The history of mankind can be outlined as a series of turning points. These are those moments in history when either individuals or movements make decisions or changes that affect the entire course of history subsequent to that moment. If we were to take a sweeping glance of biblical history, we could prove this point in just a moment. When you look at the book of Genesis, we have turning point after turning point, the first one being the fall. When Adam and Eve sinned against God, but more than just their sinning against God, the fall of Adam plunged the entirety of mankind into the abyss of depravity. After you have the fall, then you have the story of the flood that led to the destruction of mankind, and God, in essence, recreating, reestablishing humanity upon the earth. Then we have the Tower of Babel, where God separated mankind and divided them according to various language groups. You have the call of Abraham to create a new nation, the people of God. All of these events were turning points in biblical history. And in just these few sentences, we have spanned hundreds of years of time, and we haven't even gotten past the twelfth chapter of Genesis. It is just turning point after turning point. The history of the world outside the Bible, recorded outside the pages of Holy Writ, proves the same thing. One need only think of the major wars that have been fought and of the discoveries that have been made. From Alexander the Great to Alexander Graham Bell, it has been change after change, turning one direction to another. It's a turning point in history that we confront in Acts chapter 16. Since being set apart at the church of Antioch for missionary service, Paul had traveled on what became his first missionary journey. Now he is on his second missionary journey, along with Silas and Timothy. And they had attempted to go into Asia, or what we would call today Asia Minor, the area of modern Turkey, and preach the Gospel. And yet the Holy Ghost had forbidden them. He would not allow them to go in. So then they, in the words of the Authorized Version, they assayed to go into Bithynia. It was their desire. They thought, well, if the Lord will not let us go this direction, perhaps we can go into Bithynia and preach the truth of God's Word. But again, the Lord would not let them. Instead, He sent to Paul a vision of a man of Macedonia. A man compelling Paul, asking him, come into our area, come into Macedonia and preach the Gospel to us. Turn, in essence, your evangelistic efforts toward Europe. What a turning point this was. The history of the Western world has never again been the same. Why are there turning points in history? Is it because of man's ingenuity? His ability to see the end results of his decisions and his actions and their long-term effects? I think you know the answer to that immediately is no. Acts chapter 16 is a portion of Scripture that teaches us, unmistakably, that God in His sovereignty brings about these decisive moments in history, in time, in which He changes the course of history and of mankind. The remarkable thing about these turning points is that while they ultimately affect great numbers of people at the beginning, It is most often just one or two individuals involved. In the fall, it was simply Adam and Eve. At the flood, it was Noah who was chosen to be the key man. And here in Acts chapter 16, such a momentous event that affected countless numbers began with Paul and the vision of a man from Macedonia. But not only is biblical and secular history full of these turning points, church history is full of them as well. And one of the most significant ones took place in a city in Switzerland, when a pale, sickly young scholar was confronted by a man with fiery red hair, a fiery red beard, and a fiery temperament. This man is an unusual man, this scholar, this young, pale, sickly individual. And yet he has become one of the most well-known names in Western history. He is a man about whom there is no doubt. You either love him or you hate him. There appears to be no middle ground. One German theologian said of him, he is a cataract. a primeval forest, a demonic power, something directly down from Himalaya, absolutely Chinese, strange and mythological. To those of us in the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition, we bless God for Him and thank God for His efforts as one of the great teachers of the church, the man known as John Calvin. Calvin is usually associated with the country of Switzerland and, in particular, the city of Geneva, but he was a native of France. He was born on the 10th of July, 1509, in the city of Noyon in Picardy. It was an old cathedral city. About 10,000 people lived there, 60 miles from the city of Paris. It was a major trading center in France in that day. To kind of put Calvin into a historical or chronological context, tonight Mr. Mook spoke of Luther nailing his 95 theses on the church door at Wittenberg. Luther was already a mature scholar at this time, a well-known theologian and doctor in the church. Calvin was eight years old. He was a young man growing up in a very common home. He would always refer to himself as merely a man from among the common people. His grandfather was still alive when Calvin was a young man. He was a cooper, a maker of barrels, and he perhaps even worked as a boatman on the river near Noyong. But it was Calvin's father who exerted such a great influence on the life of this young man, Gerard Calvin. He served as a secretary to the bishop