We thank you. We thank you for the Lord Jesus. We thank you for the promises of the Lord Jesus. We thank you, especially this morning, for His promise that He would build His church and that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. And Lord, in this class, we have studied 1,500 years so far of the church making its best efforts to fail. and Christ by His power, redeeming, restoring, renewing, and reforming it. And Lord, as we come finally to this great period of revival, this great period of reformation, Lord, I pray that you would encourage our hearts that Jesus Christ has built, is building, and will build his church. No matter what our eyes may see, no matter what the news may tell us, he will be victorious. We ask that you would increase our faith in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, welcome, and we're in a combined Sunday school today. Pastor Walton is on duty, and of course we ask that you pray for him as a missionary, an extension of this church when he's away. So we've studied 1,500 years this year. If you look at any one period of those 1,500 years, you really become amazed that the church has survived at all. The church almost always seems to be in great peril, in great danger. And so we look at every stage of history, and you think, is this going to be the end? How will the church survive this? And when we've come through the medieval times that we've not looked terribly closely at over the last couple months, and I know we've had a lot of breaks, It can be extremely discouraging to see the condition that the Church was in, and when I'm talking about the Church, I'm mainly talking about the Roman Catholic Church. And we're going to look more about that next week at the Roman Catholic Church and the need of Reformation, but today we're going to get introduced to Martin Luther. I think we have to understand Luther and his context before we can really understand the Reformation. Now Luther is often credited with being the father of the Reformation, humanly speaking, but there were reformers that came before him, and we've looked at a couple of them. Who were those? Hus, good, the golden goose, right? Who else? Alright, Calvin's coming. Calvin's gonna follow after Luther chronologically. Who did we see that, what's that? Thank you, yeah. So we looked at Wycliffe, and I think we said at the time, Wycliffe was sort of the grandfather of the Reformation, and he, through his works, discipled Hus, and Hus, through his works, discipled Martin Luther. And so those are sometimes known, especially Wycliffe, known as the morning star of the Reformation, the first light that would soon dawn. And the imagery of light and darkness is gonna be all throughout talk of the Reformation. There's one of the great sayings of the Reformation, or mottos of the Reformation, is post tenebras lux. What's that mean? after darkness light. There were little glimmers at times, but the church really, I think by any normal standards, it would be very difficult to call the Roman Catholic Church of the medieval times a church at all. It was not faithful. It was a place of great corruption. And so we're coming to the cusp of the Reformation. There's one major event that people identify with sparking the Reformation. What was that? 95 theses, right? So the 95 theses being nailed to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg. But we're going to try to get some background here, both of the medieval church and of Martin Luther. And we'll focus more on the Reformation itself next week. So today, my hope really is to set before you what the gospel really is. And sometimes the best way to understand what something is is to look at what it's not. And when we look at the pre-Reformation church, we see a lot of corruptions in the gospel. And so that's where we're gonna go today is really what is the gospel and how did it transform the church? How did it transform Martin Luther? I'm gonna, let me ask you, what comes to mind when you think of Martin Luther? 95 theses. What else? Say it again? Yes, 1521 trial at the Deed of Worms. Good. What else? Good. Salvation by grace alone through faith alone. Very good. Reformation theology really is well associated with Luther. Luther was a pretty good theologian. There's some areas that we would differ from Luther. But I think that the Lord greatly used him. And Luther is one of those great testimonies that God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick. Luther was a complex character. If you go online and you Google Martin Luther insult generator, You just get a, there's a whole website devoted to the insults Luther used when he was debating people. And some of them were brutal. I mean, some of them make you blush. And you're thinking, a Christian man is saying these things? Now, it was certainly a different time, different era. He didn't imagine that we'd one day be Googling his insults. But I mean, he was a very flawed man. I listened to or read probably Well, I listened to about 10 lectures on him in the last two weeks and read several books. Every one of them talked about the psychology of Martin Luther, and almost everybody said, I'm not touching that. He was a very complex character, and God used him in a very