Every year at this time in late October, we pause for one Sunday out of the year just to remember and celebrate the triumph of the gospel, the one true gospel by which we are saved and by which anyone has ever been saved. It was really a return to the biblical view of justification by faith alone, based on the authority of Scripture alone. This year, I want to share with you some inspiring facts from the life of John Huss. I really think you're going to like this man once you get to know him. I didn't know much about him before I did this study, but I found a great friend and someone that we can look to as a fellow redeemed sinner. just like ourselves, who is used mightily by God in his day. He is a pre-reformer because he lived before the age during which the official Reformation occurred, and he's named John Huss. So let me tell you a little bit about this man and why I think his life is worthy of a biography for us this morning. Huss was born in 1369 and he died a martyr's death in 1415. He was born just fifteen years before the death of John Wickliffe. We studied Wickliffe a couple of years ago. Some of you may remember Wickliffe. And he died, Hus died, about a hundred years before Martin Luther ever nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg. So that means Hus really lived between the time of Wickliffe and of Luther. He was in that period. Now, with Luther's action of nailing his ninety five protests to that door, he launched what we call the Protestant Reformation around the world. So if you love the gospel, if you respect believers who have suffered greatly for the truth of God's word, and if you are encouraged by those who remain faithful under great persecution, then you'll really enjoy hearing about the life of John Huss this morning. To get us started, I want you to listen to Second Timothy chapter three verses ten through thirteen. I'm not going to exposit the text this morning, but I do want you to hear this because I think it has great bearing on what we're going to study in the life of us. This is where the Apostle Paul is writing in his second letter to Timothy about how Timothy must endure whatever persecutions will come as a result of his faithfulness to the word. as opposed to the false teachers like Janice and Jambres who refuted Moses and opposed him. And unlike those who are opposing Paul and Timothy in Ephesus, Paul reminds Timothy in verse 10. You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings, what happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra, which persecutions I endured, yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." While evil people and imposters will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. I wanted to put this text before us about suffering for Christ and about enduring persecutions here at the beginning of this glimpse of the life of John Huss. As you'll soon hear, this man suffered greatly. And he never backed down in his faithfulness to Christ. I don't want you to get the idea that he was sinless. I don't want you to think that I'm presenting him in just this airbrushed fashion. He had his faults. He had places where he might have differed from us in our doctrine or theology and even disagreed with Wycliffe on some things. But what I want you to get is the overall view. This is a highly abridged biography. If you want to read more about him, his life is worthy of a deeper study just to see where he fought on these different battlefronts. But I'm giving you sort of the Reader's Digest view of the life of John Huss. Hopefully, this will just whet your appetite for more. Far from backing down, he stood strong, just like Timothy did when we studied 1 Timothy, how Timothy remained steadfast in Ephesus. In fact, this man, John Hus, kept growing in God's Word, and the closer he came to aligning himself with Holy Scripture, the more persecuted his life became. Now, I've mentioned the persecution that's sort of a running theme so far in the introduction this morning. We talked again and again about how much he suffered, how he was persecuted, but I haven't told you anything about his persecutors. That's really the most shocking thing about the story for those who aren't aware of what happened to a lot of these Reformation martyrs. Many people may be surprised to learn that his persecution came not from the pagan world around him, but it came from the corrupt. an apostate church, the religion he once served as a faithful member and even as an ordained priest. It was because Huss had been reading his Bible that he began to affirm three truths, mainly three truths above all others, and it was primarily for these three basic Christian beliefs that the Roman Catholic Church began to attack him, ultimately leading to his death. These are the three things that every Christian man or woman believes if they believe what the Bible teaches. This is what we believe. I hope everyone here believes these three truths. Number one, he said the true church is made up of all true believers of all ages. The true church is made up of all true believers of all ages. Second, He said the authority of the Bible is higher than the authority of the church. The Catholic Church said the opposite, that the church is a higher authority than the scriptures. But in reality, the scriptures rule the church. The church doesn't rule the scriptures. And third, he said that Jesus Christ is the true head of the church. Now, it was that third point that ultimately got him killed by the Vatican. Now, if I ask you and I just came up to you and I asked you privately, do you believe that