and also what was known at that time as an apostolic notary. Now, we know of notaries, but you've probably never heard of an apostolic notary. He was basically a church lawyer and a secretary to the bishop of that city. Gerard had great hopes for his son. He had hopes that John would become a great churchman, a theologian of the church, a leader in the church. And this ambition he conveyed to his son. He was a driven man and he wanted to see his son rise to a position higher than he himself had enjoyed. Though he was a commoner, he wished to see his son elevated to a place in society where he would receive a great deal of respect. I can only imagine the pressure this exerted on the young man because he was bereaved of his mother and the comfort she could have given him when he was but six years old. but driven by this ambition, his father sought to instill within him a love for the Roman church and a desire to be one of her servants. So as a young man, Calvin exerted a great deal of devotion and enthusiasm for the church. He was devout in saying his prayers and in knowing about the saints, and this pleased his father to no end. Now in order to secure a better place in that day, as many people do today, he sought to educate his son, to do what he could to see that he was trained and ready for the work of the church. So he sent him to study with a family in the town, a noble family called the Momores. The Malmores had plenty of money. They had access to tutors and teachers. And so this was the perfect opportunity for Calvin to receive the basic learning of his day. Now, as in our day, in that day education was a great expense. How was he going to, on his small salary, provide for his son to have private tutors? Well, an idea came to him in 1521 when Calvin was only 12 years of age. A nearby chapel, the chapel of Lausanne, became vacant. There was no priest. So Gerard Calvin, John Calvin's father, went to the bishop. And he convinced the bishop to have young John installed as the chaplain of this chapel, as the priest over the work. And so Calvin here, as a young boy, received the tonsure. He had the crown of his head shaved. And he was counted as a member of the Roman Catholic clergy at this young age. Now, of course, he was too young to perform all the duties of a priest. And so his father hired an older man for a small sum to go and say all of the Masses and light all of the candles and go through the hocus pocus for him. Two years. After taking this position, Calvin was forced to leave his hometown for Paris. It was not unusual in that day for young scholars to have to leave their hometown when it was smitten with the bubonic plague. And so Calvin, along with his friends, his fellow schoolmates, the Momores, packed up to leave for the city of Paris. This time in Calvin's life is interestingly caricatured by Roman Catholic historians. They say Calvin was fleeing from one pestilence, the bubonic plague, only to catch another, the Protestant faith. This was a turning point where God was using something that had been a scourge to city after city in Europe, the bubonic plague, the black death, it was called. to bring about ultimately the conversion of this young man and his call to the ministry. When Calvin entered the city of Paris, he sought more formal education rather than just individual tutors. And so he entered the college of La Marche. This was a grammar school. Literally a grammar school. You studied Latin grammar. And that day all of the lectures were given in Latin. If you were called upon to recite or debate, you were required to do so in Latin. It was expected that everyone would know it. And that's something that continued in theological studies, Roman Catholic and Protestant alike, into the 1800s. For when Charles Hodge taught theology at Princeton, it was understood you would read Turretin's Institutes of Theology in the original Latin. And so Calvin went to the College of LaMarche to prepare for this work, to prepare to be able to debate, to study, to read, to write in this language. There he studied under an influential classical scholar, Martin Cordier. Cordier had a great impact on Calvin's life, so much so that in later years, when Calvin wrote a commentary on First Thessalonians, he dedicated it to Cordier for all the help he had given to him. Now what you have to understand is that when Calvin went to LaMarche, he was introduced to the learning of the Renaissance. And here we confront another turning point in history. The Renaissance had been a revival of learning in Europe just prior to the Reformation. The motto of the Renaissance had been the little Latin phrase, Advantes. the sources. Renaissance scholars had encouraged and really demanded of their students that they not just memorize the teaching of the church, or that they not just study the latest textbook in their field that had been written, but that they go back to the sources, that they go back to the original documents, that they not just study about Plato, or about Aristotle, or about the other classical writers, but that they actually study these writers themselves. That had such a profound impact upon the Reformation because men were then encouraged not just to study the teaching of the church, and not just study the translation of the Bible by Jerome, but to actually study the Scriptures themselves in the original language. And this is what would bring about such a transformation in the thinking of the leaders of that day. So Calvin had a great deal