great way. I want to make a statement. I want you to tell me in a moment what you think of the statement. This is the gospel. We're all sinners, but God is gracious. and God's grace works in us to make us holy so that we can become righteous before God. All right. Let me say it one more time, just for anybody that didn't catch it. We are all sinners, but God is gracious and God's grace works in us to make us holy so that we can become right with him or righteous before him. Good. We're going to dissect that statement because right there, and I hope everybody in here, your hackles went up and you thought, that is a problematic statement. I'm going to guess that could pass in probably 90% of churches today as the gospel. And so I hope that we're a discerning enough bunch that you heard that and you thought, no way. And some of you immediately were shaking your heads. What's wrong with that statement? Because this would have been the theology of the 15th and 16th century that Luther is born into. Good, explain that. in Christ is something which presupposes any work of a believer. And so if we say that the work of God in us produces the righteousness which makes us acceptable, that puts a condition upon righteousness as it relates to the actions of the believer, which is unacceptable. Good. What else do you hear wrong with that? I mean, there's a long list of things wrong. You made a comment that was super helpful. Yeah, where's Jesus in this, right? There was nothing about Christ in that. So you could just as easily do that in any worldview. What else? What else did you hear wrong there? There you go. Good. So the common teaching of the medieval church and the Catholic church, honestly, going almost back to Jerome, and you're going to remember why if you've been in this class for a while, going back to Jerome, translating the Latin Vulgate, giving the people the Bible in their language, which was a good thing. It was a very good thing. We want the Bible in the vernacular, but Jerome had one major problem there that I think it led the church in great confusion. What was the problem in Jerome's translation? Good. What does repent mean? to turn around, metanoia. So to turn away from something. And so I'm going to use a quote today during the sermon that man is naturally facing, turns his back to God and is facing the world. And that's why we love the world so much. We're naturally born facing the wrong way. We love all the wrong things. To repent is to turn away from that and to turn toward God. And we're gonna see in the sermon, it is God who turns us by his grace. But Jerome's translation was not repent, it was do penance. What does penance mean? Good. Yeah, it's the idea that there are works that can appease God on behalf of your sin. Well, there are works that can appease God on behalf of your sin. It's called the work of propitiation that Christ did upon the cross. But there is nothing we can do, nor is there anything we need to do, to go beyond what Christ has done to make propitiation for us. And so what you have in this idea, and I hope, again, I'm gonna say it one more time for folks that came in a little bit after I got started. I want to present to you the gospel as the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century understood it. We are all sinners, but God is gracious. Good, we're tracking. And God's grace works in us to make us holy so that we may become righteous before him. In that equation, in that formula, on what does my righteousness, my hope rest? I think to some degree it rests upon grace, right? God's grace has to work in me in order for me to become righteous. But it doesn't rest upon grace alone. So you think of those five solas of the Reformation. What are they? Sola Scriptura. What's that mean? Good. Scripture alone is the only infallible rule of faith and practice. What else? Solus Christus, Christ alone. We're gonna get to that in a few minutes, but in Roman Catholicism, you had lots of mediators between God and man. You had Mary, whose name is the Mediatrix and Redemptrix in the Roman Catholic Catechism. All right, Solus Christus, what else? Sola gratia, what's that mean? Grace alone. Okay, this is where Rome loses you. Rome is saying, yes, of course we're saved by grace. Just look at Ephesians 2, 8, 9. But they're not saying grace alone saves you. You're saved by grace and that grace must in you produce enough righteousness that you can become acceptable before God. What question does that leave in your mind? How much? Right? We don't have a grace meter so that I know whether I've hit enough. And so it's a life of constant instability if you're serious about this, or a life of dismissiveness. And we're going to see both extremes in the Roman Catholic Church. A life of saying, well, kind of what's the point? Rome came up with a solution. What was Rome's solution to that uncertainty about what's going to happen to you after you die? Purgatory, right? And what verse were they using to prove purgatory? Exactly, good. Yep, well said. There was no biblical text. There is one apocryphal text that taken out of context is argued for purgatory. But what's the idea behind purgatory? Yeah. And what's actually happening in purgatory? Good. Think about