Three Principles from the Reformation
Notes
Transcript
Welcome
Evangelism report from Austin and Bradley
Trunk-or-Treat tonight at 4
Communion next week
Call to worship
Psalm 19:7–11 “The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul; The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; The judgments of the Lord are true; they are righteous altogether. They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them Your servant is warned; In keeping them there is great reward.”
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 Tuesday, October 31 is Halloween. To most of us, that is all that date has ever meant. But in church history, October 31 changed the world.
On October 31, 1517 a man named Martin Luther nailed a paper with 95 theses to the Castle Church door condemning the common practices of the Roman Catholic Church. This single event began what is known today as the Great Reformation and is the reason we are not all Catholics today.
Who was martin Luther? Luther was a Catholic monk who spent his life trying to please God with his 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, 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. This was absolutely the diving providence of God because when Luther began to study the Scriptures very closely he began to see than the things he was taught his entire life from the Catholic church was not what the Bible truly taught. And all of this new revelation came to head when Luther studied this wonderful verse from the book of Romans:
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.”
All of Luther’s life he had been taught that the word “righteousness” used in this verse was only speaking of an attribute of God; BUT after his study of Scripture he came to the conviction that this verse is teaching that when a man or a women trusts God by faith, then God clothes that sinner with His own righteousness.
Luther’s discovery led him to coin this phrase about us in Christ: we are.. “at the same time sinners, yet not sinners”.
In other words, through our faith in the gospel, we are made right with God. Through our faith, we are justified before God.
And the only plan of salvation in the entire Bible is justification by faith alone.
What the Catholic church had taught him was entirely different. He was told his entire life that people should measure up to God’s standards in their own efforts.
Anyone know what God’s standard is? PERFECTION! Do you know that you cannot go to heaven unless you are perfect? And if God demands perfection, then it is humanly impossible for anyone to ever attain that standard.....UNLESS GOD WOULD GRANT IT TO US.
This is why Isaiah says, “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment”.
The only way you and I could ever be saved is if God would somehow reach down into our lives and hand us a divine invitation to his grace! An invitation that would somehow remove our sins from our account and cloth is with His righteousness.
And that is exactly what the Gospel is. It is God offering people an invitation to be granted righteousness through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
1) The Gospel is God’s POWER to save sinners which means no man can save himself.
1) The Gospel is God’s POWER to save sinners which means no man can save himself.
Lets look at that verses again:
Romans 1:16 (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.
The gospel of Jesus Christ IS the saving power of God. It is this message that God uses to call the sinner to repentance.
The gospel is not advice to people, IT IS POWER.
Paul does not say that it brings power but that it IS power, and it is GOD’S POWER.
When the gospel is preached it is God’s power at work in this place! When the gospel is preached on the doorsteps of homes, it is God’s power at work there! Anywhere the gospel is being proclaimed, Go0d’s power is on display!
When the gospel enters into the mind of a hearer, God’s power moves I to their lives. It begins to affect their life in ways that nothing else can. It begin to draw them to God.
Now let’s look at the aspects of the gospel from the book of Romans:
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
The first thing the gospel does is establish the fact that we have all sinned. That means that everyone has missed the mark of God’s righteousness.
Some people’s sin is much more obvious than others. Some do a very good job at concealing their sin and may even convince themselves that since they are such good people that there is really nothing they need to be saved from!
But this verse makes it plain that we have all been infected with this disease called sin! It runs in our blood, it has been in the DNA of the human race since Adam, and we are born sinners!
The gospel will no effect on a heart that does not come to grips with this truth.
This is God’s diagnosis of what is wrong with the human race
And if we take a real serious look at our lives, and acknowledge our own sinfulness, we can see our desperate needs of God’s saving grace.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Sin may seem like sin is that big of deal since everyone is doing it. And that is the attitude of many people today. Sin cannot be that bad, because everywhere i look it is being practiced.
Well, the Bible says there is pleasure in sin.
If there was not, then people would not be so drawn to it!
But sin is only pleasurable for a season
This verse says, “the wages of sin is death”.
Do you know what a wage is? A wage is something we receive because it is owed to us.
You go to work and put in an 8 hour day, and your boss will pay you a wage.
It is something you earned.
BUT the Bible says, what we have earned by our sin, is death
BUT, this is not speaking of physical death, but spiritual death. A death that culminates in an eternal punishment that is coming upon the wicked.
At the end of this age, God will reap the harvest from this earth. He will separate the righteous from the wicked.
The righteous will inherit eternal life, the wicked will inherit eternal punishment.
“BUT, the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”.
We earn a wage, its what we deserve, but the eternal life is a gift.