Jesus Christ is the head of the church? Most of us would answer without a moment's hesitation, of course. I mean, to us, it's taken for granted. It just seems like an obvious thing. Anyone who reads the New Testament knows that Jesus is the head of the church. But what you may not realize is that this precious and obvious truth has come down to our present generation through Reformation martyrs on a sea of blood. They didn't take it for granted, they had to fight just for the headship of Christ in the church that was by no means held by the majority. In fact, the Catholic religion to this day holds that the pope is the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Christianity holds that Jesus Christ is the head of the biblical church. So is it still an issue today? Absolutely. It's still relevant today. Listen to this just to give you the latest word from the Roman Catholic Church. This is according to the most recent Vatican Council, the last update, quote, The pope possesses full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole church, end quote. And in a similar article much earlier in the Roman Catholic Council of Trent, which is the Catholic Church's official response to the Protestant Reformation, the Council of Trent says, quote, If anyone denies the headship of the pope over all the church and all the pastors and all the faithful, let him be anathema, end quote. Literally, let him be damned, is what they're saying in that. And so the official position of the Vatican to this day still pronounces a damnation over anyone who says that Jesus Christ is the true head of the church and not the pope. Now that's a huge difference. That's a huge issue that distinguishes Roman Catholicism from biblical Christianity as revealed in the New Testament. It's the headship of Christ. But the Bible also teaches that the true church is made up of all true believers of all ages around the world and in all ages of history. But the Roman Catholic religion teaches that the church, now get this, this is something that most Catholics don't even realize. The Roman Catholic officially teaches that the church consists only of the Pope, the bishops, the cardinals, and the priests. They alone are considered the official church. Everyone else in the Catholic Church is either a son or a daughter of the church, and they only touch the official church through the mass, but they are not considered part of the official Catholic Church by the Catholic leaders. Most Catholics, as I said, don't realize that today. And the Vatican teaches that the Bible is not the highest authority in the church. They teach that the church is authoritative over the Bible. And that they alone have the authority to say what any of it means. So the Catholic Church can say whatever they want to say that it means, and that's the interpretation. So these are the three areas of biblical truth. They got John Huss killed in 1415 and yet to find out how he came to these convictions. I want to go back and explain a little bit about his life. and how he began as a faithful Catholic and wanted to be a diligent son of the church and how he fell in love with the word of God and how it changed his life. Hus was born in Bohemia, which is now modern Croatia. His parents were very poor, but they were very faithful. They were devout adherents of the Roman Catholic Church. His last name, Huss, is a shortened version of the original name Hussanak, which is also the name of the town where he lived. It was his last name, and he shortened it to Huss when he was 20 years old. He himself changed his name to Huss. It's a name that means goose. John Huss has ever since been associated with the title Goose by his friends. That was his nickname. Because his parents were very poor, his father urged him to become a priest. He told his son that if he became a priest, the Catholic Church would provide for him, that he would have food, he would have clothing, they would give him a place to live as well as a good education. And that was true in that day. Many people were starving. Many people were very poor, but they knew that if you if you got into the church somehow, you could make a living. You could make a provision for yourself. And his father loved him and thought that was the best path for his son. Now, since John Huss was smart, I mean, he was brilliant, like on the scale of a genius in terms of his acumen intellectually. He was smart and he looked at this plan of his father and it looked like the easiest path to lifelong provision and a good use of his gifts. And so he took his father's advice and he became a Roman Catholic priest. He eventually got a bachelor's degree, then a master's degree and then a doctorate. In 1401, he was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest and began to serve in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Now, this man was so gifted, he was such a talented communicator that he was appointed by the Catholic Church to the most prestigious cathedral in all of Prague. It was called Bethlehem Chapel and it seated three thousand people. Three thousand. Think of it. It was destroyed, by the way, in 1786. And it was modestly rebuilt in the 1950s, but it's nothing like it was in the day of Huss. Now, by Providence, when he was getting his education, Huss came across the contraband writings of a man we've studied earlier named John Wycliffe, and he read them. And as he did, Huss came to believe, as Wycliffe did, that the Bible was the only true authority over the true church. Now, in his sermons that he would give at Bethlehem Chapel, Huss began to