the name, purgatory. What word does that sound like? What English word? Purged. You need to be purged of the rest of your sins. So, all right, you only hit this much righteousness in this world. So you need to be purged of that remaining unrighteousness. And JD may only need a couple hundred years. I'm probably gonna need six or 7,000 years. You know, I had a lot more unrighteousness to deal with than JD did. So that's where Rome is leaving people. And then people are saying, well, how do we, this isn't a good idea. What do we do? What did Rome say? Okay. Good. And you buy the indulgences. This is really where Rome realized, you know, we don't really have products we can sell here. What is the one thing we can offer and make a little bit of money off of? We just built St. Peter's Basilica to prove the greatness of Rome. How are we gonna pay for this? Indulgences, that's a great way to pay for it. So do you wanna cut some time off of purgatory? Do you wanna cut time off purgatory for others? That actually was a later invention, cutting time off of purgatory on behalf of loved ones. Do you wanna cut time off of purgatory for them? You can write a check, cash, credit card, it doesn't matter to us. But you buy indulgences, and it shortens your time in purgatory. That's the context into which Luther is born. We're gonna look more at that next week in terms of Johann Tetzel. You probably have heard that name, or if you don't know the name, you know his famous slogan that he would go town to town selling indulgences. And what was his line that amazingly translates well into English? When a coin in the coffer rings, your mom from Purgatory Springs. Heidi, what is it? Somehow it translates really well and still rhymes. This is what Luther's born into. You have the sacraments. in Roman Catholicism to infuse you with more grace. So you sin, we're leaky, right? We get grace poured into us at baptism. It washes away our original sin, says Rome, but you leak. You leak out holiness through sin, and so you need to be re-infused with more grace. And you are re-infused with more grace through sacraments. And if you are particularly holy, by the end of your life, you hopefully will not need very long in purgatory. And by the way, there have been some very, especially holy people through the years. They had so many good works. Those works are called works of supererogation. They had more good works than they needed. Well, Rome says, what do we do with those? Put them in the treasury of merit. So when somebody's buying an indulgence, what they're actually buying is somebody else's leftover good works that they didn't need. It sounds like we're joking, right? It sounds like all of this is made up. And that's exactly what it is. This is exactly the kind of religion we would suppose a man would make up. It makes tons of sense that sinful humans would come up with something like this. But thankfully, this is not the gospel that scripture teaches. How would you make that statement differently? We're all sinners, but God is gracious. God's grace works in us to make us holy so that we can become right with him. What does the gospel actually teach? What's that? Good. And how does righteousness come? Imputed righteousness. We are pronounced righteous long before we are actually righteous. Now, God's not lying. He's just crediting Christ's righteousness to us. There's this double imputation. Christ's righteousness credited to me because all my sin was first credited to him. If you get nothing else out of today, if you remember nothing about the life of Martin Luther, I'll be okay as long as you remember what we've just talked about. That's the gospel, that God pronounces us righteous because of the righteousness of Christ imputed to us. We've sort of already touched on a lot of this, but we might not get to it. Let's see. If we're to diagnose the condition of the Roman Catholic Church, At this point, there's confusion about who Christ is and what he accomplished. There's the question of salvation by works. If you talk to a Roman Catholic, they will say, of course we don't believe in salvation by works, we believe in salvation by grace. But it's not alone. And then misunderstanding grace, what grace actually is. Let me show you what this led to in the life of the medieval church. I will get to that in a second. Here's what it led to. Exaltation of everybody but Christ. So everybody who is anybody was somebody in the Roman Catholic Church. And what that means is you had bishops, you had simony. What is simony? Sale of church office. Who's that named after? Paul Simon, exactly. Or another option is? Simon Magus, yeah, who wanted to essentially use his money to buy influence. So you had that, you had a great uncertainty. If salvation is contingent upon me having enough grace, enough holiness, I can never be sure. And either I will despair or I will become obnoxiously arrogant. It led to extreme religious practices. So if you really wanted your life to matter, if you wanted any sense of assurance, you needed to become a monk or a nun, or if you want to be really holy, a priest. But the average person Really, the mentality was their life didn't really matter to God, and God didn't largely matter to their