Tomorrow marks the 500th anniversary of
the Protestant Reformation.
You may not have known this,
but this is a significant event.
Some people rate this as a top 10 event, top five event,
not just in Christian history, but the history of the world,
how it changed the landscape of the world
and Christianity forever.
So I want to talk about some things that
came out of the Reformation,
and why you should care about this big event.
If you don't know the story,
there was a young monk named Martin Luther.
At 25 years old, he's pretty bright,
they assigned him to teach in the University of Wittenburg.
Then, at the age of 33,
he had concerns about what the church was teaching,
and was it teaching things that were contrary to God's Word?
So he posted on the church doors of Wittenburg,
you can still go there, I would not go this week
because it'll be busy.
But you can still go there today and see,
like, a bulletin board, where he posted
what is known as the 95 Theses.
His intention was not to break up the church.
His intention was not to start his own sect.
His intention was to go back to God's Word
and see what it says.
So what comes from the Reformation?
Why should you care?
If you grew up in a church, or you're part of a church now,
very likely, it's Catholic or Protestant.
And at that point in history, the tree,
the ancestral tree of the church, becomes two branches.
Roman Catholic on one side, and Protestant on the other.
That would include Methodist and Baptist,
non-denominational, Lutheran, Presbyterian.
All of these find their roots way back when
in this Reformation.
So what comes from the Reformation?
It's not just a renewed look at by faith alone.
It's not just getting the Bible into people's hands.
It's not just a new look at how people work and function
and how they can serve God in whatever they do.
The biggest thing
is grace.
God's riches at Christ's expense, grace.
God does everything for us.
I think back to a story 1500 years earlier,
as a man stood before Jesus, and Jesus said,
who do you say that I am?
That man was Peter.
He says, you are the Christ.
You are the son of the living God.
And Jesus' response is this.
We're celebrating a reformation not to celebrate
a human being, let's be very clear.
We're not celebrating even a denomination.
What we're celebrating is Christ.
And I think it's an amazing blessing
that 1500 years before the Reformation,
God, through the Holy Spirit, worked in the heart of Peter
to confess Christ.
In the hearts of all the reformers,
from 1300 to the 1600s, got worked in their hearts
to confess Christ just as he does today in you.
Let's pray.
Dear Lord, as we think about significant events in history,
we think about our own history.
The time that we came to faith,
we think about the time that we have grown up in Your word.
We pray that we always stay true to your Word,
and we're willing to have that same courage of the reformers
as we confess boldly Christ, and we confess boldly grace.
Amen.
500 years ago, today, a young monk
was trying to figure out if the church taught
what was true in God's Word.
He discovered these questions on his own,
and you can imagine this young man trying to figure out
how do I have a relationship with God.
Maybe you've wondered the same thing.
When you've got guilt,
and you've got the weight of things you've done wrong,
how can I have a relationship with God?
And he looked through all of the Scriptures,
and he's translating original languages,
and he comes to the Book of Romans, chapter one, verse 17.
This is what it says.
Now, there's two ways you can take that
in the original Greek, and this was the challenge.
This is a possessive noun, so it's saying,
this is God's righteousness, that's possessive.
So let me give you an example.
If I say, this is my gift, that can mean one of two things.
It either means it's the gift that I'm giving to you,
or it's a gift that I've received from someone else.
And that is very
difficult to understand
when you're talking about righteousness.
Is this the righteousness that God demands of us?
Is it perfection?
And Martin Luther was so frustrated
because he did everything he could,
he did everything to try and get closer to God
by doing, and doing, and doing,
and he felt farther, and farther away from God.
But, then suddenly,
his eyes were opened
through the Holy Spirit what this actually says.
God is saying,
through the Gospel of Jesus Christ,
through Jesus' substitutionary life for you,
for his death for you, for Christ living for you,
I give you this gift.
I give you my righteousness.
His whole world was changed, and he looked at passages
like Romans, chapter three that says simply,
It's not through the law, and works, and doing stuff
that we become perfect before God.
