The Forgotten Sola of the Reformation

October 25, 2009
1 John 2:27

Exordium: When the men of old Scotland went out to battle by clans they shouted out their slogans. Strong crisp words that said who they were and what they were doing.

That was also the way of the Reformers. They had slogans too.

Sola Gratia-Grace alone

Sola Fide-Faith alone

Sola Scriptura-the Bible alone

Sola Dei Gloria-God’s glory alone and

Sola Ipse-the individual alone.

It is that one that we want to focus on just now “Sola Ipse”. The Reformation has been called “the declaration of intellectual independence”. It stresses the worth and the place of the individual as over against the institution.

And out of that spirit and the writings of the Reformation came democracy in the Western World with its conviction that the state ought to serve the person rather than the person the state.

How indebted we are to this truth of the Sola Ipse. We need to find out more deeply what it means.

A Christian Theology

1 Timothy 6: 17-21
October 18, 2009

Exordium: Ephesus, where Timothy served the church, was a wealthy city. It was a center for commerce and education, much like our own Annapolis. There could be found in its streets and gardens, rich people and about one of three people who lived there were slaves purchased and kept in servitude by their owners.  Both of these groups, rich and slave poor, were also to be found in the Church. Paul commands Timothy to charge the people with the Christian approach to their abundance and their need.

Approaching the Unapproachable

1 Timothy 6:11-16
October 11, 2009

Exordium: I want to start at the end of this passage. Paul’s great exhortation to Timothy and to each one of us who aspires to be a person of God – leads to the mountaintop. That is where this section ends – at the summit.

Being Content with Your Travel Allowance

I Timothy 6:1-10
October 4, 2009

Exordium: As you hear these words, they may seem like assorted topics which hardly belong together. But they are related to each other. The Blessed Holy Spirit who gave us these words has placed them like different colored beads on the beautiful neck of I Timothy 6. Together they speak of God’s provision for each of us along the journey of the Christian life.

The Public Defenders of the Faith

I Timothy 5:17-25
September 27th, 2009

Exordium: The minister faces challenges and situations on every hand. He may feel like a juggler trying to balance things and keep the ship of the church on its right course toward the Kingdom of God.

The Highest Office in the Church

1 Timothy 5:1-16

September 20, 2009

Exordium: This passage starts out teaching us about life in the church, and goes almost immediately to family matters and illustrations for life in the home.

How close these two great gifts of God are: the church and the family circle.  The one seems to merge into the other. For after all, the church is a collection of households, and that includes the households where there is only one. That too is a little church.

An Athlete of the Spirit

1 Timothy 4:6-16
September 13, 2009

Exordium: One can learn a lot from attending funerals. I remember well the farewell service for the wife of a dear pastor friend of mine. He was a poet as well as a preacher. His beloved wife, Maryanne, went to be with the Lord and I was there and Jim, the husband, brought the message himself. We were all amazed and I wondered what he would he say and how could he do it?

He described Maryanne in glowing terms, “before she began to breathe the finer air,” as he put it. Then he summarized her life with one phrase which will never leave my memory. He said, “She was “an athlete of the spirit.”

Heirs of All Things

I PETER 4: 1-5

September 6, 2009

Exordium: Paul was a lover of life. He rejoiced at being citizen of God’s world as well as of God’s kingdom. He wrote to Timothy: “God has given us richly all things to enjoy.” (I Timothy 6:17B) Think of that sentence in terms of his embracing of life, the good life, God had given him.

We have often recounted his sufferings for the gospel, but how much have we celebrated his joy. You will remember that he wrote his great epistle of joy from a prison cell.

His grasp of God’s world was large, and he tried to expand his view of the world as well to help us to see how gracious and generous and good our God is and to enable us to enjoy Him more and more. One of His great expansive sentences was: “All things are yours and you are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.” (I Corinthians 3:21)

The Mystery of Godliness

1 Timothy 3: 14-16

August 30, 2009

Exordium: Paul’s goal here is to help Timothy see what a great thing he is working with – the very “house of God”, that is the place where He has chosen to dwell and where His children have the hub and center of their lives. He calls it the “church of the living God,” meaning that the Spirit of God is what causes the church to be alive and growing as it is.

Turning a Curse into a Blessing

I Timothy 2: 8-15

August 16, 2009

Exordium: This passage is about how we worship-an important subject since we do that every Lord’s Day- as well as in our homes. We want to get it right.

This part of the Word of God takes us back all the way to the beginning of things, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and judgments came upon them.  These are judgments we live with every day.

But in worship we reverse these curses and actually turn them into blessings.  Let me show you what I mean. Since the curses were separate and different for the man and the woman, we must turn them into blessings separately. In this section of First Timothy, the men come first.