A Superior Covenant

Well, I know for many Christians it can be quite difficult to figure out how we should respond to this festival. A festival, which while being around for a long time, has perhaps only fairly recently gained popularity within Australia.

But do any of you actually know where the name Halloween comes from?

It is actually a contraction of All Hallow’s Evening. The word Hallow, is an older term for Saint - think for instance when we say “Hallowed be your name”

So in other words, Halloween actually originated as the eve of All Saints day.

Within certain traditions, both past and present, All Saints Day was an important day on the calendar to celebrate those people recognised as saints.

Now we could explore that history further, some of which I know, although by no means do I consider myself an expert in the matter. But instead I want to turn to something else that happened on the 31st October, which made a huge difference to the world.

I’m talking of course of Martin Luther and his 95 Theses.

You see, on the 31st October 1517, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses and what we saw was the beginning of the reformation.

And in case you miss the significance of 1517, that means that on Tuesday it will be exactly 500 years since the reformation began.

Because I think that is significant, today what I want to do is to give you a brief history of how this reformation came about.

Once I’ve given this history, I want to tie it back into our series that we are doing in Galatians and show how what Luther was doing is actually bringing them back to the place that they should have been all along, but had become lost along the way.

History of the Reformation

Well to appreciate the significance of the reformation, it is perhaps important to understand how far the church had slipped in the centuries leading up the the early 1500’s.

A church gone bad

We might get upset at some of the current teachings of the Roman Catholic church, but it is nothing in comparison to how far they had strayed.

You see it largely stemmed from the church’s own sense of importance. They understood, as they still do today, that when Jesus spoke to Peter and declared that he was to build his church on Peter the rock, that this was the beginning of a long succession of rulers of the church who held the very keys to heaven.

As happens with sinful humanity, power tends to corrupt, and this happened in a big way. With all the power being held by the clergy, things got very out of hand.

There were a number of abuses we could look at, but there was one in particular that sparked Martin Luther’s attention, and that was the practice of indulgences.

Essentially, indulgences boils down to people giving money to the church and in return the church would write a certificate which would knock off a certain number of years of purgatory.

It worked really well for them. For the common purpose, it allowed them access to heaven from the people who supposedly held the keys. For the church, well, they’ve got themselves a pretty handy fundraiser.

And like all fundraisers, if you want it to work, you have to give it a bit of a push, and so they had people known as indulgence preachers who were authorised to go around, sharing this wonderful opportunity to have time taken off purgatory, all for a simple cash transaction.

One such preacher that caught the attention of Luther was someone known as Tetzel, who had a little catchcry - “as soon as the gold in the casket rings, the rescued soul to heaven springs”.

Change is coming

Well, looking back on history it is obvious how far the church went bad, but it is also obvious that God wanted to bring it back and so he raised certain people for the task.

The biggest shift happened under Luther, however it wasn’t as if he was the first person calling for change.

Wycliffe was one of the most significant forerunners in this regard, as well as Jan Hus. Both these men were about 100 years before Martin, but both were condemned as heretics and burned at the stake and while they garnered a bit of a following, no significant change happened in the church.

Martin Luther on the other hand, while very similar in what he said, but as I’ll soon highlight he had a few advantages.

So let’s briefly look at Luther’s story. Luther lived in Germany and was one very smart individual who excelled at school.

He actually started his training as a lawyer where he again excelled and was about to start a very promising career where he would earn a significant amount of money and make his father very proud.

However during a dramatic storm where he thought he would lose his life, he made a vow to become a monk, a vow that he kept.

Now something that’s crucial to this story is that Luther’s attempt to be right before God.

Luther knew that any unrepented sin could keep him out of heaven, and so he would spend hours in the confessional, trying really hard to think of every little thing that he had done wrong.

There is actually evidence that the priests who were in the other end of the confession grew very weary of these long drawn out confessions.

But while Luther tried very hard by his own efforts to be right before God, he also excelled academically as a monk. In fact he soon earned a PhD and at a very young age started lecturing at Wittenberg University.

But while he studied he came to a few realisations. First and foremost, that it was the Bible that was the most authoritative. He realised that when church teaching contradicted biblical teaching, then the bible should win out, not the church teaching.

From this understanding, he then also learnt that salvation didn’t come from the church, but from faith alone.

This is of course what I’ve been going on about for the entire series on Galatians, but back then this was a big deal.

