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#2 Celebrat ing the Reformation’s Gospel David A. Staff , Teaching Pastor

Matthew 7:24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” 28 And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his

teaching, 29 for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.i

All 3 gospel writers use the same word to describe what people experienced when Jesus

spoke: “astonishment.” They were blown away. When the Incarnate Word from God spoke the

Living Word of God, it was stunningly clear, and clearly stunning. J.W. Shepherd explains in The

Christ of the Gospels.

It is no wonder that when Jesus had finished speaking, the crowds expressed their wonder in a buzz of astonishment. It was [so] different from the sermons of the Scribes. Specimens of [the Scribes’] discourses in the Mishna and Gemara show that they were dull collections of disjointed comments on many subjects. Their

teachings were narrow, dogmatic, [full-of] second-hand [quotations from long dead rabbis], having no freshness, [no] force, …[no] power to move the heart to emotion or the will to action. They dealt with the

minutia of mint, anise, cummin, the length of fringes and the breadth of phylacteries [on the wrist].

Jesus, quite to the contrary, with swift intuitive insight pierced to the depths of the human heart…He knew the life of man--rejoiced with him in his joys and wept with him in his sorrows. [People] said, “Never man spoke as

this man.” No wonder when he came down from the hillside, great multitudes followed him.ii If it is true that, during the days of the Roman Empire, the fresh entrance of the Incarnate Word

of God brought life and hope back to people under the burden of confusing and stifling religion, it is

also true that the fresh re-entrance of the Word of God did the same thing 1500 years later. It was

called “the Reformation.”

Church history can be charted in different ways. In terms of growth: Yet the THEOLOGICAL COURSE was different

SOLA SCRIPTURA & SOLE FIDE Clarity on Authoritative Scripture and Simple Faith

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But when the Reformation of Jesus’ church happened, the light began to shine again. Why?

Because the true Head of the Church, the Lord Jesus Christ, used the Spirit of God within the church

to reform what had gone wrong and recover what was necessary for life. This key truth about

the REFORMATION is worth celebrating:

The PRIMACY of SCRIPTURE and the simple EXERCISE OF FAITH

were the heart and soul of Jesus’ Reformation of His church…

just like it is in each one of us. Let’s explore this by exploring the importance of two “recoveries” -- Recovery #1

#1 Without the recovery of the AUTHORITY of the SCRIPTURE and the AVAILABILITY of the Scripture,

the revival of Jesus’ church is difficult to imagine.

In other words, if you ask the question, “Why was there both

such theological decline over almost 1000 years of the church,

accompanied by so much church organizational corruption?”

throughout that same period, one of the major causes was that

the Scriptures themselves were no longer available to the everyday, common follower of Jesus.

The Scriptures had been tucked away. The handwritten manuscripts and copies of the original

Hebrew and Greek texts were stored away in the libraries of monasteries or regional churches, and

the only persons who had access to them were the monks commissioned to cop them and elite

church officials.

What’s more, the official “Scriptures” of the church was a 600 AD Latin translation by a scholar

named Jerome. And even though the Roman empire had fallen, and Latin was no longer the

language of Europe, the Church insisted priests conduct worship services in Latin (which no one who

attended understood) and read the Scripture in Latin (which no one understood)…and even then the

Latin translation was 800 years old, and horribly out of date.

So by 1300 AD, Christians found themselves attending church (which was required),

understanding the language of neither Scripture nor ceremony, and ceremonies performed while a

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corrupting church insisted this was the only way to possibly escape damnation through purgatory.

No Scripture in hand, no possible way “meditate on it day and night” like Psalm 1 urged. A few

controlled it. The councils and officials interpreted it to serve their own ends…and there was

darkness. Darkness until someone (who has been) called “the Morningstariii of the Reformation.”

• His name was Dr. John Wycliffe, a brilliant scholar, a leading professor at Oxford, with an incredibly passionate heart

• As he poured over the available Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, he became unswervingly convinced the church had lost its way: condemned the church’s wealth and political power; questioned the holy sacraments and ceremonies; and courageously attacked the spiritual authority of its leaders

• He began insisting that the Bible be the primary source of authority, and openly called for the purification of the church

• In order to give power to that call, he produced a hand-written copy of the Bible from Latin into English. A group of men and women gathered around Wycliff--people he trained--they began producing hand-

written copies of Wycliffe’s English Bible. They were called Lollardsiv (meaning “mutterers,” presumably

because as they copied the Scriptures, they muttered prayers of praise and dependence upon God). It took one

copiest 6 months to complete an English copy of Scripture, and they would distribute pages of

Scripture to preachers who would proclaim God’s word in the streets.

