Full Sermon We Still Thank God for the Reformation based on Revelation 14:6-7

Let us pray: Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I. Introduction. Imagine if you could go into the future about 50 or 100 years. In that time all diseases were gone. No more cancer or heart attacks or illness of any kind. The people of that time went about their daily living without thinking about the breakthroughs of the days when those diseases were causing heartache in our world. They forgot how tragic the times were when diseases were a big problem.

If Lutherans from 180 years ago could see what is going on in our time, then they might see today’s Lutherans as people who do not think much about the spiritual problems that led to the Reformation of the Christian Church around 500 years ago. Problems like ignorance of the teachings of the Bible and lack of concern about the importance of the Law that shows us our sin and the Gospel that shows us our Savior. Those older Lutherans might wonder why people had forgotten their spiritual roots.

The important thing for Lutherans today is to set aside time each year to remember the spiritual darkness of the past and the light of the teachings of the Reformation about Jesus’ saving mission for our salvation.

II. Meaning of Revelation 14:6-7 in the past. Many Lutherans before the last century believed that the angel or the messenger referred to in Revelation 14:6-7 (Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. And he said with a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.”)that angel or messenger is the sixteenth century German reformer Martin Luther—not that the words can be applied to him but that those verses are, in fact, a direct reference to the man named Martin Luther. Here is what Johann Bugenhagen preached at Luther’s funeral in 1546: “This angel who says, ‘Fear God and give him the honor,’ was Dr. Martin Luther. And what is written here, ‘Fear God and give him the honor,’ are the two parts of Dr. Martin Luther’s doctrine, the Law and the Gospel.”

C. F. W. Walther preached in a sermon just 179 years ago: “These words from the Revelation of St. John are, as you have already learned on other occasions, a prophecy of the Reformation of the church established by God through Luther three hundred years ago. The angel, the one sent by God, who flew through the midst of heaven is Luther, and the eternal Gospel that he preached is Luther’s doctrine” (“Reformation Sermon on Revelation 14.6–12 (1845),” Treasury of C. F. W. Walther, tr. Joel R. Baseley, vol. 4 [Dearborn, MI: Mark V Publications, 2008], 112).

III. Meaning of Revelation 14 today. If you read sermons and commentaries from the last one hundred years, you might not find a single Lutheran who still believes that Revelation 14 refers to Martin Luther. That may be the reason that many Lutheran churches no longer use Revelation 14 on the Festival of the Reformation. Those verses are not persuasive to them.

However, this change is not because we finally have a better understanding of the verse. Rather, the truth is that Bugenhagen and Walther and Lutherans in those days didn’t consider the idea silly or strange to say that an event as huge as the Reformation could have been prophesied in the Scriptures. Especially Lutherans at the time of Luther believed that Luther, by the power of the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, had set them free from utter bondage.

And that is no small thing.

IV. Walther quote about time of Luther. Walther characterizes things this way: “Before [Luther’s day], nearly a thousand years of spiritual darkness had settled over all of Christianity. . . . The light of the pure Gospel was lost nearly everywhere. . . . The Book of Books, . . . the Holy Scriptures, lay in the dust, right in the midst of Christianity. . . . All of Christianity was under the yoke of slavery. . . . The anti-Christ, foretold in Scripture, the Pope in Rome, ruled on his throne of Satan. . . . Christianity languished in fearful despair and anxiety. Thousands had, in their previous predicament of sin, cried out in vain, ‘What must we do to be saved?’ But there was no answer” (Walther, 110–11).

V. Those days were really bad.Worse even than a war. Worse than a food shortage. Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and the other reformers of the church in the sixteenth century recognized that things do not get worse, more desperate in this life, than when a person does not know, cannot see, the gracious God revealed at last in the Gospel that Luther rediscovered in the Scriptures and proclaimed so clearly.

VI. Pastor Kaiser’s story. Reformation Sunday helps us to turn our thoughts to the Word of God. We see the power of the Word, for example, in the life of Lennart (Leonhard) Kaiser. He was pastor in a small town in Bavaria in the time of the Reformation, started preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and was then accused of being a Lutheran—that is, a false teacher. Standing before the episcopal court of Passau in 1524, he gave in and renounced his Lutheran beliefs. But he found no peace. He resigned his position and in 1525 went to Wittenberg in Germany to study.

After eighteen months, news came that his father was dying. He went back to Bavaria, even though he knew that might be dangerous. He saw his father but shortly thereafter was apprehended again and accused once more of being a false teacher. This time he was more firmly grounded in the Word of God and defended the pure teaching of the Gospel when he was interrogated. For that, he was defrocked and handed over to the secular authorities. He was burned at the stake on August 16, 1527. He asked the people attending his execution to sing the hymn “Come, Holy Spirit”; his last words were “Jesus, I am yours; take me to heaven.”

We celebrate Martin Luther and the Reformation today because God has used him, like an angel flying in mid-heaven, to bring this bright, heavenly, joyous, eternal Gospel also to us, and to many others.

VII. Lutheran conference in Wittenberg in 2015. Through the Lutheran reformers and their followers, this eternal Gospel has spread over these last five hundred years to sinners throughout the world. In 2015, a Confessional Lutheran Leadership Conference was held in Wittenberg, Germany, the little city where Luther taught and preached.

This conference included participants from Germany, from Sweden, from Norway, from the US and Canada, but also from Ethiopia, Madagascar, Tanzania, Cameroon, Cambodia, Malaysia, Japan, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Mexico, Venezuela, Panama, and many others. Lutherans from all these lands assembled there in Wittenberg, the birthplace of the Reformation.

Gathered together, they heard with joy the preaching of this eternal Gospel. They sang together with joy, praising the Lamb who was slain, and who, by his blood, has redeemed men from every nation and tribe and language and people. Together, they thanked God for what he had given to them through Luther’s Reformation—the clear light and testimony of this eternal Gospel of Jesus Christ.

We gather here today to thank God for this as well. This is not a stretch to conclude, as many Christians have, that Luther was the angel, the messenger, who preached to the entire earth—to “every nation and tribe and language and people.” Today, we give thanks to God specifically for Martin Luther and his teaching which reformed the Lord’s Church, of which we are members.

We thank God for Martin Luther and the doctrine he preached and taught with such clarity in his day and continues to be preached and taught in our day.

VIII. Conclusion. Whether he is the angel in these verses in Revelation 14 might be up for debate, but that does not take away from the importance of the Reformation; after our Lord’s life and death and resurrection, after the courageous work of the apostles, the most important event in Church history is the Reformation. Today we remember the Reformation as we fear, love, and trust in God and give Him the glory. Amen.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Note: Material taken from and adapted from Reformation sermons from CPR by Pastor Jared Melius (October 30, 2022) and Pastor Thomas Egger (October 29, 2017).