that he owed to Cordier. But after he had trained for a while studying grammar, he entered the College of Montague. This was one of the two major seminaries in Paris, the other being the famed Sorbonne. Calvin was trained there in medieval theology, scholastic theology, the schoolmen, those who had developed and who had systematized the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. And he imbibed deeply. He studied them with a great deal of zeal. His professors had the highest hopes for him. He was obviously marked for greatness in the church, and he was seeing his father's dream for him come true. It was a hard life. It was a restricted diet at the college, rigorous hours of study, severe discipline. Yet, while he was studying theology, There came another major turning point. His father decided that, you know, there's not a lot of money in theology. By the way, that's still true. There's not a lot of money in theology. I think there'll be more money in the study of the law. I think my son should become a lawyer. And so he wrote to Calvin in Paris, telling him of his opinion, his decision. Calvin willingly complied. With all the zeal that he had been studying the schoolmen and the church fathers, he now turned to the University of Orleans and gave that same diligence and that same natural God-given mental ability to the study of the law. He went to the University of Orleans to study under the famous jurist Pierre Delatoy. But as was the practice of students in that day, you didn't just go to one school, stay there four years or five years or if you want to, you know, really study hard and pack it into six or seven. He didn't do that. They would travel from school to school to study under famous professors of the day. And it's very significant that Calvin left the University of Orleans to study at the University of Bourget. Because there, while he learned a great deal from an Italian legal scholar, Andreas Alciati, he encountered there a man who was to have a lasting impact upon his life. A man by the name of Melchior Wolmar. Melchior Wolmar. Not a household name, I'm sure. And yet, a man whose name deserves to be remembered in the history of the Protestant church, Walmar, as his name would indicate to you, was a German. And he had been a student in Paris under the famed Jacques Lefebvre. Jacques Lefebvre was a professor at the Sorbonne. Remember, that was one of the major seminaries in the city. And yet, he was something of a pre-reformer. He was a man who saw abuses in the church. He was a man who himself was studying Scripture, and we might classify him along with other pre-Reformers, such as Wycliffe, or Hus, or Savonarola. When you begin to look at some of Lefebvre's teachings, and indeed some of Savonarola's teachings, you might scratch your head and think, well, this fellow is not a free Presbyterian. He doesn't word doctrine exactly the way we might like to have it worded. But yet, here were men that God was using, and the light was beginning to dawn upon them. And Lefebvre, as he began to understand more of the Scriptures, was training his students in the same truth he was learning. And so, Walmart began to study under Lefebvre, and actually went beyond his teacher, becoming fully reformed in his beliefs. Now, Walmart became so influential in the life of Calvin, because of the subject he taught. He taught Greek, and he taught the classical Greek writers, but more than that, he taught the Greek New Testament. Now, in this day and age, that doesn't seem to be an incredible thing. Students who go to Bible college and seminary are expected to study the Greek New Testament, and in fact, A layman can order a correspondence course without any trouble and begin the study of New Testament Greek. But this was a new thing in the 16th century. And it was a dangerous thing to study the Greek New Testament. For you see, the Greek New Testament was the seedbed of heresy. Why, if you read the Greek New Testament, horror of horrors, you might become a Lutheran, an evangelical. And that was the worst thing imaginable. But it was this knowledge of the Greek New Testament that later enabled Calvin to become an expert interpreter of Scripture. And his expertise, I believe, is evidenced in the fact that his commentaries are still read and studied today as some of the finest available on the biblical text. At this point in Calvin's life, we need to say something about his conversion. T. H. L. Parker, who is one of the leading Calvin scholars of our day, has said that no part of Calvin's life has had so much energy bestowed upon it as the study of the date the manner, the causes, and the agencies of his conversion. Scholars have looked at all of the details and tried to come to some consensus and understanding about Calvin's conversion. Not that they doubt his conversion, but the fact of the matter is that Calvin was a self-effacing man. He was not a man eager to promote himself. And so you rarely have any biographical or autobiographical references in his writings. So what we have to do is we have to go back and study what was happening at his time, and where we begin to see changes in his life, and when we begin to see his writings and teachings emerge, to come to some conclusion as to when he was actually converted. There's no doubt that he lived in what we might call a Reformation atmosphere. In the city of Paris, the teachings of Luther were being debated. The Ninety-Five Theses had been posted ten years prior to this time. And so among the