It was these realisations that later on would become the foundational understanding of the reformation. You might have heard the terms: “sola scriptura” and “sola fide”, which is Latin for “by scripture alone” and “by faith alone”.

Now sometimes when we look back on the reformation we see Martin Luther just taking a wrecking ball to the church. Later in his life he did somewhat do this, but during this early time, he never wanted to bring down the church, rather he wanted to just fix some of it’s errant teaching.

While over time he saw some things in the church that really worried him, the thing that really sparked him into action was when he saw parishioners under his care that came to him feeling assured of their salvation because they had paid an indulgence - Luther knew that such indulgences were meaningless, and he wanted to correct this.

And so it was largely on this issue that Luther drafted what we know as the 95 Theses. It was essentially a list of 95 statements about why the church practice of indulgences and other related matters should be addressed.

And so brings us to the event that we will remember in 2 days time as the 500th anniversary, where Luther sent off these These to the Archbishop.

History recalls that Luther actually nailed them to the church door at Wittenberg on that day, but there is evidence that that part of the story happened a week or two later.

Curiously, this almost all died out in a whimper and could have been a non-event.

The reason it didn’t was actually because of a invention that occurred in just the previous century, and was only now being put to significant use.

That invention was the printing press.

You see, a local printer got wind of this document, and suddenly word started to spread.

Initially the church did not respond in a big way, essentially because they didn’t think much would come of it.

What they never anticipated, and for that matter Luther didn’t either, was that the printing press would allow new ideas to spread at a rate that the world at that point never knew could happen.

Following a few significant events, Luther gained confidence in his call for the church to reform, and he started producing numerous books, and so in just the space of a few small years, particularly in Germany, Luther’s ideas became very popular. That of course was also in no small part because the people were getting sick of the way the church was treating them.

This was all moving much faster than the church or Luther ever expected, and so it naturally had to come to a head - and that point was in the year 1521. In 1521 there was an event which when written down in English has a very unfortunate name - the diet of worms. While that always brings crazy images to our minds, in German, the word diet meant a meeting, and Worms was the name of the town, and should actually be pronounced Voh-arms.

Luther was summoned to this meeting, which was presided by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. At that meeting Luther was asked whether he would recant his writings, to which he gave the answer… ‘actually, can I have a day to think about it’.

But he came back the next day, and boldly declared:

“Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason… I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe not right to go against conscience. Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me. Amen.”

Not surprisingly, Luther was condemned as a heretic, but while they were planning his punishment, his was whisked away by people trying to protect him in a castle at Wartburg.

The story continues and we can learn about how he started the Lutheran church and some of his other influences, however hopefully you can see how this very bold and very dangerous stand made such a difference.

Our Personal Challenge

Now this is all very interesting from an historical perspective, after all this completely changed much of the world’s understanding of how church and state fit together, but I now want to look at this from another perspective - a personal one.

You see, it is easy to look at how far the church went back then and for us to shake our heads at them. After all, we tell ourselves, we would never go that far.

And, dare I say it, I’ll suggest that our wrong doings don’t go anywhere near the spiritual destruction that was being caused by the church at that time.

But… we do still have a tendency to veer off track.

I mentioned before two of the foundational underpinnings of the reformation, that being, sola scriptura and sola fide (which of course you all remember means, by scripture alone, and by faith alone.

Well another foundation of the reformation is in Christ alone, and as we come back to Galatians, which I might add, was one of the books, along with Romans, that greatly influenced Luther, we see how strongly the first few chapters insist on it all being based around in faith alone and in Christ alone.

But as we looked last week, unfortunately the church of Galatia had also been veered off track.

For them, Paul caught them out quickly and so the letter was enough to knock them back, but you can see how quickly this can happen.

As we explored last week, we are constantly being fed half truths from the devil who wants to knock us off track.

So as we try to fight this great fight, what becomes important is that we can recognise the difference between the way we should be living and the way that so easily can knock us off track.

As I bring us now to the passage I read earlier, we’ll see how even with a genuine desire to do well, we can fall the wrong way - which I believe for the majority of people in the church before Luther, is exactly what happened to them. They didn’t even realise that they had receded back to something that was far from the great promise that had been given to them.

The two covenants

Well, the way Paul explains the two ways, is by using an allegory of Abraham’s two sons, Ishmael and Isaac.

