John Knox, Speaking Truth to Power and Peasants, is my title this morning. Before we examine the scripture, I think some background, some context would be important. I so appreciate the opportunity to come and speak in connection with Reformation Sunday. Reformation Sunday is technically the last Sunday of October. the closest Sunday to October 31st, the traditional date for Martin Luther posting his 95 Theses on the Schlosskirche, the castle church door, in Wittenberg, Germany, his adopted hometown. Every summer I take one, sometimes two, tour groups to Wittenberg in a Reformation tour. And right now, everything in Wittenberg is under construction because they are getting ready for the 500th anniversary of Luther's posting of the 95 Theses. In 2017, Little Wittenberg will be the citadel. It will be the headquarters of the Protestant world. And they are anticipating tens of thousands of pilgrims to come to Wittenberg. When you look at the city of Wittenberg on the Elbe River, there are two churches, two steeples, which still dominate the skyline. I think there is something to the notion that whatever the tallest buildings are in a skyline, it sort of sets the pecking order for that town. You look at a modern skyline and what are the tallest buildings? Well, they're the skyscrapers. They're the banks, they're the insurance companies, and so forth. So finances set the pecking order for our nation's cities today. It wasn't always the case. And in the medieval period, with all of its flaws, as you would look at the skyline of a city, it was steeples that dominated. Because churches and church life dominated. That's still true. in little Wittenberg, at least for tourists. I wish I could say the spiritual life was still strong in those churches, but it's not. On the west end of Collegium Strasse, College Street, Main Street in Wittenberg, is the famous church where Luther posted his 95 Theses. If you go inside of the church, Of course, the interior has been remodeled. The church was destroyed twice actually in wars, rebuilt along its original lines. In one of the stained glass windows, you will see a picture of John Knox in stained glass. I love to point out to the groups as I'm leading them through the church that his dates are wrong. His birthdates are wrong by 11 years. And there's some technical reasons why that's the case, and that error was repeated for hundreds of years. In any event, right now, the Slavskarish, or the castle church, is once again undergoing some refurbishment in anticipation of a great celebration in 2017. and it's blocked right now by scaffolding and plywood and so forth, but I'm very curious when I go back this summer to see in the refurbishment whether they have corrected the birth dates for John Knox. I kind of hope they have not because it's a point of interest to my folks when I bring them to Wittenberg and point that out. The Reformation is not just about Martin Luther. A few years ago, I was invited to a church to lecture on Luther. I was delighted to do that. And I spoke. And by the way, I was riveting. So I told myself. I talked for about 45 minutes. And afterward, there was a young father and his son who came up to speak to me. And his son was kind of agitated. And he said that his son sat through my lecture on Martin Luther. And afterwards, he said to his dad, he was I suppose about 10 years old, he said, Dad, we've been studying Martin Luther King all week and I never heard any of this. So there is that confusion. This picture of Martin Luther, notice how high tech I am. I brought this off my office wall. This portrait of Luther is very well known. The reason we have so many paintings of Martin Luther is largely because of one man, Lucas Cranach. was hired by Frederick the Wise, the Prince Elector of Saxony, to be the court painter. Lucas Cranach was something of a Renaissance man and entrepreneur. He not only was a great painter, but two of his sons followed him in his profession. He had a painter's school there in Wittenberg. In fact, many of the Luther paintings, we're not sure whether they're painted by Lucas Cranach, the elder, the younger, or his son, Hans. In any event, we have dozens and dozens of paintings of Martin Luther because of Lucas Cranach. We only have four paintings of John Knox. This is probably the most famous. Of the four paintings we have of John Knox, we're not sure that any of them are remotely accurate. They were all done posthumously, in some cases a hundred years after his death. The painting that most scholars concur is perhaps the most authentic. It's called the Somerville painting, and Knox just says the very short few whiskers, not this long beard with which we normally associate him. In 2009, the evangelical world was all abuzz about John Calvin's 500th anniversary. The so-called Calvin 500, and I know by the way that sounds like a stock car race at Talladega, but in 2009, Scholars and pastors, Calvin experts were going to Geneva and other places to be a part of a 500-year celebration. Well, your pastor mentioned this morning that this is a momentous year to study John Knox, the reformer of Scotland because it is his 