explain the meaning of what the Bible says. He began to exposit the scriptures. That just wasn't done. That was not done in the Catholic Church. In fact, it was forbidden by the Catholic Church. And one of the early problems Huss encountered was that If you're going to teach the Bible, if you're going to go to all the work to explain the meaning of Scripture, you want the people to understand it in their language. So he refused to preach in Latin, and that was also forbidden by the church. Everybody in his church spoke Czech, and so he didn't want to speak in Latin and have none of it to be understood by the people. So he spoke in Czech and that simply was not done. Now, the Latin language was the language of the priesthood. That's the language that they were required to speak and know. And it didn't really matter if the people understood because it was all symbolic. It was all ritual. It was not really a teaching exercise at all. It's all about the rituals, the magisterium. Incidentally, that didn't change about Latin being the official language of the priesthood that did not change until 1965. At Vatican II, just 47 years ago, they changed it so that Catholic priests could speak in the language or vernacular of the people. That's how recent this is. And so the reason, of course, that Huss would refuse to preach in Latin is that nobody in the church spoke Latin and he wanted people to understand the Bible. People started coming to faith in Christ. The Bible is the greatest evangelist in the world. And when people hear the word of God, it opens their hearts. It changes their lives. But Huss was only supposed to teach in Latin, according to the Catholic magisterium, and he was never supposed to teach what the Bible means and never in the language of the common people. It was always to remain clouded and concealed in mystery. But Huss refused to preach in Latin, and because he insisted on teaching only what the Bible says and not the traditions of the church or its magisterium, he was eventually forced out of the priesthood. People were coming to faith in Jesus. People were hearing the gospel. They were saying, I believe this is unlike anything I've ever heard. I didn't even know that I could be completely forgiven of all my sins. They believe that because they were hearing the word of God unleashed every Sunday that has preached. But even then, even after he was kicked out of the priesthood officially, he unofficially kept preaching in the cathedral every Sunday. He just did it without warrant. You know, it's one of those transitional periods where he had been officially removed on paper, but not physically removed from the pulpit. And he continued to preach and thousands of people showed up every Sunday. So why would he stop? and he continued preaching the Word of God and the people kept growing in the Word of God. In fact, according to historians, the chapel was packed. It was packed with people every time Hus opened the Word of God. The more he was persecuted by the Vatican, the more he pressed his life and mind into the Word of God. He became more and more convinced that the Bible alone was the final authority for all things pertaining to life and salvation. Now, since Huss refused to leave his congregation at Bethlehem Chapel and because people were coming to faith in Christ and beginning to see the errors of the Vatican, that's not a good situation for the Vatican. And so the Vatican had to increase their pressure on him. They decided we can't let this go. We have to take action. And so they issued an edict that said, as long as Hush remained in the pulpit at Bethlehem, no citizen in Prague would be allowed to have a church funeral or a church burial or even be allowed to take the mass, which they taught was a means of salvation. In other words, they believe that if you were forbidden to take the mass, that you were losing your ability to be saved. They don't believe in a full justification, they believe in a progressive justification through the sacraments. So if you don't have the sacraments, you lose your salvation. That's what they were taught. And so in 1412, John Hus moved out to the countryside. He did this to spare the people of Prague further misery from the bishops and cardinals of Rome. And during this time, He's out of his pulpit. Now he's got all this time on his hand. He's in the countryside. So what does he do? He begins to write. He starts to write books every spare moment he could find. And the most important work he ever wrote was one called De Ecclesia, The Church. The church and everything he wrote was being taken back into the city of Prague and read out loud by a herald on the corner of the street so that everyone could hear it in their own language, just like a news broadcast. They would read whatever the latest chapter was that Huss had written out loud in the Czech language so people could hear it. Most people were illiterate, by the way. Most of the people could not read anyway, so they had to hear everything that they learned. And so even in exile, the words of Huss were still ringing throughout the streets of Prague, and they were hearing them in their own language. Now, he said some things that were extremely bold, extremely dangerous. For example, he wrote, quote, The pope operates through ignorance and love of money and is corrupt. So what do you really think, John? You know, he was just wearing it right out there. He said this is the way it is. Now, during this time in history, to speak against the pope was like signing your own death warrant. He was disseminating unpleasant truths about the