life, because how could they be made right with him? How could they matter to God? And so you had the monks and the nuns and everything, and typically that was a life of asceticism. What is asceticism? Self-denial, yeah. Often self-flagellation, what's that mean? Yeah, beating yourself, starving yourself, cutting yourself off from humanity in hopes that God would be pleased with it, that it would take away your sin. Let me give you an example of a situation. Emperor Maximilian, just for the time of Luther, maybe during the time of Luther, not a religious guy, comes to die. He left specific instructions. Here's what he says. When I die, Check my pulse very carefully to make sure I'm gone and then whip my body and knock out my teeth. Shave off all my hair so that I appear before God as penitent. Makes total sense within this paradigm, doesn't it? And hopefully, it'll slip by God as if he hasn't noticed. Now, we can mock that, but that's what everybody's doing. If we really think about it, any attempt at self-righteousness is just that, because Ephesians 2 tells us we are dead in our sins and trespasses. And so, it's all trying to do the same thing of deceiving God into thinking that we were good enough. The opposite end of that was extreme monasticism, like the asceticism that we just talked about. That's the context Luther's born into. So let's talk about Luther. He's born November 10th, 1483. Heidi, how do we pronounce that? He was baptized the next day. I couldn't help but think of Paul in Philippians 3, circumcised on the eighth day, kind of the things he had to boast in. Luther's baptized the next day on the feast of St. Martin of Tours. That's where he got his name. He was named after St. Martin. His parents were Hans and Marguerite. This is a weird statement. They were successful peasants. And I didn't really know that was a thing, honestly. They were the lower class, but they were successful within the lower class. And they wanted opportunities to move up. And so Hans actually invested in a silver mine and became relatively wealthy and influential, but still within the peasant class. Marguerite was very strict. She was a strict disciplinarian. That's one of the only things we know about her, but we know Luther loved his parents. He had conflicts with them at times, and talking about the psychology of Luther, there's one famous psychologist who spent years analyzing Luther, and he said the whole Protestant Reformation was just Luther dealing with his daddy issues. Very interesting. Educated, attended local schools, went to University of Erfurt, enrolled 1501, got a master's degree in 1505, so by the time he's about 22, well-educated. After that, his father wanted him to go to law school. Why might a peasant dad want their child to go to law school? Yeah, move up in the world for yourself, but also a little bit of social security for me, right? If my son can take care of me, I'm in a better spot for late in life. So he goes, he starts law school, and very early on, very early on, what happens? Y'all know the story? He gets stuck in a lightning storm. So he hasn't been in law school long. What does he do in the lightning storm? Praise to Saint Anne. Saint Anne, save me and I will become a monk. There's something really fascinating about this, and every historian has a strong opinion on this. I'm not sure where I fall. Luther actually had rumblings in his heart that he did not want to go into law. He had argued with his father. His father compelled him to go to law school, and Luther wanted to honor his father. But he did not want to go. And the death of a classmate at law school got him thinking about eternity. And he gets stuck in this thunderstorm, which I think is totally legit. And he makes a deal with St. Anne. Who is St. Anne? patron saint of minors. What was his father's occupation? He was a miner. Are you, Hans, are you really going to work against the prayers of Saint Anne? By the way, Saint Anne is also believed to have been Mary's mother. But are you going to work against the patron saint? In other words, there is some question of whether or not Martin was manipulating his father with this by praying to Saint Anne. So he goes back to his father and says, listen, this is the deal I've made. We don't have a choice here. I've got to go become a monk. So 1505, he leaves law school. He goes and studies to become a monk. He's fasting, long hours of prayer, hours and hours and hours of confession, which is significant. He's ordained a priest in 1507. He serves under somebody named Johann Staupitz. Staupitz, Luther would say, was critical in his own spiritual formation. Luther bugged everybody to death. Here's what I mean by that. His conscience was so plagued with his sin that he would spend sometimes six plus hours a day in confession. But not confession like you and I. We go to Jesus in confession of our sins. Who would he have had to go to? To another priest, right? So he went to stoppets. And this man is coming to him for six hours every day, confessing sins. And he's driving Stolpitz nuts. And he says, Martin, I think you need to go get your doctorate. And I really think he was just trying to distract Martin. And so Luther goes to University of Wittenberg, studies