Our Protestant Identity - Mattie Montgomery

Salvation stands on Christ alone, not on tradition, performance, or human authority. When we return to Scripture as our measure, we recover the same simple faith that saved the thief on the cross—grace received, not earned.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Thank you for listening to this message from the Altar Fellowship.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

You should know this about my uh situation. I have so much to say to you. This is a topic I've been studying really for years, really intensely for months, uh, for this message, I suppose. And uh I also don't have a timer, the back screen broke, so there's no telling there is no telling how long I may speak today. Uh it's it'll be fine for you. Second service people may have a hard time finding a place to park when they show up, but uh that'll be fine. That'll be fine. Um you know, there was a moment last year, I suppose, maybe two years ago, when I had to stand at this pulpit and give uh a cautionary warning to the church about uh a ministry that had sprung up in town that I knew was uh some some members of which were encouraging people to leave the altar fellowship and to come and join their their movement. And it's it's that is hard for me. I'm not really uh naturally uh disposed to confrontation. It's not something that I love to do. Uh but I recognize that as uh a shepherd here in this house, I'm responsible to the shepherd for the way that I keep and guard the members of this community um from deception or from division. And uh and I feel like I today need to do something similar. Um only now it's not some new church plant here in the tri-cities. Um now it's the Roman Catholic Church. I I feel I have to warn you against entertaining. And here's here's why. I want you to know where this is coming from. And I I found over these last years of ministry such a comforting kinship with the Apostle Paul. It's it's an amazing thing the way that in the scriptures he shares his heart and his vulnerability, even his fears and his insecurities in a lot of his writing and speaking. And I'll start here in Acts chapter 20. And in this in this interaction, Paul is talking to the elders of the church in Ephesus, a church that he helped plant. And he's saying goodbye to them, knowing he's never going to see them again on earth. And this is what he says to them, his last words to them, he says, Indeed, now I know that you all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, will see my face no more. Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men, for I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God. Therefore, take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood. For this I know for I know this, that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also, from among yourselves, men will rise up, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore, watch and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone day and night with tears. And so I need you to hear me today because we have to have a vital family conversation. There is a shadow of deception that is creeping into the minds of my generation in a way that is unique in my lifetime. And this shadow of deception, this is the seed that grows into religious deception that has drawn countless millions of my contemporaries into I should say away from the foundation of the gospel of grace. And and and this is the idea. It's it's this it can't be that simple. It can't be that simple. Confess the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. All who call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. It can't be that simple. That's the thought. And it seems innocent enough. Well, what more is there? You know, there's let me let me look at church history, let me begin to study doctrine. And you hear these extravagant claims from people that say things like the Catholic Church is the one true church established by Jesus Christ, and we have 2,000 years of unbroken apostolic succession that we stand on. And so this is the the way the church has always been historically, and it's the way that God designed the church to be. And if we had hundreds of hours, maybe I could begin to scratch the surface of all the reasons that is not true. But here's here's the reality. We're gonna get into some of it today. But I need to, as one, the the Bible would say, the one that watches over your soul. I'm accountable before God to caution you to say there is an institution that presents itself as the one true church that is inviting you to come and join the one true church, and it can be really appealing because it feels old, and you think just because it's old, it must be right. But you should know that much of Catholic tradition is just Roman paganism that has been wrapped in Christian language. And if we are not careful, we will be drawn into a pagan religion that has the name of Jesus and other biblical characters slapped upon it. Here's the truth. And and this is just me being vulnerable here. I I had some people in our church, I don't know, a year or more ago come to me and say, hey, you know, I'm just interested in finding more out about church history. I thought I might start go visiting the uh, you know, I might go visit the Catholic church in town. What do you think? And and here's what went through my mind. This is again vulnerable disclosure here. I thought, well, I don't want to seem insecure or controlling. I want to be the cool dad, you know. So, oh sure, go for it, man. It's totally fine. It turns out, like, any of you who've raised kids, you know this. Uh sometimes your kids don't need you to be cool and agreeable. They need you to protect them from things that could be dangerous. And and here's where I was wrong. I thought, you know, we have a style here at the altar where maybe you might see a conga line, you know, break out from time to time. We may do, we may do fire tunnels, the kids may jump up on the stage and dance around for an hour. Like that's stuff we do, that's our style. And I thought, well, Catholics, they have their style, you know, they have pictures of saints and stained glass, and it's like, it's just a different