pope and his officers at that time and understand they were living in what Huss called reprehensible lives full of sin. And I did a little research into this just to find out what was going on at this time in the Catholic Church and under Pope Gregory VII. who was a pope who lived from 1023 to 1085, almost 300 years before us. This kind of immorality was going on from Gregory's time up until Huss's day and beyond. So here's the kind of immorality that became commonly associated with the priesthood. This is how the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church were viewed by the people. One historian wrote, quote, The abodes of the priests were often dens of corruption. It was common to see priests frequenting taverns, gambling and having orgies with quarrels and blasphemy. Many priests kept mistresses and convents became houses of ill fame. In many places, the people were delighted to see a priest with a mistress because the married women would then be safe from him in quote. So Huss saw this. This was all over the streets of Prague and throughout the Roman Empire. Huss was speaking out against this wicked system. He was saying this is wrong. This is just obviously patently wrong. Well, the Catholic Church had had enough. No one likes to have their their warts pointed out, especially if they're trying to conceal them. And so they convened what they called the Council of Constance to deal with this problem. And Huss agreed to go to the meeting under promise of safe conduct from the church. And yet he was not a gullible man, and so he prepared his last will and testament before he ever set out. He knew this is a dicey situation. This might not turn out the way they promised. And so he prepared his last will and testament, not knowing what the future would hold. And after a short period of freedom, he did have a little relative freedom after he got there, it seemed like it was going to be nice. But then all of a sudden there was this crackdown where he was imprisoned. He was put into a dungeon underneath a Dominican monastery. They put chains on his hands and feet both night and day. And for months he was given very little to eat. And not surprisingly, he was very sick and weak, shivering with cold in the winter. sweltering with fever in the summer. When friends of his asked the church why the safe conduct promise had not been kept, why did the Vatican break their promise to Huss? The Catholic leaders responded that a promise made to a heretic is null and void. And so they got out of it. They would not be bound by anything they promised to a quote unquote heretic. Now, when the trial was held, Vatican denied any defense counsel for Huss. He said he would recant anything that could be proven wrong from the Bible. As long as you point to the Bible and say this is where you're wrong in Scripture, I will recant it. But they didn't do it. They never even opened the Bible. It wasn't an issue. And so after this, he was defrocked. He was defrocked by the Bishop of Constance and Huss said after his defrocking these famous words, he said, you may silence this goose. But there will come a swan that you will not silence. Those are some of his last words that he ever said. He made that statement to the bishop of the Council of Constance before his death. And so let me tell you how this ended on a warm day in 1415. The date was July 6th, in fact. It was then that they executed John Hus for teaching that Jesus Christ and not the Pope was the only head of the church. And to carry out his execution, Hus was brought into the cathedral, into this beautiful, massive, ornate cathedral, Bethlehem Chapel in Prague, where he had preached to thousands of people in the city of Prague. And the leaders of the Catholic Church began by celebrating a high mass. They had a high mass for the people in a full Roman Catholic liturgy, and another bishop read the charges against him and linked the teachings of Wycliffe with those embraced by Huss, and they were both denounced as heretics. The bishop of the Council of Constance presided over the execution, and it began with what they called the public defrocking of Huss as a priest. Let me explain what a defrocking means to defrock someone. The Catholic officials dressed him in all of his ceremonial priestly regalia. That is, every feature, every element of his ceremonial attire was placed on him at once. Every possible article of clothing that a priest could ever wear was on him in layer after layer after layer. July six in Prague. So it's hot. And he's clothed with layer after layer of heavy robes and tunics and garments, all the regalia. Then he was made to stand in front of everyone who happened to be gathered there in front of everyone in that whole congregation packed with people on that day to watch this. And then. He was ceremonially defrocked. And what that means is they removed one piece of clothing at a time, ceremonially and slowly until he was wearing nothing but his undergarments in front of everyone. Weak and frail from months of imprisonment and malnutrition, he stood before them. This was done to a man who loved Jesus Christ. Because he would not deny God's word. And this is what they did to him. They embarrassed him. They wanted to humiliate him. And I think of the author of Hebrews, and I think the author of Hebrews had martyrs like this in mind when he wrote of men of whom this world is not worthy in Hebrews 1138. Oh, he could have recanted. He could have been spared, but he refused by reason of conscience. As Luther later said, my conscience is bound by the word of God. That was Huss's