students, and especially those who were now beginning to study the Bible, Luther's points of doctrine were points of contention, points of interest, and points of debate. But J.A. Wiley points out something interesting, that though there was this Reformation atmosphere, Calvin had been triply steeled against it. You remember he studied at one of the leading seminaries in France, the College of Montague. It was very orthodox in its Roman Catholic doctrine. He was not likely to hear anything there that would subvert the teachings of Rome at all. You remember he had also received the tonsure, the mark that he was a member of the Roman clergy. He had put his hand to the plow of Rome. Would he dare look back from that? To leave mother church was seen as the most serious of all crimes. And his daily diet was the schoolman of Rome. Yes, he had turned to the study of law, but he had spent day after day having his mind ingrained with the tradition of the Church. But then came Melchior Womar. As we said, Womar had taught him the Greek New Testament. He taught the truth of the Greek New Testament. And though we cannot trace Calvin's conversion directly to him as a man who was thoroughly reformed, I have no doubt whatsoever that he was giving the gospel to Calvin. But I believe that the greatest evangelical influence on his life was that of his cousin. Calvin's cousin, Pierre-Robert Olivetain, had also gone to the city of Paris to study. His last name is rather interesting, Alivaten. It means midnight oil. At first it was a nickname, because he was known for sitting up late at night and studying, and it only later became his family name. He too was a student of this Jacques Lefebvre, this pre-reformer. And Alivaten, while studying under Lefebvre, while studying the Word of God, began to embrace the truth, this new doctrine. And he found in this new doctrine the old teaching of the Gospel. He found release from his sin. He found freedom from his guilt and from his bondage. And it was this freedom of the Gospel that he so greatly enjoyed that he began to talk with his cousin about. He began to tell John about how he could be forgiven of his sins. how he could too enjoy this peace with God. Now, Calvin, as I say, had been steeled against this. And up to this point, he had been confronted with the saints of the church, people who were, in reality, just a little bit holier than he was. But Leviathan brought him face to face with an all-holy God, a righteous and a just God. And this began to bear and weigh heavily upon his conscience, because he stood, he knew now, before the bar of this holy God, and he stood condemned. Another thing that greatly moved Calvin at this time was the martyrdom of a man named Jean Valliere. He was a monk who had turned to Christ, who had embraced these doctrines. And Calvin stood and watched him burned at the stake. The Roman church was discovering in the 16th century what the Roman Empire had discovered in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries. That the blood of the martyrs served to be the seat of the church. that by martyring these faithful men and women who were followers of Christ, instead of squelching the doctrine, instead of squelching the preaching of the truth, only served to further it. Because now men and women were seeing that there was not only something worth living for, there was actually a truth that was worth dying for. And it was the truth of the Gospel. Calvin struggled with his own self-righteousness, and at last came to a knowledge of the truth. Calvin's writings, as I said, are not full of autobiographical glimpses, but in his preface to his commentary on the Psalms, we do find this brief mention, a rare glimpse into his life. He said this, God drew me from obscure and lowly beginnings, and conferred on me that most honorable office of herald and minister of the Gospel. My father had intended me for theology from my early childhood, but when he reflected that the career of law proved everywhere very lucrative for its practitioners, the prospect suddenly made him change his mind. And so it happened that I was called away from the study of philosophy and set to learning law, though out of obedience To my father's wishes, I tried my best to work hard, yet God at last turned my course in another direction by a secret reign or curb of providence. What happened first was that by an unexpected conversion, He tamed to teachableness a mind too stubborn for its years. For I was so strongly devoted to the superstitions of the papacy that nothing could draw me from the depths of its mire. And so this mere taste of true godliness that I received set me on fire with such a desire to progress that I pursued the rest of my studies more coolly, although I did not give them up altogether. Before a year had slipped by, anybody who longed for pure doctrine kept coming to me to learn from me. Still a beginner. A raw recruit. A sudden and unexpected conversion. That was what he experienced. It was not what he had gone to Paris looking for. He had gone looking for an education. His father had sent him looking for material prosperity. And yet God had found him. and tamed his unteachable and stubborn mind, and gave him an unquenchable thirst for godliness. With such a change in his own heart, Calvin, like his cousin, became an evangelist for others. He returned to the city of Bourget where he had been studying, This was a good place to be at the time for a Protestant. It was under the protection of Margaret, Queen