Lessons from Luther and the Reformation

Welcome

Reminder about Shoe Boxes

NO HEAT!

Missions Celebration tonight at 6:00!

Call to worship

Psalm 91:1-7 Those who live in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty. This I declare about the Lord: He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; he is my God, and I trust him. For he will rescue you from every trap and protect you from deadly disease. He will cover you with his feathers. He will shelter you with his wings. His faithful promises are your armor and protection. Do not be afraid of the terrors of the night, nor the arrow that flies in the day. Do not dread the disease that stalks in darkness, nor the disaster that strikes at midday. Though a thousand fall at your side, though ten thousand are dying around you, these evils will not touch you.

LET US STAND AND WORSHIP!

“What a beautiful Name”

Words and Music by Hillsong

PRAYER OF PRAISE FOR WHO GOD IS

Lord,

“What a beautiful Name”

Words and Music by Hillsong

“What a beautiful Name”

Words and Music by Hillsong

PRAYER OF ILLUMINATION TO OPEN OUR HEARTS

Lord,

SERMON

Introduction

INTRODUCTION

This past Friday was Oct 31. And the majority of our nation dressed up in costumes and went out trick-or-treating. And to most of us today that is all October 31 is: a pagan holiday.

But about 500 years ago on Oct 31 a major event took place that changed the church forever: It was called the Great Reformation. A man by the name of Martin Luther nailed a paper with 95 theses (or criticisms) to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg Germany and it changed the direction of the church forever.

Who was martin Luther? Luther was a Catholic monk who spent his life trying to please God with pious deeds. Monks in the middle ages lived in a monastery and spent their lives devoted to praying, meditating, teaching children, helping the sick, and any thing that many today would consider “good deeds”. They were what we would think of a Nun who was married to God. That was Martin Luther’s early life. But that life left Luther unsatisfied and feeling empty.

So, he became a professor at the University of Wittenberg where he lectured on the Bible and when Luther began to study the Scriptures very closely he began to see than the things he was taught by the church his entire life was not what the Bible truly taught.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

What the Catholic church had been teaching Luther and everyone else for hundreds of years was that grace is dispensed through sacraments.

There are 7 sacraments in the Catholic Church:

Baptism which happens during infancy and is the initiation into the church.

Confirmation: This happens between the yes of 12 and 17.

Communion:

Confession or reconciliation

Anointing of the sick

Holy Orders

Marriage

Each of these sacraments were a means of God’s grace which fills the person up so that at the end of their life they would be full and go to heaven.

But The problem with this was that sin took some of that grace away. And everyone sinned, so the person was never full and instead of going to heaven, they went to purgatory. This was an in-between where people were temporarily punished for their sins until they have paid for them in full and then they were admitted into heaven.

Now during the time of purgatory, the saints on earth could pray that this time in purgatory will be shortened and they will go to heaven sooner than expected.

They also believed people on earth could buy indulgences, which helped quicken their refining process and got them to heaven earlier.

This was the common teaching of the Catholic church

Luther believed all of this until he started reading the Bible for himself

This verse that opened Luther’s eyes was Romans 1:17:

Romans 1:16–17 (NASB95)

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.”

What Luther saw in this verse was that these sacraments have nothing to do with dispensing God’s grace! He found that faith and faith alone was the way to God’s righteousness! That God clothes the sinner with His own righteousness when then the sinner places his faith in Christ!

Ephesians 2:8–9 says the same thing: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Romans 4:3 “For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.””

Over and over in Scripture we see that God’s righteousness comes by grace through faith!

Why did no one see this before Luther? Because most people were illiterate in those days, and those who could read could not read the Bible because the translations of the Bible were all written in Latin, not German!

So people were at the mercy of the priests, who taught them the Bible and how they could be saved.

And the church was full of corruption, priests living like Kings, being looked at as these great religious figures who could dispense grace. They were literally seen as the gatekeepers into heaven. They were the authority in the church.

But thank God, the Lord raised up a monk who took it upon himself to study the Bible in great detail and see the error of the church. And thank God, He gave Martin Luther the boldness to address the corruption publically to the church. And we should thank God Martin Luther took it upon himself top translate the Bible in German from the original Greek and Hebrew texts.