style. And uh, and and the the reality is I was wrong. Because while we have a style that we acknowledge is a style, the Catholic Church has um stood on a foundation of sort of self-proclaimed infallibility in saying everything that is our style is actually God's will for all people. And if you don't agree with it, you're not welcome in the church, and if you aren't welcome in the church, you can't find salvation. And so there's a dogmatization that has happened for many, many generations now in the Catholic Church, where they say essentially, if if our style doesn't become your style, then you are anathema. You're let you, you know, you can be accursed or condemned and you are uh removed from fellowship. And so uh I I want you to hear what I'm saying. What I'm not saying is that uh all Catholics are you know evil, terrible people and we hate them. We have much in common with many Catholics in the same way that I have much in common with many Mormons, many Jews, many Muslims. But the reality is the Roman institution has departed from the gospel of grace. And they have institutionalized, they've canonized their departure in such a degree that it would take a historic level of repentance and restoration to rectify it. Some Catholic leaders have attempted that. We call those the the reformers they tried it in the 1500s, and uh and and we are still trying it today. Understand, I haven't given up on the Roman Catholic institution, but I am saying if we if we can we're gonna have to return to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to the authority of the scriptures if we are ever to have true fellowship and to be able to build together on a foundation of the true gospel. And so today I want to point out a couple things that I I think I I need us to be aware of if we're gonna navigate this season in Western in the history of Western civilization. All right? Sir Are you good? Nobody's gotten up to run out of the doors yet. Okay, so far so good. So let's start first with uh the pagan practice of praying to the dead. I told our volunteers today, I said there's a high probability I'm gonna lose you some friends today, so it's all right. We'll figure it out together. Here's the problem. Uh the the Catholic argument would be, well, the saints aren't dead, you know, they're alive, we're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. The problem is that we're we when we pray to, when I pray, if I pray to Mary and you pray to Mary and she's praying to Mary, and we all get together and we're all praying to Mary, we're ascribing to Mary um two of God's incommunicable attributes. Those are attributes that belong to God alone that aren't shared with other people. Those two attributes are omnipresence and omniscience. Omnipresence is the idea that God is everywhere all of the time. Omniscience is that God knows everything. And so the thought that Mary or any other saint is somehow everywhere after their death is uh is an attribution to them of an attribute of God that does not belong to any person. Like I we don't believe we, you know, people might point to like the transfiguration on the mount where Jesus is seen with uh with Elijah and Moses, and they would say, Well, see, the saints, they can interact with us. And I would say, okay, I don't think that Elijah and Moses hear everything that is ever said about them all the time.

unknown 12:20

Right?

SPEAKER_01 12:21

And in fact, there's no biblical framework for the idea that somehow a saint who has passed away becomes omnipresent or omniscient. They don't see everything, they don't exist everywhere, they don't um I'm not saying that God couldn't allow them to see something that's happening on earth or that they wouldn't be able to see something that's happening on earth, but the idea that they could see everything that's happening on earth is a deification of the saints. Like we're promoting the saints to God's level in a way that Roman paganism, which precedes the earthly ministry of Jesus. So, like before the Christian church was established, for seven or eight hundred years, there was Roman paganism where there were many gods. Uh, they were very strict about keeping traditions, including holidays and you know, sacrifices and things like that, to those many gods and goddesses. I feel like I should incorporate that because we're gonna talk about Mary here in a minute. Um, you know, many gods and goddesses that they would worship. And and also the Roman paganism is is uh where we get the idea of like praying to dead ancestors or or worshiping dead ancestors. And so this is what this is, is is paganism that has sort of adopted Christian characters and fit them into pagan practices. So far, so good. So I want to look first at the scriptures, okay? Let's get a framework for who Christ is, and then we'll look for just a minute at what the Roman Catholic abomination says Christ is. I I don't want there to be any. I am more Protestant today than I've ever been in my entire life. I am I'm gonna get John Calvin's face tattooed on the other side of my neck. Like, I don't care. I will nail thesis to everybody's door. Uh let's look at Hebrews chapter 7. I'm gonna read this in the New Living Translation just because it's a little bit easier to understand. It says, uh it says, there were many priests under the old system, for death prevented them from remaining in office. This is talking about the old religious system. There were many priests under the old system, for death prevented them from remaining in office. But because Jesus lives forever, his priesthood lasts forever. Therefore, he is able once and forever to save those who come to God through him. He lives forever to intercede with God on our behalf or on their behalf. He is able once and forever to save those who come to God through him. That is the truth we live and die on. That's the truth we build the gospel, our understanding of the gospel upon. That's the truth the church has to stand on. However, that is not the doctrine that the Catholic Church today or throughout history has taught. Not that Jesus, as our great high priest, is able once and forever to save those who come to God through him. In fact, uh the Catholic position is that Jesus