It's only through Christ.
Other passages come alive.
It's by grace you have been saved through faith,
not by works so that no one can boast.
Where does this grace come from?
It comes from God's grace to you.
So what does this all mean?
It means that God loves you, not because of who you are,
God loves you in spite of who you are.
God loves you not because of who you are,
God loves you because who he is.
And he is our Savior that did everything for us,
and gave us the gift of perfection.
Let's pray.
God, we can never fully grasp what you did
through many, many reformers, and many, many people
that have taught us the Bible.
We pray as we remember the Reformation.
We think of a time, but this is where your grace shines.
They didn't invent grace back then.
Instead, you were the one who showed us grace,
something totally foreign to us until we experience it.
In the love of Christ.
Amen.
In the book of 1 Corinthians,
it encourages Christians all around the world to stand firm.
This is what it says, 1 Corinthians 16:13,
When I was about 16 years old,
I got my first speeding ticket.
My parents know about it, so I can say it out loud.
So I got my first speeding ticket,
and I thought, "Hey, I am gonna go,
"and I am gonna go to the courthouse,
"and I'm gonna convince the judge
"that I should not have gotten this speeding ticket."
I just wanted to reduce the points,
but I went there all excited.
But as soon as the judge started questioning me,
I melted,
and nothing happened.
I was so flustered in fact, that when I left the courthouse
I went the wrong way on a one way street
past the police station.
We'll just end the story there.
How many times I wish that was the only time
that I folded and melted under pressure.
I wish that was the only time,
that when I had an opportunity to speak some truth
to someone, that I didn't just forget
and kind of become a wallflower.
I think about the Christians who actually followed
1 Corinthians, they stand firm in their faith.
The Coptic Christians in Egypt who come off a bus
only to be killed because they confessed their faith.
There are more martyrs in the last 100 years
than the previous 19 centuries combined.
People who stood firm for what they believe in.
How do you do that?
How did the reformers 500 years ago,
stand firm and say, "I don't care about the consequences.
"I don't care about life or death, or reputation.
"I'm gonna stand firm on this truth."
They trusted the source.
If you're part of a church that trusts the authority of God,
for this is what it means for your life,
to look to God's Word to discover what God has to say.
A holy God who actually communicates to us
through his Word.
You can go back to people in the past
who stood on the truth of God's Word,
but how do you defend it?
How do you get the courage like they did,
to stand up and say, "This is what I believe in"?
How do you get the courage to go before people
that are questioning you, or are making fun of you,
and say, "This is what God says,
"I don't care the consequences"?
Well to paraphrase Charles Spurgeon,
you defend God's Word the same way you defend a lion,
you let it out of the cage.
God's Word is living and active,
and God's Word cuts open our heart.
It's sharper than any double-edged sword.
It opens up and let's us see inside ourselves,
and our own greediness, and sinfulness, and selfishness,
but it's that same Word
that brings healing,
and brings forgiveness, and brings acceptance.
So stand firm,
and let the lion out of the cage.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
500 years ago they thought your truths of salvation
by grace alone was worth dying for.
And we know that hasn't changed.
So help us have the courage to stand firm
and speak what we know is true,
that salvation comes only through you,
and only through your grace.
Amen.
I'm not sure you know what is the most valuable Bible
in the whole entire world.
You might be able to guess it's a Gutenberg Bible,
a first edition.
The last one to sell was in 1978 for $2.2 million.
They estimate that if you found one of these,
and was able to purchase a whole version,
it would be roughly $25M to $30 million to get it.
So why is it so valuable?
Well a number of things collided right around the time
of the Reformation, is why we have these Bibles.
This is the first mass produced Bible.
It's the first mass produced book in the entire world.
So Gutenberg invented
the mechanical printing press, movable type.
So movable type was around for about 400 years before that.
Paper comes around a thousand.
So we now have paper, not just animal skins.
We have movable type.