500th birthday. And I participated in a few of those Knox 500 conferences already this year. Now other than the nice round number of 500, why study John Knox? Some years ago I was reading a biography of Knox and in the preface the author explains why they needed one more biography of Knox. There are probably 100 or more, maybe hundreds. But he tells this true story, unlike the ones your pastor normally tells in his sermons. He tells this remarkable story explaining what got him into the study of Knox. This man was summoned to his father's deathbed. And his father drew him close and said, Will you promise me one thing?" And he said, of course, Father. If I'm able to do it, I certainly will do it. What is it? And he said, Son, promise me that before you die, you will go to Scotland, find John Knox's grave, and spit on it. He thought, what kind of man would generate or produce this kind of passion? I mean, this is a deathbed request to go spit on someone's grave. And so he went to Edinburgh and learned about John Knox, became something of an admirer of John Knox. We do not have a grave of John Knox in Edinburgh. We have a little brass marker in the church parking lot outside of St. Giles in Edinburgh. John Knox was an extremely controversial figure both then in his day 1514-1572 and now in Scotland. John Knox is hated in Scotland. Why? We'll be a little patient. I'll get to that. A few more preliminary questions before we look at the Scripture this morning. Why do we take this hour when the preaching of God's Word is normally the centerpiece and instead give it to a historian. Why replace our preaching with the study of someone other than God or Christ or the Holy Spirit? Someone who's not a direct disciple of Jesus and someone who's not even in the Bible. Why should we study John Knox. Those are good questions, but I want to show you that John Knox is, in fact, in the Bible. If you have a Bible with you, turn to Hebrews. Chapter 12. A familiar passage, and you'll recognize immediately where I'm going with this Hebrews. Chapter 12. Hebrews 12, 1 and 2, Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out before us. You see, John Knox is included in this great cloud of witnesses. He's one of those saints of God who is passed on. And he is an eyewitness cheering us on as we complete our race faithfully as Christians. So in a way, Knox is in the Bible. Now let's look at our text and we'll draw some observations about John Knox. Bible scholars believe that John was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write this gospel. of John, this account of Jesus' life, at the same time battling the Gnostics. They were a first century menace, largely through the work of Irenaeus and his singular apologetic work Gnosticism became something of a relic. But the Gnostics, as you know, believed in this dualistic worldview in which the spirit was good, and anything matter or material was evil, and as a result of that they held to this form of Christology known as Docetism, Docetic Christology. That Jesus could not, in fact, be the God-Man. Because spirit is good, but matter is evil. Can you imagine any stronger rebuttal to Gnosticism which raged in John's day than John 1.14. And the word became flesh and dwelled among us." It's an in-your-face to the Gnostics. It's at the end of this verse that I want to focus my attention this morning, our attention, speaking of Christ who came from the Father full of grace and truth." See, I believe there are two kinds of Christians in the world. There are grace Christians and there are truth Christians. Admittedly, we're not exclusively one or the other, but we all tend to favor one over the other. The grace Christian has many admirable qualities. The grace Christian emphasizes the wonder of God, the mercy of God, His loving kindness, His gentleness, His compassion. And the grace Christian continues every day to truly be amazed by grace. Amazed at the unmerited favor of God. The thought of grace drives the grace Christian to tears of joy and wonder and awe of this great God. The gospel truly is good news for the grace Christian. Then there's the truth Christian. The truth Christian finds security in the law of God. the duty and responsibility that Christians have to live and act and talk and think and behave like Christians. Jesus said, if you love me, you will obey my commandments. Grace is never denied by truth Christians. It's never abandoned, but it's considered maybe a crutch for weak Christians. The truth Christian wants to wear the full armor of God and battle every day, every minute of every day, the world, the flesh, and the devil. I think both the grace Christian and the truth Christian have weaknesses. In theological terms, the grace Christian has a tendency towards antinomianism, that is, anti-law. not so much law-less, but not focusing on the law, but rather on the positive. Perhaps ignoring or downplaying the duty side of Christianity. On the other hand, the truth Christian battles legalism, battles self-righteousness. Full confession here, I am an outstanding legalist. I love legalism. I find great security. I hope you're finding some irony