is able to sort of save us, but that we can lose that salvation actually again and again. And it's not like the the blood of Jesus is like partially or temporarily efficacious or effective for us, but that we also need some other righteousness, either from ourselves or from someone else, to be credited to our account. You can see this um maybe most clearly in history when uh in the 1500s. And this is this is maybe what led to uh the Protestant Reformation. This is what drove Martin Luther actually insane. I uh is is Pope Leo X. It's interesting we have another Pope Leo right now. Pope Pope Leo X was building St. Peter's Basilica. Has anybody here ever been there? It's unbelievable. Imagine trying to build that period, imagine trying to build it in the early 1500s. Difficult, right? And the amount of money that that would take is astronomical. And so if you're the Pope, you gotta come up with a way to raise funds, to get people to give more, so that you can build this incredible monument to your, you know, historically successful papacy. Like he's it's it's the same, you know, human impulse that drove the pharaohs to enslave entire nations of people so that they could build pyramids so they could be remembered, right? For their uh for their reign, their dynasty. And so you have uh Pope Leo X, he's building St. Peter's Basilica, one of the most unbelievable buildings I have ever laid eyes on. Certainly, without question, the most unbelievable building I've ever laid my eyes on. So they come up with this idea. Here's what we'll do: we will sell indulgences. We've got to raise funds for St. Peter's Basilica. So what we'll do is we'll sell forgiveness for sins. And so people believe that after they die, then they'll go to purgatory for a really long time. And so we will sell them, you know, the ability to lessen the amount of time they have to spend in purgatory. And so um, a uh an indulgence, this is actually so funny, it's something I learned just recently, had a specific amount of time that you could max out. If you if you paid all the money, you could you could reduce your time in purgatory by up to, but not exceeding, 1,902,202 years and 270 days. That's a lot, you know. So that's like that's a lot of sins that I can just get rid of by buying this indulgence, you know. An indulgence, as Matthew Barrett says in his book, God's Word Alone, the authority of Scripture, what the reformers taught and why it still matters. Um he writes, an indulgence was a the full or partial remission of temporal punishment for sins. It was said to be drawn from the treasury of merit, which is another nonsense pagan imagination. It was said to be drawn from the treasury of merit, a storehouse of grace which was accumulated by the meritorious righteous works of Christ, and also by the superabundant merit of the saints. What does that mean? It means that let's say Peter, who did so many righteous acts, you know, if he needed to do a thousand righteous acts to get himself into heaven, he did two thousand righteous acts. And so his extra, you know, extra credit got, he got into heaven, but then his extra credit was stored in the treasury of merit, and that if I pray to Peter or if I give to uh to the church, then you know, Peter's righteousness can be credited to my account, and it can actually lessen my time in purgatory so that way I can get to heaven quicker. I wish I was joking. This is what scripture actually tells us. You know, in Luke chapter 23, we read the story of the thief on the cross, who I feel like it's an interesting thing to think about the scriptures because they're not just doctrinal and they're not just historical. It's like the God who wanted to communicate doctrine is the God that also orchestrated history. And so I feel like God allowed the thief on the cross story to occur to blow all of our religious impulses out of the water before we even had a chance to act on them. You have this one, he was never baptized, he never gave alms, you know, he was never catechized, he never preached the gospel to anybody, he uh never went on a mission strip, he never joined a church, like all this stuff that we tried to say is necessary for salvation. This man didn't do any of it. The thief on the cross in Luke 23, I want to just read this to you. Luke 23, starting in verse 39, says, Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed him, saying, If you are the Christ, save yourself and us. The next verse. But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds. And so he, just like the Pharisee that I preached about a couple, or the text collector, excuse me, that I preached about a couple weeks ago, this man recognizes that he is a sinner. And he's not asking for some sort of special reward for the good he's done. He's asking for mercy to cover the fact that he is a sinner. So he says, We indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds, but this man has done no wrong. Verse 42, he then said to Jesus, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And then, and Jesus said to him, Assuredly I say to you, in 1,902, 202 years and 270 days, you'll be with me in paradise. Oh, that's not what it says. That's right. Assuredly, I say to you, today, everybody say today. Today, you will be with me in paradise. What righteous acts has that man ever done? Not one. Everything he had ever done had been wicked and selfish and destructive and dishonest. Everything he had done was rebellion against God until the last conversation he had on earth. He didn't have time. To offset his wickedness. And yet he was promised by Christ, today you will be with me in paradise. The idea that we can sell time off of purgatory is pagan nonsense. The truth is Christ, who is our great high priest, is able to save to the uttermost. That he's able to save fully and completely everyone who comes to God through him. Amen. Everyone who comes to God through him. And so, you know, now, because, you know, in history, because this merit-based soteriology, soteriology is our the doctrine of salvation that we hold. Because of this merit-based soteriology or the system of justification, the Catholic institution began to see human virtue as salvific in nature. That's to say that we began