And now we have a mechanized system to produce this Bible,
so everyone can read it.
Of course everybody in Europe had to have a Bible.
The first book ever produced.
Well it wouldn't have mattered.
Because we had paper, and we had movable type,
but the Bible was in Latin.
And just like today, not a lot of people knew Latin.
One of the things that comes out of the Reformation
was a movement to try and get the Bible into people's hands.
So they translated it
into the common language of the people.
And then they produced this Bible.
So now people had a Bible they could take into their homes.
A Bible they could take to their house.
And they could read it to their family.
That started an effect that went through
all the way to today.
Our first English translation, maybe some of you
still use it, 1611, the King James version,
a version that has withstood
the test of time for hundreds of years.
There is literally a Bible in every known language,
at least part of it, so that every person on this planet
can open up God's Word and learn about the grace
of Jesus Christ, and who he is, in their own time.
So I ask you one more time,
what's the most valuable Bible in the world?
Well listen to what the Bible can do.
2 Timothy 3:16 says,
All these things come from God's Word,
so what is the most valuable Bible in the world to you?
For the peasants back in the Reformation,
and all the people through today, and for you and me,
it's not the Gutenberg Bible,
it's the Bible that you and I read and study everyday.
Let's pray.
God we're so thankful for inventions.
We're so thankful for the ingenuity
that you have given to people.
That you have blessed them with the ability
to mass produce your holy Word.
So we pray that we don't take it for granted.
We don't forget about it, just because it's so everywhere.
Instead, we concentrate in the Bible you've given us,
open up those words, and read again and again where we stand
with you, and how we are connected to you through grace.
We ask this in your name, amen.
Just about every party I've ever gone to,
every social event where I interact with other people,
they ask me this question,
"What do you do for work?"
And maybe it's because we're so wrapped up in our identity
and what we do that I kind of avoid that question
when I talk to people,
I kind of wait until the end of the conversation
before I bring it up,
just to see if they'll bring it up,
and invariably, every single time they do.
There was a deeper question that they asked
during the time of the reformation.
They wanted to know what is godly work?
What is valuable work?
Can I be a stay-at-home mom and be serving God?
Can I be a lawyer and serve God?
Can I be a police officer and serve God?
Can I milk cows and be serving God?
Or,
is the only way to really, truly be serving God
is to work directly in the church as a pastor
or a priest or a monk or a nun?
And so, they were battling with this
and they came from that time, a renewed sense of vocation
a renewed sense that is summarized in this
Colossians, chapter three,
God is saying no matter what you do, you can serve me.
So, the gist of vocation is this,
God has given you specific gifts,
God has given you specific abilities,
and it does not matter if you're a pastor,
or a teacher,
or a farmer
or a factory worker.
You choose the abilities and the calling
that God has given you and the way that you serve God
is by serving other people.
I think one of my favorite understandings of this
is in the movie, Chariots of Fire,
one of my favorite movies and one of my favorite scenes,
Eric Liddell is training to either be a missionary
or he's gonna go to the Olympics
and he's at this kind of position and he doesn't know what to do,
and his sister comes to him
and wanted him really to be a missionary,
but this is what he says,
"I believe God made me for a purpose,
but he also made me fast
and when I run I feel his pleasure."
I don't know what God has made you to do,
but I know God made you for a purpose.
He may have made you to be a stay-at-home mom,
or a father,
or a teacher.
or a doctor, or a baker,
or someone who drives truck.
It does not matter.
The way you serve God is not dreaming about other jobs.
The way that you serve God is taking the gifts
God has given you, doing the best that you can,
and loving Him by serving the people.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we each have unique gifts,
we each have a unique calling,
and we pray that we are able to find those gifts
and appreciate the gifts you've given us.
We don't want jealous hearts
that seek after other's abilities,
but instead, cultivate the things you've given us
and do our very best through faith in Christ
to serve you every single day of our life,
every single morning, and every single night.
That's what we do for work,
we serve other people, Amen.