• Wycliffe’s translation was pronounced illegal, his books were collected and burned. • Evidence of the possession of an English bible was considered heresy, the penalty for heresy

was death by fire. • The church/king hunted them down, many were burned to death at the stake.

Others whose passion for putting the Scriptures in the hands of people could not stopped.

William Tyndale…

“If God spare me many years…”

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Desidrus Erasmus, a brilliant…

Luther was clear about Scripture especially for the next generation

Of course, it was no coincidence that in the sovereignty of God, that Gutenberg invented the

printing press (c.a.1440) and soon, a proliferation of printing businesses multiplied all over

Europev…and most of what they were originally printing was Bibles, Bibles for the people. All

because SOLA Scriptura – the authority and primacy of Scripture -- was the foundational truth of

the Reformation, and it changed everything. Erasmus, “Give light and the darkness will disappear.”vi

A 2nd recovery was crucial – captured in the phrase SOLE FIDE.

#2 Without the recovery of JUSTIFICATION through SIMPLE FAITH, the GOSPEL was in danger of becoming

a LAW of works VOID of true hope. When Martin Luther carefully read and taught-for-a-year through the letter of Paul to the Romans,

followed by yet another year of reading and teaching through Paul’s letter to the Galatians, there was

a truth about the most important question in life that shot through his soul. The question was, “Can

anyone someday stand before an absolutely holy and righteous God and not be condemned?” With

a whole host of questions attending it:

• What has Jesus’ church been teaching about this? • What has Jesus’ church been requiring of people concerning this? • Over 1500 years, has Jesus’ church ever been clear about this? • What does the Bible (not the church councils, not the writings of the fathers or other church

dignitaries and authorities)…what does the Scripture say? Who can someday stand before God and NOT be condemned for his sinfulness and his sin? Could

anyone ever stand before God JUSTIFIED? What Luther found in the Scriptures were these

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passages: (p.941 ESV)

Romans 4:2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” 4 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. 5 And to the one who does not work but

believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness… 23 But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be

counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

Romans 5:1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we

have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Galatians 2:16 yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law,

because by works of the law no one will be justified. One source on the Reformation explains the conflict that thundered in Luther’s heart: Justification for the Church during Luther’s time was described as a process by which a soul is freed from the burden of sin and the fate of damnation. This was imagined to be a complex process: initial justification is God’s gift to the infant at baptism, made possible by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Yet the sinner – for man can but sin – must earn justification through striving to live a life ordained by God’s will and attempting to fulfill his commands. She or he must furthermore undergo the penance of purgatory in order to be fully cleansed from sin and [finally] enter God’s glory. The sinner’s own good works, but also the prayers of mortals and the intercession of the saints, codified in the concept of indulgences, expediated this complex process of justification. Luther himself, like most of his contemporaries, was terrified by the prospect of eternal damnation, and highly distrustful of the convoluted—and he believed corrupt—path to salvation ordained by the Church. Far from offering its flock salvation, the Church was (he felt) heinously sending its sheep down the path of perdition. Basing his thoughts on the epistles of Apostle Paul and the teachings of St. Augustine, Luther concluded that humans, sinners all, could neither free their souls from the stain of sin through works nor rely on the intercession of others to do so. They could only be justified through God’s gift of grace (sola gratia), accepting this bounty through their belief in the Savior (sole fide), and instructed not through man-made traditions but by God’s holy Scripture (sola scriptura).vii In other words, the “gospel” – the good news from God about His Son Jesus –

• the good news that one could stand before God fully forgiven of all sin and declared absolutely righteous

• BECAUSE Jesus’ death paid completely for sin’s just penalty, and rose from the dead to prove the debt had been paid…

• the good news that I could be JUSTIFIED freely, by FAITH… That GOOD NEWS had been replaced by Jesus’ church with a complicated system of religious

rituals and ceremony performances, and other requirements to earn this justification through

continually performing good works and good deeds…and even then having to spend time in

purgatory paying for sins and hoping others will buy you out or pray you out.

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The Church had both departed from Scripture and changed the Gospel.

One of the men whom God put at the elbow of Martin Luther was Lucas Cranach the Elder.viii

Cranach was an artist in woodcuts and oil painting in the court of the German Electors of Saxony.

Over his 81 years, he not only painted portraits of political and religious leaders of his day, but

produced Biblical art that visualized scenes from Scripture. They contained the Biblical truth of the

Reformation movement. Consider for a few moments his LAW AND GRACE painting:

Divided into two halves by a half-barren, half-

blooming tree, the painting compares individual

scenes from the O.T. and N.T.

ON THE LEFT • the obligation to follow God’s law in order to save

their souls • Bottom right: Moses surrounded by the prophets

referring the naked sinner to the 10 commandments, which he cannot keep.