there, gets his doctorate in 1512. He becomes a lecturer. Again, straight line, crooked stick. Becomes a lecturer in Psalms, Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews. Pretty great places if you want to understand what the gospel is, isn't it? That's what's assigned to him. For hours on end, every day, Luther's just studying Romans. He's studying the Psalms. And he is not finding any relief for a plagued conscience. There was a word Luther used, anfechtungen. Am I saying it right, Heidi? What does it mean to you? Yeah. It's usually translated in Luther's context as inner angst and turmoil. And it was the question of his sin. He's a monk confessing his sin for hours. He's depriving himself with asceticism. All day is spent in religious duties. He makes the statement that's translated like this, if ever a monk could have gone to heaven by monkery, it was I. And yet he found no relief for his conscience. He was a miserable, miserable man. And the question was, how can I become righteous enough? Goes back to our initial question about the definition of the gospel. And he's studying Romans 1. Look there with me, Romans 1. Look at verses 16 and 17. Paul says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it's 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 for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. Now we love that verse, I hope. What did Luther hear when he read that verse? What was the righteousness of God in his mind? And why did that intensify his angst? So in his mind, yes, everything we said earlier about the gospel in the Roman Catholic Church, us being infused with grace so we become righteous enough, but he's reading the righteousness of God. How could I become that righteous? Later, he's commenting on Romans 1, and I think there's several ways he said this through the years, but he's commenting on Romans 1, and he says, at the time, I did not love God, I hated God. Why do you think he felt that way? What's that? Yeah. He thought God was just an angry taskmaster that he had to win the approval of. And so he found in his heart that he despised God. He finally understands, Romans 117 is not talking about the standard I have to live up to. What's it talking about when it talks about the righteousness of God? Yeah, Christ's righteous life. What were you gonna say, Michael? I was just gonna say, righteousness of God enjoyed by a human is a work of God. the from faith, for faith, or beginning with faith and ending in faith, or from faith to faith, depending on how it gets translated. All of that is pointing to, you know, it'd be really easy for me to think that it's something that I generate in my heart, but it is impossible to generate through human Luther began to understand that the righteousness that was talked about there was not a native righteousness. That's what Rome taught, is that grace cultivates in you native righteousness so that you're godly enough to be approved of by God. It's an alien righteousness. What does that mean? Good. So Luther, and I've used this illustration a lot lately, Luther loved the imagery from Song of Solomon that in our relationship with Christ, we are like a prostitute. deep in debt, filled with disease, terrible reputation, and she marries a king, and that king takes all of her debt and her shame to himself, and he gives her all that is his. And so in the moment of marriage, she is one with him, and all that is his become hers. and he takes all that was hers, all the shame, all the guilt. And in that moment, she is beautified. She is his bride. It is a pronouncement, just like at a wedding, I pronounce you husband and wife. Justification is a pronouncement by God that someone is righteous. Now, that woman was still filthy. She was still diseased, all of those things. But what you find is, as she's married to this king, Luther says, she becomes beautiful. She is his bride. She is one with him. And she will become beautiful. And that's the process of sanctification. God making us beautiful, making us lovely. So he pronounces us righteous through justification. And then in our sanctification, he's making us righteous. so that we're becoming more and more like him. We're becoming like the bridegroom, Jesus Christ himself, the one who loved us and gave himself for us. And he reorients our desires and our affections so that we love now who he is. It is a pronouncement that leads to a life of growth in Christ. Now help me understand the difference between that and what Rome was teaching. Good. Faith, godly living is the result of our justification, not the cause of it. It's the fruit, not the root. That is completely different. You know, we've said all throughout this class, the problem for most Christians is not right versus wrong, it's right versus almost right. And the gospel was almost right. And you had people filling the pews bound for hell, and they had no idea that they were leaning on their own righteousness rather than the righteousness of Christ. And Luther comes to this idea by God's grace that his hope rested not in his own righteousness, but this alien righteousness, this righteousness that's imputed to him. He called it a passive righteousness. received righteousness. In his own words, he says, "...at