Now for Paul to use Abraham is actually quite significant, because the Jewish people loved to hold Moses up, with all the laws he passed on, as the one who shows the way, but for Paul, it was Abraham where God started his plan for reconciliation, and this is something we explored in a bit more detail back in chapter 3.

Now if you remember the story, Abraham was married to Sarah, but as it turned out she was barren - something which caused great confusion for them because Abraham believed God when he had said that he would be the father of the great nation.

Now if we go back to , they’re concerned about not having children, and so at Sarah’s suggestion, Abraham sleeps with an Egyptian slave named Hagar, to which they bear a son called Ishmael.

Now this son actually caused some grief, yet did receive a special blessing - but it was never the blessing that was part of the original promise.

But this just became even more confusing, particularly at Abraham neared 100 and Sarah 90. But then the most extraordinary thing happened.

At the ripe old age of 90, Sarah did conceive, and bore Abraham another son, who was called Isaac. On this occasion the son was the son of the promise.

And so it is these two sons that Paul highlights to show the difference between the wrong path people were taking, and the right one.

So let’s briefly look at the differences.

The Differences

Verse 22 tell us Ishmael, was born of a slave woman whereas Isaac was born of a free woman.

Verse 23 takes this further telling us that Ishmael was born of the flesh, in other words, as a result of worldly wisdom and means, whereas Isaac was born as the result of a divine promise.

In verses 24 to 26, Paul links the two boys with locations, Ishmael to Mount Sinai, and Isaac to Jerusalem. The clear insinuation is that Mount Sinai represent the slavery of the law and Jerusalem the freedom of the promise.

Essentially this is what it all boils down to. On one side, you can choose slavery, on the other, you can choose freedom.

But in verse 26,

But there is a catch, and we get that in verse 29.

You see, with the freedom that Isaac represents, there is also persecution.

That’s not something we like to think about, but the truth is that it actually is a reality of our experience.

Paul’s context

Now in Paul’s context, the comparison he is making seems quite clearly directed to that of the Jews who wanted to continue their ways under their law, which essentially is slavery, with those who have accepted that Jesus has accepted has provided a new way for them.

Paul’s big concern was that for those who knew the way of Jesus, they still manage to go down the line of those who accept slavery under the law.

Luther’s context

But I think the comparison equally applies to the situation that Luther found himself under.

You see, by this stage the church should have well and truly understood the message of grace - but because of the influence of the evil one, they had moved back to the way of slavery.

The slavery might have looked quite different in the specifics, compared with what Paul faced, but in many regards it was the same. You see it is a slavery based on rituals and rules, saying that you need to do various things before you were saved.

And I mentioned persecution as well, which is what we saw in verse 29. And how clearly we saw that applied to Luther’s situation.

You see, as Luther chose the way of freedom, he also found persecution - and this is because the devil is feeling challenged.

Out context

But as I bring this now to our own context, I want to consider how what our slavery looks like.

The trap for us is different in the specifics to Paul’s context, as it is also different to Luther’s context, and yet in many ways it is the same.

Actually, I’m going to suggest that the specifics of it is likely different for each of us, but there are so many little things that creep in that start to define us and then we feel that we are less than whole without them.

You see, it can actually become really subtle, and at times, it can even seem admirable.

But an example of what I’m talking about is our reputation. You see, we want people to like us. We want them to think of ourselves in the same way that we think of ourselves. When they don’t for whatever reason, we feel like we’ve failed.

Now while maintaining your reputation is a worthwhile endeavour, it can also become our slavery. It can be the very thing that drags us down and makes us feel that we are not worth anything.

That slavery might also be money. We start desiring it, but before we know it, it also starts dragging us down. We don’t even realise how far it takes us from God.

Almost anything that we can cling our identity to can become a slave in this way.

But we can’t let it. We need to remember that we are children of the promise, people who are free by very nature.

Our identity needs to cling to Christ and him alone.

Conclusion

This week, as we mark the 500th Anniversary of the reformation, don’t just think of it in terms of how far the church back then got it wrong.

What is important is that, just like the Galatian church struggled, and just like the church of the 1500’s struggled, we too can easily get it wrong.

The only way that we are going to fight this though, is if we learn to identify what it is that is pulling us off the path.

My hope for you is that you will begin to examine your own life to see what it is that is taking you off track. When you identify it, take the courage, just like Luther to face it and deal with it. It won’t be easy - it never is. In fact, as you do try to deal with it I can almost guarantee that you feel face push back, but it’s worth it.