• So having failed, he is driven into the fires of hell (bottom left) by the two figures, one “death” the other “Satan.

• Above his head are Adam and Eve, whose disobedient sin with the Tree endowed him with nothing more than “original sin,” and plunged him into his plight of sin

• Above them is the Lord Christ, the judge sitting atop the world, and under him, the camp of Israel with people dying and needing to look at the bronze serpent…an allusion to God’s grace.

• The tree is barren; there is no life on the left side of the painting. God’s law points out our sin, but we are powerless to keep it and condemned by our sin.

ON THE RIGHT, however

• The sinner stands listening to John the Baptist, who points out the Lamb of God (notice at the foot of the cross, having its hoof on the head of the serpent/Satan as well as “death”)

• Even as the sinner looks about Christ, he is sprayed with blood from the wound in Christ’s side, allowing him to share in salvation.

• Yet behind the cross is an open tomb, and above the tomb is a risen savior (and you see just above and to the right the Angels announcing Christ’s birth to the shepherds).

• The tree on the right half of the page is blooming with life • And the sinner? He is not being instructed to keep the law or to do anything else. He is simply looking

in faith to the cross, and having the forgiving blood of Christ applied to his life.

How is a person declared righteous? Forgiven of sin’s eternal penalty? Given life when

he/she was running in shame into death? Sole Fide – “justification by faith alone.” By trusting, by

believing, by looking the crucified and risen savior and say, “I believe.

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Without the recovery of the Scriptures, the revival/reformation of the church is hard to

imagine. Without the recovery of justification through simple faith, their was no good news in

the gospel.

TAKE AWAYS

#1 Don’t neglect the Scriptures! (or, more positively) Buy into what Jesus himself said

Matthew 4:3 And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written,

“‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

#2 Take some time to understand some of the deep and wonderful truths which the Reformers put back in front of God’s people. What woke up in their souls were convictions they gave their lives for

• The unique AUTHORITY of the Scriptures • The incredible CLARITY and POWER of the Scriptures • The beautiful GRACE of the GOSPEL • The opportunity to be DECLARED RIGHTEOUS simply by faith

Christians…the followers of this Savior…should talk about these things, and be able to simply explain

them to others. Take some time to understand what you know Scripture to teach. The Bible is for

everybody to read; these truths are for everybody to understand.

#3 On which side of the (Cranach) picture are you?

Titus 3:5 God saved us, not because of works done by us in

righteousness, but according to his own mercy

Ephesians 2:8 For by grace are you saved through faith

Your Questions

Copyright 2017 © David A. Staff All rights reserved

i Mark 1:21 And they went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and was teaching. 22 And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes. Luke 4:31 And he went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. And he was teaching them on the Sabbath, 32 and they were astonished at his teaching, for his word possessed authority. ii Quoted in J. Dwight Pentecost, The Words and Works of Jesus Christ—A Study of the Life of Christ (Zondervan, 1981), 188-189. iii The planet Venus has long been considered a “morningstar.” It appears low in the sky before the sun arises, persisting in being seen. In ancient times, the planet was considered to be the god of the dawn who opened the gates of heaven for the sun to pass through. iv One panic-stricken observer claimed that “every 2nd man” he met was a Lollard. Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language., 230. v A helpful video, entitled “The Battle for the Bible,” can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RubxnoTeL_M The Battle for the Bible – The English Bible

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vi “If you approach the Scriptures in all humility and with regulated caution, you will perceive that you have been breathed upon by the Holy Will. It will bring about a transformation that is impossible to describe. The first step is to know what Jesus taught; the next is to carry it into effect.” Quoted in McNutt and Lauber, eds., The People’s Book: The Reformation and the Bible, pp.54-55. vii “Sola Fide—Justification by Faith Alone,” in Martin Luther – Treasures of the Reformation (Standstein Verlag, Dresden, Germany: Landesamt fur Denkmalpflege und Archaologie Sachsen-Anhalt, 2016), 183. viii Lucas Cranach the Elder (German: Lucas Cranach der Ältere German pronunciation: [ˈluːkas ˈkʁaːnax dɛɐ̯ ˈʔɛltəʁə], c. 1472 – 16 October 1553) was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is known for his portraits, both of German princes and those of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, whose cause he embraced with enthusiasm, becoming a close friend of Martin Luther. He also painted religious subjects, first in the Catholic tradition, and later trying to find new ways of conveying Lutheran religious concerns in art. He continued throughout his career to paint nude subjects drawn from mythology and religion. He had a large workshop and many works exist in different versions; his son Lucas Cranach the Younger, and others, continued to create versions of his father's works for decades after his death. Lucas Cranach the Elder has been considered the most successful German artist of his time.[1]