in this statement. But when we look at these two kinds of Christians, grace Christians and truth Christians, truth Christians love to rally around the obedience and duty and legal side of Christianity. But that is one reason why my calling and my passion as a professor, as a church historian, is Reformed faith and the doctrines of grace. In the Protestant Reformation, you see a restoration of the New Testament Pauline doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone. And in the thousand years of the medieval period, grace was somehow abandoned. It was lost. It really wasn't replaced With truth, it was replaced with the sacerdotal system, the sacramental system of the Roman Catholic Church, which certainly involves duty. But it was duty more than it was truth, or the law of God. Now, without question, John Knox, the Reformer of Scotland, was a truth Christian. A truth Christian much more than a grace Christian. I said earlier, John Knox was then and is now a controversial figure. Why? Because he spoke the truth and steadfastly refused to compromise. This fact was noted at his funeral in 1572. In his eulogy, one of the speakers said of Knox, here lies a man who neither feared nor flattered any flesh." My wife and I were watching Doc Martin last night on PBS and I thought, you know, in one sense, he was the Doc Martin of his day. He never feared nor flattered any flesh. Listen to this quotation of Knox. John Knox said, quote, I have learned plainly and boldly to call wickedness by its name. A fig, a fig, and a spade, a spade. When I was a kid, I had kind of an odd hobby. It's a wonder I didn't turn out to be an axe murderer, but I guess the entire story hasn't been written yet. But one of the things I did as a kid was to collect the autographs of visiting pastors and missionaries and Bible teachers and evangelists when they came to my church in Lapeer, Michigan. And after the sermon, all of which were way too long, I would go up and I would get their autograph and they would attach to it a biblical text, right? A reference. Their life verse, if you will. John Knox had a life verse. Most scholars, whether they are pagan in their orientation or they are believers, they concur that the verse that drove John Knox was Deuteronomy 12.32. See that you do all that I command you. Do not add to it or take away from it. That is what drove John Knox. I've chosen a few episodes from Knox's life this morning to illustrate the fact that he was a truth Christian, to demonstrate his courageous and steadfast devotion to God and the ways of God and the Bible. I've chosen just a few. The whole life of John Knox makes this, I think, evident. The first time that John Knox appears in the pages of history, we find Knox, who was of average height, he was probably about 5'2", 5'3", and he held a four-foot two-handled sword. He was acting as a bodyguard. There were some Scottish lairds, a laird is a lower lord, Some Scottish lairds had summoned a Lutheran Protestant preacher from the continent, a Scot, by the name of George Wishart, who, because of his evangelical views, had to flee Scotland. But he was invited back and these lairds promised him protection if he would go through Scotland and he would preach the gospel to this Catholic nation, this pagan nation. And here's John Knox acting as a bodyguard with his four-foot-long, two-handled sword. And it was the real thing. He could have cut a head off had he swung it, if he could have lifted it, I suppose. Knox was always a defender of the truth. Now, the end of the story about George Wishart is really a sad one because after drawing huge crowds to his sermons throughout Scotland, the crowds begin to dwindle and rumors begin to circulate. The King and the Cardinal of Scotland will not continue to permit George Wishart to preach. And people began to fear for their lives and so the crowds got smaller and smaller. And finally, George Wishart, with a kind of premonition, if you will, said to John Knox, return to your barons, your pupils, your students. You see, John Knox, at this point, was a tutor of children to these Lairds. He said, return to your barons. One is enough for a sacrifice. And sure enough, within an hour or so, Officials came, captured George Wishart, and they had kind of a kangaroo court. He was convicted of heresy and burned in Scotland. I think that had a profound influence on John Knox's own sense of calling, and he will stand courageous and will not back down. He did back down. Now, he followed You see the advice of George Wishart, go back to your barons, your pupils. One is enough for sacrifice. But from that point, he never backed down. Knox became the chaplain of a group known as the Castilians. And it was a group of renegades, some Protestants, some were ne'er-do-wells, but they were held up in the castle of Cardinal David Beaton who was responsible for the death of George Wishart and these Lairds took justice into their own hands and David Beaton was murdered. Now John Knox was not a part of that murder though he was by association a part of these men and they took over Cardinal Beaton's castle and it included the Lairds, these