The church has drifted again today. We have started following the modern movement of the cultural church. We have been trained by popular trends and man’s ideas about church rather than the Word of God. And our mission has become about us rather than about the Kingdom of God.

I want to give you three principles this morning from the reformation that we need to put back in the church! And I pray that God will open our ears to hear it!

1) The Bible is the sole authority in the church

There were five primary principles that fueled the reformation: 1) Scripture alone, 2) Faith alone, 3) Grace alone, 4) Christ alone, 5) glory to God alone. All of these five principles fall under this main truth: The Bible alone is the sole authority in the church. It is the source of truth!

What Luther pressed was that the Word of God is the only rule for faith and practice. No one had any authority over the Scriptures. Not the pope, not culture, not modern opinion, nothing. The anchor that could keep the church on solid ground is the Word of God.

Why is that?

2 Timothy 3:16 “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness”

Inspired means literally GOD-BREATHED. Yes, it was written by men, but those men wrote it without error because it was God that writing through each one of them, through their personalities, to give us the full canon of Scripture which is sufficient. Everything that we need to know, to know God and to be a church that is pleasing to Him is given to us in the Holy Word of God.

2 Peter 1:21 “for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”

The conviction to keep Scripture where it belongs, is that God is the Author of Scripture. Behind all 40 authors in the Bible was God working through these men to write exactly what He wanted written. And the sole authority in the church is the WORD OF GOD!

See what happened in the days of Luther was that TRUTH WAS COMPROMISED and the church began to drift. And drifting is a very subtle thing. It doesn’t happen all at once (just like our lives). It happens little by little and over time, years, the church has moved so far away it does not even look the same. That is what happens when it is not anchored to the Word of God. When the Bible is no longer the sole authority in the church!

The church as a whole has drifted today. It is far from where it once was and it is far from the Word of God.

Let me give you some examples of how the church has drifted from the Word of God today:

Church discipline is almost non-existent. The thought of removing a member who lives in sin, especially if they have been there for many years will get you straight kicked out of a church: ASK ME HOW I KNOW!

Yet we are taught over and over in NT teaches that we are to carry out church discipline.

Church membership is nothing more than a verbal agreement with no accountability.

That is people can be members of the church and never even come to church.

This is why you see a church with 600 people on the role and 32 in Sunday morning service.

And this is why you knock on someone’s door and they say, Im a member of this church or that church but I haven’t been in a few years.

The primary mission of the church is to get people in the pews and the baptistry

This is not the mission of the church. The mission of the church is to get people into the Kingdom of God and that can only happen by repentance and faith!

A couple years ago, I was out witnessing and I think Ashley was with me, and a leader of the state convention came out with us to knock on doors.

And I talked to a few people and shared the gospel with them, and then he took a turn. And do you know that not one word of the gospel was spoken. Just an invite to church.

Going to church does not save anyone!

Romans 1:16 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes

People die and go to hell everyday from the pew, but no one goes to hell who believes the gospel.

Conversion is no longer about repentance and faith: it has become a simple prayer repeated and then one’s soul affirmed by the leader of the church that if he said that prayer he will go to heaven.

Sound familiar? Happens all the time.

Just like in the days of Luther. Come and do this, get baptized, get confirmed, Take communion and God’s grace will be dispensed to you.

Not according to the Word of God.

THE CHURCH NEEDS A REFORMATION

The best thing that I can do for this church is teach the Word of God in its purest form and intended meaning! You do not need me to get up here and entertain you! You do not need me to get up here and make you feel good! You do not need me to get up here and dull the sharp edges of Scripture so that it does not cut and slash and penetrate below the surface, so that it can save you!

And the best thing you can do for yourself is to believe it. When the Bible declares truth, we are to believe it with all of our hearts! When the Bible commands us to do something, we are to take that as a direct command from God.

The Bible must be the sole authority and just about every disagreement can be resolved if we do this

2) There is no such thing as cheap grace

What really disturbed Luther was the growing conviction in his heart against the selling of indulgences by the Catholic church.

Indulgences were papers written and signed by the Catholic pope that were sold to people as a means of God’s grace.

The idea was that if someone was to pay for this special piece of paper signed by the pope, then that “good deed” of giving money to the church would cover a certain sin in their life.