to look at the good deeds of people like those are the things that save us. And so here's what naturally flows from that. If we begin to look at virtue, human virtue like it's able to save us, then we look at virtuous humans like they are able to save us. Do you understand what I'm saying? How these things lead to each other? How like bad soteriology, that's our understanding of how salvation happens, bad soteriology leads to actual idolatry. And so in Roman Catholic practice, not only is Christ our Savior, but so also is Mary and Peter and the other saints. In fact, the Pope, the Pope today can release people from purgatory, which is actually one of the things that made the reformers so angry, is that the Pope, on his own impetus, could release any person from purgatory he wanted to. And so they were like, why are people paying for this? Why would you not just do that for everyone? Right? But you got, you know, if you hold the keys to salvation and people got to pay you to get them, you have the power, right? And so uh so in Roman Catholic practice, not only is Christ our Savior, but so also is Mary and Peter and other saints, including the Pope himself, who after all is the one who would uh issue the indulgence. So this produces an idolatrous infatuation with the saints. If we see human virtue as the thing that saves us, then we see virtuous humans as able to save us. You could see this, I think, most clearly in the Catholic veneration of Mary. Now, here's the interesting thing is that if you say Catholics worship Mary, they will tell you we don't worship Mary, we venerate Mary. You should know that if you look up in the dictionary, synonyms of worship, veneration is on the list. It's just two words that mean the same thing. Here's here's so you should know this about me. I I um took my first several theology classes at Catholic universities. I went to two Catholic universities um during my undergrad. And so I um my father taught at a Catholic university when I was when I was young. And uh, and I remember talking with one of my theology professors, and I asked her, and I said, Hey, it seems like y'all worship Mary. And she said, We don't worship her, we venerate her. And then she explained this. She said, We honor Mary because of her yes to the Lord. That is a good and right thing, and and it's worthy of honor. And I said, I totally agree with you, that's fine. And then it was years later that I finally stopped and looked, and I said, That's not what y'all do, though. I respect Mary for her yes to the Lord, I admire it. I my plan is to preach about Mary next week. However, you should know that uh we can hear the salesmanship all we want, but uh the reality I think we can't escape is is this. We we've got to trust our eyes. When you see people worshiping Mary, it's because they're worshiping Mary. Here's here's okay, so there is a uh uh a prayer. It's a very actually extremely popular prayer in the Catholic Church, even today. So this isn't some you know ancient sort of fringe thing. This is something that today, millions of Catholics woke up and recited this prayer. It's called the Morning Consecration to Mary. And I'm just gonna read it to you, and you guys can, Daniel, you know this one? You're you're laughing already. All right, you guys can uh just come to your own conclusions, I guess. This is the prayer that today, this day on May 3rd, 2026, millions of Catholics woke up and recited this prayer. My queen, my mother, I offer myself entirely to thee. And to show my devotion to thee, I offer thee this day my eyes, my ears, my mouth, my heart, my whole being without reserve. Wherefore, good mother, as I am thine own, keep me, regard me as thy property and possession. Amen. Man, we we get sometimes so into the weeds of doctrinal debate that we you know we argue over the meanings of words. It's not worship, it's veneration. It's like, no, that's worship. It's worship. And it comes from it it happens because of a poor soteriology. We view salvation as being something that is a product of man's virtue, so then we look at a virtuous human like Mary and we say, well, that person can save us too. But 1 Timothy 2, 5 makes it very clear how we are able to come before God. There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus. There is one God. This has been, it's just, yeah, this has been uh uh a verse that we have to cling to. Like you understand that I can pray for you, but I can't mediate your relationship with you. You don't come to God through me as your pastor. You don't come to God through your parents, you come to God through Christ Jesus. There's one God and one mediator between God and man, that is the man Christ Jesus. And just in case, it's almost like the God who wanted to communicate doctrine was also in charge of history because there's an event recorded in Luke chapter 12 that clearly shows us what Christ's position on this, on the worship of Mary was. In Luke chapter 12, verses 27 and 28, it tells us this story. And it happened as he, this is Jesus, spoke these things that a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to him, Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts which nursed you. But he said, this is how Jesus responds, but he said, this is Luke 12, 28. You can check me on this. More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it. Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it. Listen, I have heard the word of God and kept it many times, and there are no Catholics praying before pictures of me. Nobody lights a candle with my picture on it in their house during Lent. Weird, right? Jesus is is clearly communicating hierarchy or priority here. He's saying, listen, I'm not taking anything away from Mary, but understand if you're looking for an order of sacredness, this is the thing we esteem the most, is obedience to the word of God. The thing we honor the most is obedience to the word of God. More than Mary, the womb that bore me or the breasts that nursed me, more than that, more blessed than that are those who hear the word of God and keep it. This is Jesus Himself clearly communicating priority. Not to say that Mary isn't an example worth following, a woman worth celebrating, whose story is for all of us, you know, an inspiration, a bit of guidance and revelation about how to respond when God calls us to a task that is way too big for us to handle. I'm so grateful for the example that she set, and it's an example we all ought to follow. But she doesn't stand between us and God. Christ is our only mediator. You know, and we are told, if you remember, that you know, the Catholic Church is the sort of the one true church, and that the way that they practice the faith today is the way that it always has been. That is it's actually just not true. You know, for example, the uh the treasury of merit was uh that idea was codified by the Catholic Church in the year 1343. So for 1300 years, the treasury of merit just wasn't a part of Catholic doctrine. Uh Mary, for example, um all of the Marian legends, the Marian mythology that have become uh that have been proclaimed infallible doctrine by the Catholic Church have happened since the Protestant Reformation in the last 500 years. And those include the idea that Mary was without sin, she was born without original sin. That's the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, that she lived her life sinlessly, that she was a perpetual virgin, a perpetual virginity of Mary, and that she was bodily assumed into heaven, that she never died, that she just floated up into heaven. Um, none of those things, of course, are in the scriptures. This is just mythology that has developed very recently, more recently, in fact, than even the Protestant Reformation. Um, you could see the same sort of developmental issue uh with the church's position. This is, I've got too much to say on this, and uh and I don't have a clock here, with the uh with the church's position. This is from uh Vatican I in 1870, the Roman Catholic Church said it was to Simon alone, that's Peter, to whom he, that's Christ, had already said, You shall be called Cephas in in John 1.42, that the Lord, after his confession, said, Blessed are you, and I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church and will give uh you the keys of the kingdom. Then the council adds, this is a direct quote from the Vatican Council, the Council of the Roman Catholic Church at Vatican I in 1870. This quote, this doctrine has always been understood by the Catholic Church in accordance with the ancient and constant faith of the universal church. I've got a full page of church fathers who disagree with that. I've got quotes from Tertullian and John Chrysostom and uh Ambrose of Milan and Augustine of Hippo and several others who would disagree. And so there's these claims that the whole church has always agreed with our current position, but in 1870, which is really in the grand scheme of the last 2,000 years, not that long ago, the Roman Catholic Church uh canonized into doctrine something that much of the early church would have disagreed with enthusiastically, and they did it by saying this is what the church, all of the church, has always believed. That is a lie. I need you to hear this. Like that's a demonic lie designed specifically to exert control over people who are willing to defer the study of God's word to someone else because maybe they're too innocent or too ignorant to do it on their own. And so uh the true issue here, this is really the core issue. Like I could talk for hours and hours and hours about official doctrines of the Catholic Church that are just unbiblical. But the core issue here is this who has the final say? In the uh 1400s, the Catholic Church, I should say, yeah, from the 1300s through the 1500s, the Catholic Church had a pretty fierce debate over who would get the final word, the Pope or a church council? Who was the final authority? And so it's interesting this idea that like you got to submit to Rome because Rome isn't even quite clear on what it means to submit to Rome. Is it submit to whatever the Pope says, or is it submit to whatever some Vatican council asserts or writes down? You have in the 1370s, for like 70 years in the 1300s, um, you have uh another papacy in Avignon, France. And so you have the Roman Pope. There's a Pope in Rome, and then there's another Pope in France, and so the church gets together and they select a council, and they think, all right, we're gonna clear this up once and for all. We're gonna get together in Pisa, Italy, and we are gonna select another pope. And this is gonna be like the official popes. And then they select that guy. Guess what happens? The other two refuse to leave. So now there's three popes, and they're all excommunicating each other, and people are like, you know, winding up dead under suspicious circumstances, and it just becomes this like very complicated situation in the 1300s. So eventually, after all this chaos, people start to say, well, maybe the pope doesn't hold all authority, maybe the council should hold authority, the councils have the final word, and so then you have councils saying things like what they said at Vatican I in 1870, which is just demonstrably not true. And so the idea that maybe the Pope is infallible, he cannot err, that is clearly false. And then they thought, well, maybe the council cannot err. And uh and that also now is clearly false. And so, what is it that cannot err? You want to know what it is? Scripture. Scripture cannot err. Welcome to the Protestant Reformation. This is solar scriptura. This is to say not that tradition doesn't matter, not that church authority doesn't matter, but if church authority or tradition disagree with the scripture, we submit to scripture. And I and I would say that about me, that if I ever ask you to do something that's not biblical, submit to the scriptures. Submit to God's word, where God's word is clear. And then people would say, well, you need someone to interpret the scriptures for you. And I actually, this is an interesting, I'm just, we're just talking here, right? Like this, okay. I actually am working out this idea that I don't necessarily, I'm not against conciliarism. That's the idea that you believe that the council holds authority. I would just consider myself, I literally have never heard anyone else use this term before. Maybe they have. I just haven't Googled it yet. But uh, I