lesser nobles, whose sons Knox was tutoring. And they brought their whole families into the castle. So if Knox is going to continue his occupation, he had to go into the castle and continue to teach these kids. And when he did, they asked John Knox to become their chaplain. So he became the chaplain of these so-called Castilians who had avenged the death of George Wishart. John Knox's very first sermon was in St. Andrews, Scotland, and of all the texts, he chose the prophetic book of Daniel and preached on the kingdoms. He called the church, by the way, his audience was almost entirely Roman He said the Roman Catholic Church was the synagogue of Satan, the whore of Babylon. And he also threw in his belief, his conviction that the Pope was Antichrist. Here lies a man who never flattered or feared any flesh. I'm not sure that's the sermon I would preach before a group of Catholics, I'm not John Knox. John Knox was eventually arrested with the rest of the Castilians and he was placed upon a slave ship, a galley ship, and his job in Goodweather was to take the boat and row. It was a boat, galley slave ship that had probably 30 rowers or more, one on each side, so pairs of 15 men, and they delivered mail. That was John Knox's job. He was chained to the oars. On one occasion, the man who held the whip and drove these men to push the boat through the waters passed around a statue of Mary. And their task was to kiss this statue and pass it on to the next rower. Well, it came to John Knox. He took a look at the statue and threw her in the ocean with the comment, she's the mother of God, certainly she can swim. Well, everyone had a good laugh except the taskmaster. who did not enjoy the joke. Here lies a man who never feared nor flattered any flesh. John Knox was eventually freed through the auspices of the English government, and he will become a part of the realm of King Edward VI, known as King Josiah because of his youth. And for a brief period of time, until his untimely death at age 15, there was a reformation in England. A thorough reformation, though brief. And John Knox's task was to go to the border of Scotland and to preach. And he was so effective that people from all over Scotland would come and hear John Knox preached. And then they moved him from Berwick to a larger town, Newcastle-on-Tyne, another border town. Knox continued to preach and word spread, this is a powerful preacher. We need him in London. And so Knox was summoned to come to London and he became one of the chaplains of King Edward VI. The chaplains rotated and when it was time for Knox's turn to preach, he preached on the prayer book. Young Edward VI, the King of England, you see, was raised as a Protestant. He received letters from John Calvin advising young Edward had to be a Christian king and encouraging him. And the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, of course, was an evangelical as well. No wonder his previous boss, Henry the Gaith, he was really not allowed to reform the church. But we have this team that has been assembled in England to reform the church. And Knox was part of that team. And here he is, one of the chaplains. He'd received from the Archbishop, Thomas Cranmer, a prayer book. There were actually two prayer books during the time of Edward. The first prayer book of 1549 was considered too Catholic. It still, in the minds of many reformers, still smelled like Rome. So it was revised and advanced copies were given to the chaplains, including Knox. And he received this advanced copy just when it was his time to preach before Edward VI. And he used that occasion to criticize one section of the second prayer book of 1552. Because it mandated that when you came to the Lord's Supper, you were supposed to kneel. You're supposed to receive the elements of Holy Communion on your knees. And Knox said, don't you understand? So many people in this realm have come out of Catholicism And their practice in the Catholic liturgy is to come forward, and on their knees, the priest would stick his hand under their chin. They would extract their tongue, and he would put the wafer on their tongue, draw it back, you know, in their mouth. And Knox said, So many of these new evangelicals have come out of Catholicism that when you ask them to receive Holy Communion on their knees, they are unwittingly going to venerate or elevate the status of the bread and the cup beyond their common use. You are compelling them to commit sacrilege. And Knox was so forceful in his condemnation of the second prayer book that Edward VI, the King of England, yelled the equivalent of, Stop the presses! Don't let the prayer book go out! And Archbishop Cranmer was enraged because John Knox had scuttled the second prayer book. A sort of compromise was reached. It's called the Black Rubric, where a patch was placed over the offending passage with an asterisk saying, kneeling while taking communion does not suggest veneration of the elements. When Knox returned to Scotland in the spring of 1559, his preaching generated an iconoclastic controversy, that is. People would hear Knox preach and they'd go into the churches. How did