It cannot be earned. There is no kind of deeds that we could do to ever earn it.
It can only be received by us.
It is freely given by God through the gospel.
How do we receive that gift?
Romans 10:9 (NASB95)
that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;
There are two things in this verse I want to point out:
Confess Jesus as Lord
To confess means more than just to say something. It means to verbalize what is truly in our hearts.
So if we confess that Jesus is Lord, that means He is truly Lord of our lives.
To be Lord is to be in charge. His is in control of our livers. He calls the shots, He leads us.
We have taken our whole life handed it over to Jesus and said, “here I am you do whatever You want with me”
Believe
This is not speaking of a intellectual belief....this does not mean we must believe that God exists!
The word “believe” means “to trust” God with our lives. It means we obey His Word and do His will regardless of the consequences.
Ephesians 2:8–9 (NASB95)
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.
Application
The Catholic Church taught Luther all his life the very opposite of this verse! That if he would just do good things, he could be accepted by God.
But that is not the gospel!
And that is still the message preached by the Catholic church today. Grace plus works saves, but not grace alone!
And there are many people sitting in all kinds of churches, in all kinds of denominations churches trying to work their way to heaven
They come to church on Sundays
They put some money in the offering plate
They may even teach or preach from the pulpit
And they think if they do these things, then God will accept them
But if God’s standard is perfection, then how could doing good thing make us perfect?
It cannot
We need God’s righteousness
And the only way to receive God’s righteousness is the way God said it must be done!
Allow Jesus to be Lord of your life
Surrender to Him
Put your faith in Him!
Turn from sin, and turn to God
This is the message the church must learn to rely upon
It is the gospel that is God’s power to save!
And I know we are having a Trunk-or-Treat tonight but I am not expecting anyone to get saved by that....UNLESS they hear the gospel
And that is our hope and prayer for tonight!
Or maybe they will show up to church on Sunday morning and hear the gospel.
But either way without the gospel, there is no salvation
2) There is no such thing as cheap grace
2) There is no such thing as cheap grace
What caused the Great Reformation was the growing conviction in Martin Luther’s 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 work” of giving money to the church would cover that certain sin in their life.
These indulgences became a “license to sin”!
Let’s say you wanted to go out and get drunk for a week and you knew it was wrong, you knew it was a sin!
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 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
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 world today desperately needs to reform its thinking about God’s grace! There is no such thing as cheap grace!
Cheap grace teaches that God accepts and forgives everyone no matter how they live and everyone is 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 because those they sin willfully and regularly!
Cheap grace has no allegiance to Christ, His Word, or His work.
The German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived in the times of Hitler. He became a spy He was an early critic of the Nazi movement. He became a spy, was arrested in 1943, and executed in 1945. During his ministry he wrote a book called, “The Cost of Discipleship”. This book was motivated by the growing religious movement of cheap grace. Bonhoeffer said this about cheap grace, “cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is 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
Come join my cult, away from the church, because the church is too judgmental and even discipline you if you live in habitual sin
In fact, many believe you do not even need to gather with the church, for if we are saved by grace then why even go to church.
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
To be a disciple of Christ is to surrender it all to Jesus in exchange for eternal life
But cheap grace is a manmade idea that sends many people to hell.
If God’s grace in your life has not cost you, you may be buying cheap grace.
3) It is the Word of God that brings reformation
3) It is the Word of God that brings reformation
The reformation was not about establishing protestant churches, it was about calling the Catholic church back to a biblical foundation.
Definition of Reformation (MW): “the removal or correction of an abuse, a wrong, or errors. To put an end to evil by introducing a better method.”
And everyone of us must be continually reformed by the Word of God!
We must realize how quickly humans can drift
It did not take 15 centuries for the church to drift
The book of Revelation was written about 95 AD includes letters to churches that were already drifting.
“Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love!”
How do we get ourselves back on track when we drift?
The same way Luther, Calvin, and others brought reformation to the church…through the Word of God.
It is God’s Word that is the anchor, that keeps us grounded in truth!
It is expositional preaching that keeps the church on course!
It is biblical grounded teaching that keeps us from drifting!
It does not matter how mature we are, if we stop reading and applying the Bible we will begin to fall!
How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word. With all my heart I have sought You; Do not let me wander from Your commandments. Your word I have treasured in my heart, That I may not sin against You.
Conclusion
Maybe God has brought you in here today, because your life needs to be reformed.
Maybe you have been trying to work your way to heavenm
Maybe you have fallen victim to cheap grace!
Maybe God is calling you through His Word to get back to Him.
How does God save us?
He does so through the gospel.
How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?
I have preached, now you come. And you get right with God today.
ADVERTISEMENT