of Navarre. And she had offered a safe refuge there for those who embraced the Protestant faith. He wished to study in seclusion. This was always Calvin's desire. Just to have a nice, quiet place to study. And yet people kept pushing him to be their pastor. You remember he said, Within a year of his own conversion, people who wished to know the truth kept coming to him. And so at last he agreed to go house to house, evangelizing and teaching them the things that he himself was learning. He returned to his own home city to evangelize. His father had passed away, and so he went back there to straighten out some family business. And again, he was giving the Gospel to all with whom he came in contact. At last he returned to Paris. There the city was going through a great deal of struggle with the theological debates. There was growing persecution. But Calvin did not so much enter into these debates as he again went home to home teaching the Word of God. Other students were caught up in the debates, no doubt with genuineness and sincerity. But one historian said, while the students were outside destroying syllogisms, Calvin was inside converting souls. That was his heart. He remained in Paris for four years. But as the year 1533 neared its end, things became very uncomfortable. An incident involving a friend of his named Nicholas Copp was what brought it all to a head. Nicholas Copp was the rector of the other seminary in town, the Sorbonne. And Nicholas Copp was scheduled to give an academic address on the opening of the first day of school, November 1st, 1533. Tomorrow will mark the 470th anniversary of this address. The problem with this address was that it was to be on the text of the Beatitudes, Matthew chapter 5. What happened? There are actually two accounts of what happened. Some believe that Calvin wrote this address, that he wrote it as an exposition, though an academic address, yet it focused on the grace of God. And it was a thorough presentation of the Gospel. And the unusual thing was that in this academic address, At one of the leading Roman Catholic seminaries in Europe, there was not even a mention of the saints, and it was all saints day to boot. Well, this was not a good thing. Another account says that Calvin didn't write the address, though we have a copy in his own hand. He simply copied it for himself, for his own benefit. Whatever the case, whether Calvin authored it or whether he copied it, he was implicated with Nicholas Cox. And Paris became a place where he could not stay. It was seen to be an evangelical, a Lutheran address. And so Copp was summoned before the French Parliament. As he was going to meet the Parliament, he was informed that Parliament's decision had already been reached. He was going to his death. And so he left and fled to the city of Basle in Switzerland. Soon it became known that his accomplice, His partner in crime was John Calvin. And in one of the most dramatic moments in Calvin's life, they came to seize him as well. Some of his friends had burst into his room to tell him, they're on your trail, they're after you. And not moments after they had entered his room, there was a knock at the main gate. His friends, in what could be a scene from a movie, helped him make a rope out of bed sheets to get out of the window, while others went to the gate to stall the people who had come for him. He made his way to the outskirts of the city, and he was a little bit late for Halloween, but he found a costume anyway. He went into a vine dresser's cottage, dressed as a vineyard worker and complete with a hoe over his shoulder, He strolled into the countryside and was able to escape. He found refuge in the city of Angeline, in the home of a friend named Justin Dutillet. This was a significant place of refuge for him because the Dutillets had something remarkable in that day. They had a library of 4,000 volumes. And so there Calvin could, in quiet seclusion, study. And it was while he was there that he outlined what was to later become the institutes of the Christian religion. After staying there for six months, he moved northward to Poitiers. He became friends with leading people in the city there. He preached the gospel to them. Persecution began to arise in the city, and so they became a church, an underground church, literally. They had to flee to the cave of Benedict. It became known as Calvin's Grotto. And people would come different paths at different times to arrive at the cave for a service. And it was there, we believe, that the first Protestant celebration of the Lord's Supper took place in the country of France. He was a pastor to these people. But he was also an evangelist. He had a heart to get out the Gospel. And this is something that people to this very day do not understand. Some influential young men came under Calvin's influence. Jean Vernon, Philip Vernon, and Albert Babineau. They were there in that congregation that met in the cave. And under the preaching of the Gospel, they were burdened themselves to become evangelists. And so they went out into the cities of France. They went into the South and to the West. And at Calvin's instruction, they sought to win the teachers of the young. Because they knew that if they could win the teachers, the teachers would seek to win the students. Here he was. sending out evangelists to preach the Gospel. Now, that's far from the caricature of Calvin today. I remember when some relatives discovered that my wife was dating a Presbyterian. They