they respond to the clear preaching of the gospel? They smashed the churches to pieces. I had a professor once, I think this is probably the only thing I remember from him, he doesn't remember me at all, but he said to class one time that students take things one step further than their teachers. And here John Knox was teaching these people. He didn't say, now in response to the gospel, let's destroy this church. But that's how they responded. And Knox's preaching did little more than generate this iconoclastic controversy. So Knox was sort of moved off center stage, and he was placed in a capacity where he had better gifts. He was acting as a diplomat for the so-called lords of the congregation. There was the beginning stages of a reformation in Scotland in 1559. However, in 1560, Mary, Queen of Scots, age 18, returned to Scotland after the death of her mother, Queen Regent, to assume her role as the proper queen. She had been in exile in France and had been raised as a Roman Catholic. Well, one of the first things that Mary did when she comes to Edinburgh is she celebrates the Mass, though it was punishable by death. What did Knox do? He went to St. Giles Cathedral and thundered from the pulpit of St. Giles against the Mass, which he considered idolatry. John Knox was summoned to speak with the Queen. In fact, over the next several months, there will be five face-to-face meetings with John Knox and this young Queen. I think it is largely those five meetings which has formed the perception that many people have of John Knox as someone who's mean. He made the queen cry. Why would a preacher make the queen cry? Well, there are many good reasons for that. What is rarely told is that on more than one occasion, Knox sat down with the queen and said, I have children about your age. It breaks my heart when I see them cry. Knox tried to preach the gospel to Mary Queen of Scots. but she would have none of it. Now, I think there's one other reason that John Knox, in the popular world, is probably despised or hated. John Knox wrote a pamphlet, a treatise, titled, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Reign of Women. Was John Knox a women hater? No, I don't think he was. John Knox aimed this pamphlet at Mary Tudor, so-called the Lady Mary, who was responsible for the death of about 300 Protestants, men, women, and children in England during her short reign, 1553-58. Knox knew many of the people. who were burned at the stake simply because they named the name of Christ and refused to acknowledge the Pope as the Vicar of Christ. That was their only crime and they were burned at the stake. And so John Knox wrote this pamphlet against the first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous reign or regiment of women. Knox was not anti-women. He was anti-Catholic women who burned Protestants at the stake because they refused to go to Mass or acknowledge the Pope as the Vicar of Christ. Is there a kinder, gentler side of Knox? I think there is and one place you will find that is in Knox's correspondence. John Knox had a mother-in-law a woman who was converted to evangelical views when he was a pastor in Berwick. And eventually she will leave her husband in England and join John Knox and his bride Marjorie Bowes in Geneva. And Knox invited his mother-in-law. Even after Marjorie Bowes died, and Knox remarried. The mother-in-law stayed with Knox through a second marriage. But before Elizabeth Bowes joined John Knox and her daughter in Geneva, she wrote to Knox for spiritual counsel. And biographers refer to her as someone who is suffering from spiritual melancholy. She would pour her heart out to Knox and Knox was a great pastoral theologian giving good advice to her. We have about 40 of these letters that have been collected from John Knox to his mother-in-law and there you see the compassion of Knox in a way that you do not see in the public Knox. In closing, and by the way I know Those are the two favorite words of every congregation. Right, Pastor? By the way, I know some pastors who say, in closing, and they're good for another 50 minutes, but that won't be the case. In closing, our challenge as Christians is to, like Christ, embody both grace and truth, not one or the other. John Knox always spoke the truth, but he did not always speak the truth in love. John Knox, at least in his public persona, was not very balanced. John 1.14 says of Jesus, he was full of grace and truth. I want to show you one verse of Scripture that I think is perhaps messianic. It is a turn to Psalm 85. In closing as we look at this. Psalm 85. Psalm 85 verse 10 says, and faithfulness meet together. Righteousness and peace kiss each other. As I was studying this, I found there are some translations that say, of verse 10, grace and truth meet together. And there are parallels. Righteousness and peace kiss each other. This is perhaps a messianic psalm in reference to Christ who was the embodiment of grace and truth. But brothers and sisters, that is our goal. To be more like Christ where grace and truth meet. Where love and faithfulness dwell together. Where righteousness and peace kiss each other. Amen.