last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to these words, that in it the righteousness of God is revealed." And he says, "...I felt like I was altogether born again and had entered paradise through open gates." that becomes the turning point for Luther. We're not exactly sure when that was. Some people will argue he really came to that realization after the 95 Theses. Because the 95 Theses aren't exactly dealing with justification by grace alone through faith alone. They're really dealing with indulgences. Luther was actually willing to keep a lot of the Roman Catholic Church intact. He was willing to have the Pope. He was willing to have a lot of other things. How much he really understood of salvation by grace alone through faith alone, that's hotly debated. And some people say he didn't really come to understand it until some events in 1519. We don't have a clue. What we know is that the gospel transformed Martin Luther. Let me ask you all to take out your Bibles. Let's look at a few passages and see if what Luther is believing is what scripture is teaching, because it doesn't matter what Luther believes if it's what scripture's teaching. Started in 1512, somewhere between 1515 and 1521 I think is when people suppose he was converted. Good. Good. Good. Yeah. Great point. We're going to spend some time looking at the role of the printing press and translation, going back ad fontes and going back to the original text of the scripture in weeks ahead. But it's just the plain reading of scripture that brings about Reformation. Great point. Somebody look at Romans 3, 21 and 22. Who'd be willing to read that in a moment? I'm gonna hand out a handful of verses. I wanna check to make sure that what Luther has discovered is really what has been in the scriptures all along. Three, 21 and 22. And then you're gonna do that one. And then somebody look up Galatians 2, 16. Who will do that? All right. I heard, who was that Laura? Oh, thank you. Somebody look up Ephesians 2, 8, and 9. And actually, we'll go through 10. I think it'll be helpful to go through 10. And then John 8, 31 and 32. All right, Noah will get that. Ephesians 2, 8 through 10. All right, so Romans 3, 21 and 22. So the reason I think Romans 3 was so critical is Romans 3 is what shed light on Romans 1 for Luther. But what is Romans 3 21 and 22 saying there? What's that? Good. So how could there be righteousness apart from works? It must, the only way that can make sense is imputed righteousness. It must be an alien righteousness. All right, what does Galatians 2.16 say? 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. All right, help us understand that. Is this what Luther is teaching? What do you think? What's Paul saying there? Good. All right, Ephesians 2, 8 through 10. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, Good. All right. I think Paul is saying, I don't know how to be more clear to you. Salvation is by grace through faith. It is in the imputed righteousness. And just in case you think it is by works, let me be clear. It is not by works. And what does Rome say? Oh, it's by works. Okay, we got it. Paul is making every effort to convey the gospel as clearly as possible. Now, there's something significant in 8 and 9, and then followed by 10. 8 and 9 is saying it's by grace you have been saved, not by works. And then verse 10 says, for you are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. What's the logic there of Paul saying, not by works, you're created for good works? Good. You think of the Ten Commandments. We'll read them in just a few minutes in worship. What's the preface to the Ten Commandments say? Yeah, I'm the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Grace first. And then what does he say? Here's how you live. Here's what you're to do. If God's intent had been that salvation would be by works, He would have said, I'm going to give you the law, and in 40 days, if you're keeping it well, I'm going to deliver you from Egypt. Grace first. Read Romans. How does Romans divide? The first 11 chapters are almost purely, here is the grace of God. We call these from a grammatical standpoint, the indicatives of the gospel. There are almost no commands in the first 11 chapters of the gospel. It's just what God has done and what you can't do. Then you get to Romans 12 and what happens. Therefore, in view of God's mercy, offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. And he's gonna go through about 200 commands in the last four chapters. Here's how you're supposed to live. When the grace of God has sunk down deep into your soul, that you cannot be saved by works, but by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, here's how you're to live. And that's when the imperatives of the gospel come in. Every false religion in the world puts our works first. Every man-made religion puts what we do first. And whether we're talking about reaching nirvana, it's something we do, or pleasing Allah, it's something we do. And the gospel sets forth, here is what God has done for you. Here is a God who has loved you. And what's the response? Love Him. Love him in return. Don't love the world. This world can't please you. This world can't save you. This world can't