were greatly concerned that I would not believe in evangelism, that I would not believe in witnessing to people, in giving out the Gospel, because that is the caricature. Calvinism is a hard-hearted religion. that rejoices in preaching reprobation and rejoices in the damnation of the lost when nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, brothers and sisters, the modern missionary movement did not begin with William Carey. Do you know that? It began with John Calvin. That man who studied in Geneva went as far as the country of Brazil to preach the truth of this book. So these men went out, teaching the young, spreading the gospel to the students. A Roman Catholic historian, Raymond, said that the young were lost before they were aware of their danger. Many with only the down on their chins, he said, were so incurably perverted that they preferred being roasted over a fire to giving up their Calvinism. They were preaching the gospel with power. They were evangelizing those they knew would become leaders. And so, in a sense, they were maximizing their mission to all of France. Calvin returned to the city of Noyon, then to Paris in the spring and summer of 1534. He resigned his position over that little chapel of La Gécine. He saw this could not be continued with any kind of consistency in his life. He also sold the inheritance that he received from his father. He didn't care for his worldly goods. But he was unable to evangelize when he returned to Paris. There was continuing unrest. And so he began to travel. He traveled to Strasbourg, to Ball, to Metz. But all he desired at this time was really this quiet place to study. He felt the impending persecution against the church. This led him to publish the first edition of his Institutes in 1539. Why did he publish his Institutes? He said he did so to vindicate from undeserved insult, my brethren, whose death was precious in the sight of the Lord." A close friend of his named Laforge had been martyred in Paris. Oh, the king of France said, don't worry, we're only killing Anabaptists and seditious people. Calvin knew that was not true. They were killing those who were faithful. to the Gospel. So he said, I want to vindicate my brethren whose death in the sight of the Lord was precious. But he said also that since the same sufferings threatened many pitiable men, that some sorrow and care for them should move foreign peoples. And so he published what was to be a confession and a means of instruction. The Institutes went through several editions from 1536 to the final edition in 1559. Let me take just a moment here to encourage you to become readers of the Institutes. Many people are frightened. Calvin was such a deep theologian. He was a deep theologian. There are passages in the Institutes I must confess the section on sacramental union that's still boggle my mind. I hope one day to get to the bottom of it. That'll probably be in heaven. But there are passages that are so simple. In fact, most of it is so simple because it was written to instruct the church, not just other theologians. It was written with a practical end in sight to build up ordinary Christians in their faith. And I think you would be amazed if you sat down and began to read at just how simple, yet it's profound, it's deep, yes, but how simple it is. I often ask people, what do you think is the longest section in the Institutes? Think about Calvin. Think about Calvinism. And just for a moment, what do you think is the longest section? Well, certainly it has to be the section on predestination and election. Actually, it isn't. It is even the section on the sovereignty of God. The longest section in the Institutes is on the doctrine of prayer. And it is some of the most blessed teaching on prayer for the Christian that you will ever encounter. Let me encourage you to become readers of the Institutes. Upon the publication of the Institutes in Ball, Calvin left. He did some more traveling, and then he set out for Strasbourg. He had hoped that finally he had found his place of rest. The place where he could be quiet, where he could have his books, where he could study and remain undisturbed by the persecution of all these people who wanted him to be their teacher. I'd like for us just for a moment here to go back to the Scripture portion that we read earlier this evening. For in Acts chapter 16, I believe that we see a great parallel to the life of Calvin. In Acts 16, Paul was determined to go into Asia. But what happened? The Lord wouldn't let him. And then he was determined that he would go into Bithynia. And the Lord wouldn't let him. God had an entirely different direction planned out for the Apostle. And so he went. into Macedonia to preach the gospel. It was not an easy task. At Philippi, he was beaten and thrown into prison. You all know the story of the conversion of the Philippian jailer. And yet, God's ways are the best ways. God's direction is always the right direction. Because when Paul went into Macedonia, it was from Macedonia, from Philippi, and other cities in that region, that the Gospel began then a strong westward movement into what is now Europe. And that, brothers and sisters, brought the influence of the Gospel to you and to me. We see the parallel in Calvin's life in that he wanted to go to Strasburg. He wanted to lead this quiet life, but God had other plans for him. He was on his way to Strasburg when he had to take a detour. There was a war going on at that time. Francis I and Charles V were