would consider myself a universal conciliarist. And here's what I mean: I think the council holds the final authority. I just don't think the council is this group of a dozen Catholic scholars that the Pope appointed. I think the council is the full body of Christ globally. And so I do think the council holds authority to interpret scripture, but I think that God has decentralized that council in his sovereign grace to make sure that people from different walks of life, from different backgrounds, are able to say, no, no, no, I see it this way, so that we together as a collective body can come closer to the truth generation after generation after generation. So uh, anyway, are we having fun? I am sweating. Let's do it, Jesus. Thank you, Lord. And so the question of who has final authority, is it the council or is it the Pope? Uh I would disagree, I would live and die with my boys John Luther and John Calvin and Zwingli by saying uh it's the scriptures. The scriptures have to hold the final authority. And if there is any tradition or church council or church leader that disagrees with the scriptures, I will always yield to God's word uh above all. You know, sola scriptura doesn't mean that God only speaks through the Bible. Sola scriptura means that the Bible is the only universal and infallible rule of faith. That if it's not in the Bible, it it may be beneficial, it may be helpful, but it's not divine universally. And so um here, I I'll I'll actually I'll point this out to you that this is actually how the apostles uh dealt with their their own authority. Um I would look at Acts chapter 15. Um let's do it. I don't have a timer telling me that I'm past time, so we're just gonna do it. In Acts chapter 15, there's this is the Jerusalem Council. There's a bit a debate going on uh among the first century, the first generation church leaders about uh circumcision, about Gentiles coming to salvation, what they need to do to be saved, and even if they can be saved, or if salvation is only for the Jews. And there is this uh uh this uh set of circumstances. I'll just read it to you. Okay, so it says, now the apostles, starting in verse 6 of Acts 15, now the apostles and elders came together to consider this matter. And when there had been much dispute, understand, this is a church dispute over doctrine. Peter rose up and said to them, Men and brethren, you know that a good while ago God chose among us that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. So Peter is referring here to Cornelius, the story of Cornelius and his house. Peter has a vision of, you know, unclean foods coming down out of heaven, and God says, you know, don't call unclean what I've called clean, and then Peter preaches the gospel to Cornelius, a Gentile. He and his whole family are saved and filled with the Holy Spirit. So Peter says, I've seen it happen. In verse 8, he says, So God, who knows the heart, acknowledged them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us, and made no distinction between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. Purifying their hearts, what?

unknown 41:04

By faith.

SPEAKER_01 41:05

Yeah, yeah, not by purgatory, not by uh, you know, atoning rituals, purifying their hearts by faith. Our hearts are purified by faith. And so uh so he says, uh purifying their hearts uh by faith. Now, therefore, why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, everybody say grace. Yeah, through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved in the same manner as they. Then all the multitude kept silent and listened to Barnabas and Paul declaring how many miracles and wonders God had worked through them among the Gentiles. Okay, so so here's what you have. These guys are all saying, we're not sure, can the Gentiles get saved? Do they do Gentiles have to convert to Judaism? Do they have to start get circumcised and start going to the temple and making sacrifices? Like, what do we do with these guys? And so you have Peter and Paul and Barnabas all stand up and share testimonies. Peter's saying, I saw it through uh in Cornelius's life. Paul and Barnabas are saying, Man, we're seeing it all over the place. God is giving grace to the Gentiles. It's obvious God wants these people to be saved. And uh and so then this is what happens. James, this is the brother of Jesus in verse 13. And after they had become silent, James answered, saying, Men and brethren, listen to me. Simon has declared, that's Peter, has declared how God at the first visited the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name. And with this, the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written, after this, everybody say as it is written. Yeah, yeah, pay attention to that. After this, I will return and will rebuild the tabernacle of David which has fallen down. I will rebuild its ruins and I will set it up so that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord who does all uh do all these things. So this is from Amos, this is from the book of Amos. And and then it says, uh, James says, known to God from eternity are all his works. Therefore I judge that we should not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God, but that we write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from these, from things strangled and from blood. For Moses has had throughout many generations those who uh who preach him in every also they should you should abstain from drinking blood, which is another uh point of the Catholic transubstantiation thing. Anyway, um you should abstain. Yeah, yeah. There's so much. Okay. For Moses has throughout many generations, Moses had throughout many generations those who preach him in every city being read in the synagogues every Sabbath. Then, verse 22, then it pleased the apostles and elders with the whole church to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch, Paul, and Barnabas, etc. etc. And they wrote them. This letter. So this is what settles it. Is James stands up and says, it's biblical. And everybody goes, Okay. Peter and Paul and Barnabas all said, we're seeing personal testimonies. We have a personal witness that this is the right thing to do, but it's not until James invokes the authority