached and prayed and drank beer with my friend Armstrong and the word of God did the rest yeah I say the word of God did it all that man discovering the scripture was so transformed by it that he transformed our faith Richard Pratt one of the professors who was out here at the Jackson campus that now is down at the Orlando branch of Reform Seminar has written a little booklet called what is reformed about to reform theological seminary he goes through these five pillars of the reformation was not what he says about solar scripture because he explains it so simply and yet so compellingly he says solar scriptural or scripture alone expresses our strong commitment to the unquestionable authority of the Bible the early reformers saw many errors in the church of their day many of these false teachings stem from the denial of biblical authority the outlooks of human leaders and the church had risen to a level of authority equal to that of the word of God these human traditions led the church away from the truth and the Protestant counter these false views by affirming the unique and supreme authority of the Bible at RTS we believe in the very important principle of reaffirming the Bible as the final authority for God's people in many circles the place of scripture has been usurped by human traditions once again modern science and philosophy and popular opinion have led many to deny the authority in scripture in response to these current problems reformed theological seminary affirms with the reformers that the Bible is the only unquestionable authority brethren that is where it all begins it begins with that formal principle and it begins with a humble heart let me tell you that Martin Luther and John Calvin and Hodorak Zwingley were no mental midgets they were intelligent men in fact each one of them were able to write in their own language and in Latin Greek and Hebrew and they were fluent in all of them they read guides like Seneca and and Augustine and Jerome and Aristotle like we read the newspaper they were well schooled by the time Martin Luther was six years old he knew about as much Latin as a college senior knows today who studied it for three years these men read the traditions of the fathers they knew the decrease of the Pope they lived their church history they knew their philosophy and yet something happened to them in the throes of that early struggle wheat information a great sense of humility came over them in Martin Luther I think explains it in graphic language better than he does always than anyone else he said we find in this holy scripture the swaddling clothes and the manger of Christ yes there are locally in common in plain in speech but how wonderful how glorious is the treasure they unfold rather than for you to really grab a hold of your faith and to reaffirm it in this day of attack it is necessary for you to realize that what you hold in your lap right now are the swaddling clothes of Jesus Christ you will never love him until you know and love this and all through your life you have but one major duty to unwrap this little Christ until he grows into your Lord and Savior in your own life and experience and this is where you begin faith come us by hearing and hearing by the word of God this Paul said I commend you to and to the riches of his grace which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among the saints in glory we have been maligned by our opponents and ridiculed by other schools of thought accused of bibliology of worshiping the Bible it has been misrepresented what we mean when we say solar scripture and we'll clarify that next Sunday but I am unashamed to say with the apostles and prophets and with our great reformers and with my friends like you that we are not ashamed to hold this up and say that if any man builds a house of faith on any other foundation than this that house will fall it is this word of God alone that must captivate the hearts and minds of people so that Christ can capture them for glory we'll look at the rest of this principle but suffice it enough to say that we ought to go home tonight realizing with Luther in Calvin and these other men what a treasure what a storehouse what a divine library we carry in the leather couple for this thing called the Bible if we really believe this word is what we say it is then how can we not be consumed for the rest of our life with anything other than studying it and learning it and knowing it inside out let me and then we'll close if I told you tonight down at the north part mall instead of Santa Claus God was there and he was in a good mood you could go sit in this lap and find out anything you wanted to find out at all and he would spend as much time with you as you wanted to spend with him answering all your questions how many of you would go there I venture to say that before I said a minute of the closing prayer this place with the emptying y'all be heading up the county line road well I'm telling you that you don't have to worry about going and sitting in God's lap God will sit in your lap every day he'll be waiting for you when you get up in the morning and you can lay your head on him and go to sleep at night and you can consult him about anything you want to consult him about and you can enter into the mysterious finding out not only what's on his mind but what's his heart and you can have more of a personal relationship with God than you ever imagined because of this holy bible book divine Luther said when I found this book in the library I was never again the same man I can remember when I was 17 years old going through the chapel of the monastery and praying to God about how unhappy I was with something that was lacking in my faith and I picked up a copy of the New Testament they'd given us when we came into orientation there at the monastery I'd never read it in four years and I opened it up and I began to read until I came across these words in John chapter 10 I came that they might have life and have it abundantly that's the very first time the word of God ever spoke to me and I stopped and I looked up at that crucifix hanging over the altar and I said oh God I believe this is true that you want me to have an abundant life that you want me to have more of you than I've done the problem's not with you it's with me and I'm going to leave this monastery and go find you and I want that abundant life well I didn't find God he found me but he began with that word that living and abiding word the change Luther change Peter and Paul the change everybody who's ever been changed and it is the foundation of every single living soul who now rests in heaven whoever hopes to be there may we come to love it more than we've ever loved it and to learn it more than we've ever learned it to hold it as the greatest treasure we have other than the Lord Jesus Christ himself because it is what Jesus Christ is wrapped in and when we open it up Jesus Christ comes out and into our life faith comes by hearing the word of God and with him is eternal life I remind you of these things let's pray father what a wonderful treasure we have in our language and in countless versions in every imaginable format even on our computers we possess this living treasure this word of God we thank you for it we thank you for being a God unlike other gods who wants to explain himself and to show himself and to be known and loved and experienced and wants to enter into a partnership of exploration with his people I pray as we go home tonight that we would be ever more thankful than we've ever been for the Christ of the word and for the word of Christ the living and the written word that comes to us by a gift grace through a gift of faith give us more faith to believe it and to mine its resources to plummet its depths and cause it more than ever to come alive and revive us and reform us for our sake and for the sake of our dear Lord Jesus Christ of whom it speaks and in whose name we pray amen