at it again, and the armies were blocking the roads to Strasburg. So he had to take a detour south toward the city of Geneva. This was only an overnight stay, mind you. A room for the night and on to Strasbourg the next day. But since he had published a book of theology, he had become a well-known man. Though he was only in the city for a night, the word spread quickly. Before the night was over, there came a knock at his door. And into Calvin's room came a man named William Farrell. Farrell was 20 years Calvin's senior. He too had been a student of Jacques Lefebvre at the Sorbonne. You can see the influence this pre-reformer had. Farrell conducted most of his work in Switzerland and almost all of the areas in what is today the French-speaking cantons of Switzerland. was one to the truth of the Gospel under this man's ministry. It was a powerful ministry. It was a small man, red hair and a red beard, and a fiery preacher of the Gospel. Here was the great turning point. Pharaoh came into Calvin's room. Elijah-esque is the only way I know to describe him in both his looks and his demeanor. And in a very blunt fashion, Farrell said, if you refuse to devote yourself to our work here in the city, God will condemn you. Calvin later confessed that he heard that night, he believed, the voice of God speaking. He returned to ball together a few personal belongings and came to the city of Geneva, where he was to spend most of the rest of his life. Calvin was installed as a lecturer at St. Peter's, the cathedral of the town. He was installed as the professor of sacred letters. And I think that's very significant. You know, I was thinking today, Calvin was reluctant to take on the position a pastor. He was willing to come into the church and lecture on Paul's epistles. He was willing to share with others what he learned, but he felt the call to the ministry to be such an important and such a heavy call that he was not eager to take it on. And you know, that is so far different from the way the ministry is approached today. I have a number of friends who teach in Bible colleges and seminaries. And many of the young men who are training today have as their ultimate goal to become a quote-unquote scholar. To go on and to earn their doctor's degree. I'm here to confess a Ph.D. in 50 cents will get you a cup of coffee. But they're eager to do this so that they can be thought scholarly, they can become professors, and if they're a pastor, well, that's a lower position that may be a stepping stone into a higher position in a seminary. But you know, I believe that is just the opposite of the way we should look at it. Calvin saw that anyone with A modicum of intelligence given the time, the interest, and the training could become a respectable scholar of Scripture. He could learn Greek, he could learn Hebrew, and learn how to interpret it. But men and women, it takes a call from God and a gifting from God to be a pastor. And Calvin understood that. And as you encounter young men who show an interest in Scripture, show an interest in studying Scripture, lay before them that the greatest challenge is to become a preacher and a pastor of this book, not just someone who sits in a library studying for his own benefit. Now there are men who are called to study and to train others. And I do not despise that calling at all. But what a great office is the office of the pastor. I magnify not an individual man, but the office, for it is what God has chosen to use for the feeding of His church. It was at this time Calvin wrote some significant things, but the one that caused him the most trouble was an article of church discipline dealing with the Lord's Supper. Calvin and Pharaoh both were determined to keep away heretics and sinners, open, profligate sinners, from the Lord's table. Now, not every city in Europe was wanting to do that. In fact, the city of Bern had developed an order of worship where those who were libertines, open, known sinners, could come to the Lord's table. And that's what they wanted to do in Geneva. And Calvin and Pharaoh said no. Yes, if you are a sinner, we urge you to repent, and then come to the Lord's table. If you are a heretic, we urge you to repent and embrace the truth, and then come to the Lord's table. But if you will not repent, you will be excommunicated. This led to shots being fired outside of Calvin's home, and shouts to the Rhone, which was the nearby river. Let's drown this man. because He is such a trouble to our lives. I think that demonstrates just how Christian these people were who wanted to sit at the Lord's table. They were not Christian at all. They simply wanted some outward sign of religious respectability. All of this trouble led to Calvin's banishment Easter of 1538, he and Pharaoh refused to serve the Lord's Supper to these Libertines, so they had to leave the city. Calvin went to Strasbourg. Finally, he made it. He lived in the home of Martin Busser, but even there he could not lead the quiet life of the student. He wished the French refugees at the Church of St. Nicholas on the south wall of the city compelled him to come and be their pastor. Now, Busser was a happily married man. And as very many happily married people are, he became a matchmaker. He thought Calvin should be married. And Calvin, he thought about it, he prayed about it, he decided this would be a wise move. And indeed it is a wise move for a pastor to be married because the home has a profound impact upon the pulpit that cannot be denied. But he