of Scripture that the council is able to say, okay, we're in agreement now. We'll submit to what God's word says. And so this is where we see, I think, a beautiful working out of how doctrine comes into play. We can say, hey, I'm experiencing this thing, I had this dream or this vision, or God spoke to me in this way, that's wonderful. We should bring those things to the table. But when we see those things disagreeing with Scripture, we should question our own personal experiences. But when we see those things borne out in Scripture, when Scripture affirms and confirms the things that God is doing in the world around us, then we can run with it confidently. You see the same thing in 1 Corinthians chapter 9. This is uh the the apostle Paul struggled with the Corinthian church. I can relate. And uh and this is what he says. And I think this is so beautiful. So there's this idea, right, that Peter is the Pope and the seat of Peter, that's the seat of authority over the entire church, and as the uh as the bishop of Rome, that Peter was the you know the primary authority, that he's the sort of foundational cornerstone, he's the rock upon which the entire church is built. That would be the Catholic position. But there's this there's this beautiful moment here where you know Paul is advocating for his own authority. And I want you to notice that Paul doesn't say, I was ordained by Peter. I'm a bishop because Peter said I'm a bishop. Peter laid hands on me, I got Peter's permission. This is what he says in uh in 1 Corinthians 9, verses 1 and 2. He says to these people whom he loves, this church that he helped establish, he says, Am I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? Look at the next verse. He says, If I am an apostle to others, yet, if I am not an apostle to others, yet doubtless I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. Here's the the position of the Catholic Church is that this is not, the altar fellowship is not a legitimate church because the leader of the church is not a bishop ordained under the authority of the Roman Catholic institution. But Paul doesn't point to the institution or the office or the appointment as the reason for his authority. He points to the people and he says, You are the seal of my apostleship. I have authority because you've given it to me. I planted this church, I shepherd these people. I've been in your homes, you've been in my homes, we've eaten food together. Like this is this is a family, and Paul is not invoking some external authority. He's saying, you are the seal of my apostleship. That's all the evidence that I need. That's all the proof that I could that I could provide to you. This is the beauty of what God has been doing, is that since the beginning of the church, the Lord Jesus has been establishing his church, not by way of institution, but by way of inspiration, divine inspiration. And he's been calling apostles out of time, men like Paul, for example, and sending them into his mission field to establish them as outposts of heaven on the earth. John Calvin, and so I suppose before I get to that, the question that we have got to ask is where does the final authority lie? Is it with the apostle, the bishop, the pastor, the leader of the local church, or is it with the scriptures? And as the leader of this local church, I should tell you it is with the scriptures, my authority only goes as far as God's word. My authority in your life only goes as far as God's word, and I would never demand or expect anything more than that. John Calvin defined the church like this. He said, The church is the society of all the saints. A society which, spread over the whole world and existing in all ages, is yet bound together by the one doctrine and the one spirit of Christ. It cultivates and observes unity of faith and brotherly accord. With this church, we deny that we have any disagreement. This is John Calvin, the you know, heretic in the eyes of the Catholic Church. This is John Calvin who is excommunicated, removed from fellowship, the reformer. He says, with this church, that is the society of all saints, spread over the whole world and existing in all ages, bound together by the one doctrine and the one spirit of Christ. He says, with this church, we deny that we have any disagreement. Nay, rather, as we revere her as our mother, so we desire to remain in her bosom. Guys, hear what I'm saying. We love the church when it's rightly defined. The church is not a brand or an institution, the church is an organism, it is the body of Christ, and it is comprised of all who call on the name of the Lord for salvation. And I am more convinced today than I have ever been before that there sits in Rome a demonic tyranny, whose express spiritual purpose is to dilute the teaching of the church to such a great degree that the gospel of grace becomes impossible to find. Remember how Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness? The Father said, You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, publicly affirmed his identity as the son of God. Now, Satan couldn't keep Jesus from being the son of God, but what did Satan do? If you really are the son of God, you should command these stones to be turned into bread. If you really are the son of God, then you should do what I tell you. See, there's this demonic impulse that you can see even in the scriptures that recognizes if if I can't keep you from coming to Christ, then I'll try to convince you what you have to do now that you have. If you come to Christ, here's what you have to do. Keep coming to Christ. Grab a hold of him. Chase after him and follow where he leads. So what does all this mean for us? I want to go to 2 Corinthians 7 2. And uh and I want to just read a couple verses to you in 2 Corinthians chapter 7. And this is Paul writing to the Corinthian church after they've done more shenanigans. And uh I'm sorry, I think that's the uh I think that's wrong. That is a good passage, but I think that's the wrong one. It's uh 2 Corinthians, sorry, uh 11, 2 Corinthians chapter 11, uh starting in verse 2, he says, for I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. I I this is I I I should tell you guys as I've been dealing with