These indulgences became a “license to sin”!

Let’s say you wanted to go out and get drunk this weekend and you knew it was wrong

Well all you had to do was buy one of these indulgences and you would be purchasing God’s grace and that sin would be taken care of

And then if you decided to commit some other kind of sinful deed, all you need to do was purchase an indulgence and you would receive grace.

But when Luther read Romans 1:17

Romans 1:17 NASB95

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.”

He found no such claim on God’s grace. In fact, he found just the opposite! God’s grace could not be earned, it could not be bought, it could only be given by God.

And no where in the Bible do we see that people can hand out a piece of paper claiming ownership of God’s grace.

This right is reserved for God alone, for His glory alone!

There is no such thing as cheap grace!

Cheap grace teaches that God accepts and forgives everyone no matter how they live and everyone can live in sin and still be right with God!

Cheap grace says that God would never call me to suffer or expect me to live in such a way that would be uncomfortable or cost me something!

Cheap grace does not consider the tremendous payment Jesus Christ paid for our sins and so people sin willfully and regularly!

Cheap grace has no allegiance to Christ, no allegiance to His Word, and no allegiance to His work.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who coined this phrase: cheap grace. He lived in the days of Hitler. He became a spy, was planning to kill hitler, was arrested in 1943, and executed in 1945. And he stated that the rise of Nazi empire happened because cheap grace was dispensed in the church.

in those days, Hitler persecuted the church, took the Bible and rewrote it to support his hatred of the Jews. He even changed the ten commandments to twelve commandments adding: “honor your leader and master” and “keep the blood pure and your honor holy”.

How did someone so evil like Hitler get by with so much and rise to such power? Bonhoeffer said it was because of cheap grace!

He said, “cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

We live in a day, just as Bonhoeffer did, where cheap grace is sold on every corner.

Come say a prayer, be baptized, and then continue living your life the way you always have, just so long as we can put that number down on our annual report.

THE CHURCH NEEDS A REFORMATION

There is no such thing as cheap grace. If God’s grace cost the agony, suffering, shame, and death of Jesus Christ, then surely we must believe it will cost us too.

To follow Christ is to be willing to give up ones life in the same way Jesus gave up His life

Be buried with Him in baptism and raised to newness of life!

Will it cost you something? It will cost your entire life, but in return Jesus will give you eternal life

If God’s grace in your life has not cost you, you may be buying cheap grace.

3) Luther’s personal grappling with the Scriptures led to his conversion

For years Luther simply believed what everyone else believed. He did the practices that he was supposed to do. If there was anyone in the church that day who would make it, it was Luther.

But when he started reading the Bible for himself and reading it carefully, is when he discovered how indifferent what he had been taught was to what he was reading.

And it was this careful reading of the Scripture that led to his reformation, and then the Protestant reformation altogether.

The Word of God creates tension in someone’e heart who is not right with it.

And thats not a bad thing, that is a good thing. When we think that we are good people and going to heaven and then read in the Bible that what real salvation is, is something totally different than what we have, it creates tension. It makes us uncomfortable. It creates conviction!

And conviction is not a bad thing! That means our hearts are still tender enough to hear and believe.

But what we must not is take that tension, that conviction, that the Bible has created and suppress it with some kind of false comfort that is not TRUE!

WHAT WE MUST DO is like Luther did and wrestle with that Scripture or truth, reading those verses that spoke to us very carefully, allowing God through the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to truth and give us understanding.

When Luther did that, God changed Luther’s life and direction of the church.

And when we see someone wrestling with that tension that is a good thing! We must make sure we do not go and try to take that away.

Because that tension can only truly be taken away by the Savior Himself.

Conclusion

Do you know what the church needs today? It needs a reformation. Don’t buy all the false propaganda that the church is healthy and doing all these great things all around us. Most churches have gone adrift, and I even wonder if God has taken His hand off this nation as a whole because what drives the church now seem to be the glory of man rather than the glory of God.

Maybe that means you need a reformation. Maybe you have bought into ideas that are not grounded in Scripture.

Maybe your here this morning and you have never came to Christ in repentance and faith.

I want you to know that you can do that today. The only way to the Father is through Christ. And the only way to Christ is by turning away from our sin and turning to Him by faith.

~PRAYER~