wrote to his friend, Pharaoh. And he described the kind of wife he was looking for. He said, always keep in mind what I seek to find in her, for I am not one of those insane lovers smitten at first sight with a fine figure. The only beauty which allures me is this, that she be virtuous and modest, dutiful and thrifty, patient and likely to care about my health. Well, several young ladies who were seen to be suitable prospects were looked at, but in the meantime, he simply fell in love with a member of his own congregation, Idelette de Bourgh. Idelette was the widow of an Anabaptist. She had obviously embraced reform doctrine, sitting under his preaching in Strasbourg. And so in August of 1540, with Farrell performing the ceremony, they were married. Just a few weeks later, a call came from Geneva. The city council saw that they could not control the unruly people of the city. They needed a man with a firm hand, a man of principle, a man of conviction, and so they begged him to come back to the city and take up his post once again as pastor. You can imagine the deep struggle this would have been. He had been banished from his pulpit only because he stood for the truth, and now he was called back. Finally, he agreed, he surrendered to being the Lord's will. So, on September the 13th, 1541, he entered Geneva to take up the work of the gospel once again. The next summer, Idilet gave birth to a son, but he lived only a few days. was no ivory tower theologian. He knew much about life and the heartaches of life. We often think of Calvin in the secluded study, writing his deep tomes, but very often there were as many as ten children connected with various members of his family living in his home. And so with Midnight cries and teething and all the other problems that come with childhood, Calvin carried on his ministry. But his own son lived only a few days. He wrote to a pastor friend and said, the Lord has certainly inflicted a severe and bitter wound in the death of our baby son, but he himself is a father and knows what is good for his children. A few years later, 1556, John Knox came to Geneva. We trace our heritage through that path, for it was Knox who brought the Reformation to Scotland, eventually to Northern Ireland through Scottish immigrants, and then from Northern Ireland to America. The Presbyterian heritage and tradition that we hold dear and which men and women we dare not sell out. Knox said that he found in Geneva the most perfect school of Christ on earth since the days of the apostles, and he no doubt was right. Later, three years later, Calvin opened the Geneva Academy, a seminary for training. He also in that year published the last and the fullest edition of his institutes and died just five years later. May the 27th, a Saturday evening, at only 54 years of age. And yet, the great amount he accomplished in those 54 years. As he wished, he was buried in a simple casket with no marker for his grave. So to this very day, we do not know where Calvin is buried. And yet, in one way, how little that matters. because of His influence that lives on. Now this evening, you've been very patient with me as I've gone through this, talking about the turning points in the life of Calvin. But in these closing moments, let me just draw out a few other lessons from his life for us as a church. We see in Calvin the value of a persistent witness. Many of you have unsaved family members to whom you have witnessed and for whom you have prayed for years. Let me encourage you to keep on witnessing and to keep on praying because Calvin's cousin, Eliva Tan, did not give up. Let's face it, Calvin was not born a Protestant. He was, we might say, a tough nut to crack. He was steeped in the superstition and scholastic theology of Rome, but yet, men and women, he was delivered by the power of God. Because faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Don't give up in your witness. We see the value of separation. Calvin had been enticed to stay in the Church of Rome. You can't dare leave Mother Church. Rome could have provided him a place of luxury and ease either as a teacher of the church or as a lawyer. And yet he chose to bear the reproach of Christ. We see the guiding hand of providence. The armies of Francis I and Charles V were used as instruments of God simply in being in the way on the road to Strasbourg. God working out all the details. And then we see the enduring witness of faithfulness. The fact that Calvin is still a household word in so many places. His writings continue to be published. And if my friends, converted now, but who went to Catholic high school are telling me the truth, and I believe they are, he's still hated and taught against in the religion classes. Keep on. with the work and witness of God. There is the enduring witness of faithfulness. And as you hear the Phoenix Free Presbyterian Church continue to proclaim and preach the great doctrines of the Reformation, the great doctrines of justification by God's free grace, and the absolute authority and the sole authority of God's Word, remember that that faithfulness God will use as an enduring witness. And brothers and sisters, by maintaining that faithful witness here in the city of Phoenix, who knows? Only God knows what a turning point this is in the history of the West. May God keep us faithful. May God keep us trusting Him that when He does turn our paths in ways we could not imagine, in ways that we did not want, we will follow after Him knowing that He knows best.