satisfy you. Love the one who has loved you. The light bulb goes on for Luther. By God's grace, he begins propagating this. He begins teaching it in the classroom. The classroom is important. We're gonna see that throughout the Reformation. What you're training preachers to preach is very important. And the gospel is going to start going forth, not so much among the clergy, but among the peasants. Luther had a heart for the peasants coming from that background. And so part of his goal, we already talked about having the scriptures in Greek and Hebrew accessible to them. Now Luther says, all right, we're going to put the scriptures in the hand of everyone. and he, we're gonna see it next week, Lord willing, he's arrested, gets falsely kidnapped, we'll talk about that, and he spends a year translating the scriptures into German, so people have the Bible in their own native tongue. That's always the goal of the reformers, is to give people the word. Any comments or questions, we'll pick up here next week. All right, let's, yeah. It's not something that's necessary. It's still in place today in the catechism. What do they do with the plain meaning of these scriptures? Do they just ignore them? Do they twist them to say something else? So starting place here is the Roman Catholic Catechism, or it's called Catechism of the Catholic Church, has 2,000 plus questions. My dad always says a giraffe is an animal that looks like it was built by a committee. It was put together by one group and then another group is what it looks like. It just doesn't all seem to fit together, though in God's providence it does. The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, it was built that way. And so there's actually some catechism questions that are going to match exactly what the scriptures teach. And then right afterwards, you'll have one that totally contradicts it. And so often, the reason I say that is oftentimes in my conversations with practicing Roman Catholics, they'll say, no, we believe it. Look. And we'll go to question 1,189. And I'll go, well, what about 1,190, the next one? So to answer your question, there is not generally one universally agreed upon teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, because you got 2,000 plus doctrinal statements in these questions that often contradict each other. The other thing is most people are ignorant of the scriptures. That was Rome's tool to ensure that something like Luther never happened, was we can keep the people as ignorant as possible. Let's translate that into today, into 2024. Has that need changed? Do you accept things because Steve and I teach them? You accept things because that's what the scriptures say. And you ought to always be like the Bereans. What did the Bereans do? Search the scriptures to see that these things were so. And we invite you and plead with you to do that. And we invite you, long after we're gone, to keep doing that, so that this church, by God's grace, will still be preaching the same gospel as it's preaching today, as Luther was preaching, as the Apostle Paul was preaching, as Jesus Christ himself preached in 100 years, in 500 years, in however many years till Jesus returns. Yeah? I just think it's important to add to that, when you look at Luther's time and so many different people groups around the world that never had exposure to Scripture or the ability to read Scripture for themselves, we live in an era in which it's probably never been more readily available. You can do audio, you can do e-book, you can do whatever version you just about want to find, and yet we're willingly not reading it. And so when we look at our culture as a whole, It seems to be a choice to allow ourselves to be distracted by the world instead of choosing to spend any modicum of time in the world. Yeah, or read about it, but not read it. So read what other people say and be able to quote what they say, but not actually be able to quote the scriptures. It's almost like they're invisible spiritual forces that don't want us to read the scriptures. Strange. Almost. Yeah. If we long for this to be a faithful church for generations, we must know the word. And when I say we, I mean you. You. Because if I go astray, and I trust that I won't, but if I go astray, or if subsequent pastors go astray... What's that? Find a stool. That's a reference that'll make sense in about six weeks when we get to the Scottish Reformation. Yeah, run them out of town, run them out of the church, run me out of the church if I teach what is not consistent with the scriptures. Let's pray. Lord in heaven, we thank you for the word. It is good, it is rich. In it, we find everything we need for life and godliness. Father, help us to be a people who follow in the footsteps of Luther, before him of Wycliffe, before him of Augustine, but far more importantly, the footsteps of the Lord Jesus Christ, who loved the word, who says, man was not lived by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Lord, help us to love it, because in it we meet you. Father, as we think about Reformation, make us zealous for it in our day, first in our own church, and then through the propagation of the gospel to the ends of the earth. We pray it in Jesus' name, amen.