this, and and even in our church, we've had families leave to convert to Catholicism, and we've had people, you know, encouraging other people to leave to convert to Catholicism. So I need to confront this, and but I find, like I said before, this kinship with Paul. As he says this to the church in Corinth, he says, I am jealous for you with godly jealousy, for I have betrothed you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. Say simplicity. He says, I'm afraid that your minds might be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. I can't think of anything that the Catholic institution is better at than corrupting minds away from the simplicity that is in Christ. The simplicity that is in Christ. He says, for if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit, which you have not received, or a different gospel, which you have not accepted, you may well put up with it. And I I I feel this. The people I've walked with through hell are hearing someone go, the Catholic Church is the one true church, two thousand years of unbroken apostolic succession, and thinking, Oh, that seems cool. And and I and then I hear Paul saying, Dude, I feel you, Maddie. I felt the same way about the Corinthians. These people that I loved, I gave my life for them, were so shallow in their footing, so shallow in their trust for me as their apostle, that if anybody came along and tried to lead them into some religious institution that would pull them away from the simplicity in Christ, I would I thought they might follow. And so I have to say to you, understand, we're not here by luck, we're not here on accident. This community of people has been chosen by God for such a time as this. We stand on a foundation of 2,000 years of faithful men and women of God that have buried themselves into God's word. Many have laid their lives down for this beautiful church, the society of all the saints spread over the whole world and existing in all ages. We stand today on a foundation that they laid. And I'm so grateful we get to do that. And my hope is that you will not be deceived into believing that we are who we are as a church just because, you know, of hillsong. We are who we are as a church because of Jesus. Who promised in Matthew chapter 16 that he would build his church on the confession of his messianic identity, and that against that church the gates of hell would not prevail. This morning we get to engage in one of the two sacraments we recognize. Um we get to engage in in the Eucharist, we get to take communion this morning. And I want to charge you before we do, if I can get the elders to come up and prepare. I want to charge you before we do to remember that it is by faith that we have communion with Christ. It is by faith that we have communion with Christ. It's not by my merit or anyone else's, it's not by your merit or your virtue that we come into communion with Christ. It is by faith. But I would guard, I would caution you to guard very seriously your heart. Do not take this lightly, do not view this as flippant or insignificant. As we engage in the sacrament of communion together, we come very seriously into the presence of the body and blood of Christ, and we we must do so, I think, with an appropriate degree of reverence. This isn't snack time. This isn't something that we do without thought or without care or consideration. Um, we engage in this as an act of corporate meditation on the sacrifice Christ made for us in corporate communion with the one who made the sacrifice. And uh and so I uh I'd ask you to just stand with me and uh just to give you a couple instructions. So we'll have you guys, we've got stations set up in these in front of these two aisles, so we'll have you kind of both filter through these two outside aisles, and then when you're done, you can go back either through the middle or through the uh through the outsides if you need a gluten-free option. We've got one here in the middle. Um let's just uh want you to take a moment to look at your own life, at your own heart. If there is unforgiveness that you're holding, resentment that you're holding, I'd ask you to lay it down before you come and receive this today. If there is secret sin in your life, I'd ask you to turn away from it, confess it before you come and receive the elements today. If there is good you know that God has called you to do, that you have not yet done, I'd ask you to settle that in your heart. Make that commitment today before you come to receive this. But as Jesus instructed his disciples on the night he was betrayed, he took the he took the bread and he broke it. And he said, This is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And then in the same way the scriptures tell us he took the cup and he said, This is my blood of a new covenant shed for you. This take as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. And so we recognize that this is not bread and wine, that spiritually this is the body and the blood of Jesus. And by faith, we are carried in this moment, in the practice of this sacrament, into the presence of Christ with gratitude and humility over the unimaginable sacrifice that he made on our behalf. And so I'll pray and then we'll let you come forward. Lord, we thank you for your body and your blood. We thank you for your kindness toward us that that drove you to the cross and that held you there. Lord, thank you that there was a joy set before you for which you were willing to endure the cross. And God, we thank you that the church is that joy. And Lord, as we receive the body and the blood today, we thank you for the health, the life that it brings. Thank you that by faith today we come into communion with Christ. And we ask you, Lord, that you would draw us nearer to you in this moment than we've ever been. We pray this in your holy name.

unknown 1:00:22

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:25

Thank you for tuning in to this service from the altar fellowship. We pray that you are impacted powerfully by this message. If you have been personally affected by our ministry and you would like to partner with the altar as we work to establish the kingdom of heaven, please visit our website at ww.thealtar.org.