conviction as well. Now, this public defrocking was all done to humiliate this godly man, this brave expositor in front of his congregation. But don't miss this. It was also done to scare the wits out of everyone who followed his teaching. It was done to intimidate the masses so that they wouldn't go along with opposing the church. Many of these people had come to faith in Christ through his ministry. Many of them were now going to be in heaven because this man preached the word to them and they understood it. And so as he was being tied to the state, this godly expositor prayed these words. Lord Jesus, it is for you that I patiently endure this cruel death. Lord Jesus, have mercy on my enemies. And as the flames engulfed his body, He was heard quoting the Psalms until he entered the joyful presence of the Savior and Lord. And when there was nothing left but his ashes on the ground, the executioners were instructed by the Vatican to scoop up his ashes, to put them in a container and then scatter his ashes over a nearby lake to leave nothing of his remains that he might have no name, no monument, no marker. Parenthetically, I want you to know there are markers and monuments all over Czechoslovakia today dedicated to John Huss. There are churches named after him. There are all kinds of sites and institutions named after Huss because he died a martyr's death. They couldn't extinguish the flame, but that was their goal. And the Lord Jesus did not let this witness fall to the ground in silence. Remember those words that he said? Remember that Huss told the Bishop of Constance, you may silence this goose, but there will come a swan that you will not silence. Remember that nearly 100 years later, a swan arose and his name was Martin Luther. Of course, Martin Luther was called the swan of the Reformation on October 31st, 1517, one hundred and two years after the execution of Huss. Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door at Wittenberg, Germany, and Luther is often called the swan of the Reformation, just as Hus predicted. God brought it all to pass and the cathedral. Now, listen, this is one of the most interesting things about this story. The cathedral in Erfurt, Germany, where Luther was ordained, has providential and unlikely connections to John Hus's prediction. When Martin Luther was being ordained for ministry in the Catholic Church before the Reformation was even a twinkle in his eye, he wasn't even thinking about reform. He was just a faithful Catholic. He wanted to become a monk. When he was being ordained in Erfurt, Germany, he was lying face down prostrate in the cathedral in the shape of a cross with his face on the floor in the cathedral in Erfurt and right underneath Where Luther was being ordained in that cathedral was the burial crypt of the Bishop of Constance, the same bishop who put Huss to death nearly 100 years earlier. He was buried right under the stones where Luther was ordained. Little did the bishop of Constance realize at the time that the swan who wouldn't be silenced as predicted by Huss would literally be ordained over the bishop's dead body. It happened. Our sovereign Lord has a majestic sense of humor in the grand sweep of history. He is the Lord of years. He is the potentate of time. He contains and controls all things, all circumstances. And I want you to know and realize that Jesus Christ is the one true head of the church and any church without Christ as its head is a false church, a dead church, a spiritually decapitated church. For us, the way Jesus exercises his authority over the church is through the preaching of his word. That's why the preaching of the word is such an emphasis for us. It determines everything else about what the church will be and how it will perform in the future. The exposition of scripture is what God uses to save his people, to equip the saints, to encourage the afflicted, to convict the sinful and to strengthen the weary, to silence the word of God in the pulpit, either by distortion or neglect, is to muzzle the king of kings. It's to put your hand over the mouth of the true head of the church and say, you have no voice here. Over the centuries, there have been thousands of brothers and sisters in Christ who laid down their lives so that we could have copies of God's word in our own language. What a glorious privilege that is. As the scripture we read earlier says, indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. We've clearly seen that this morning. John Huss was willing to face brutal persecution for Christ's headship and the exposition of scripture. I'm so grateful for this life. And again, that's just an abridged version of his life. There's so many details that I had to leave out of this. But I want to remind you here at the end, don't ignore God's word or the gift of having copies of God's word. Right in front of you in these pew racks, as well as most of us have many Bibles in our homes, in our own language. Don't neglect that. Most believers did not have that before the Reformation. That's a new thing. That's a glorious privilege that we've had. Honor the faithfulness, honor the sacrifice of these martyrs by reading your Bible, by obeying the life changing truth that it teaches. That's the lesson for this morning. As we celebrate this Reformation Sunday, let's close in prayer. Father, we do thank you for your word. Your word changes lives. Thank you for preserving the Bible in our own language across the centuries through faithful, redeemed centers, men and women, those like Wickliffe and Hus and Luther. May we boldly stand for your truth in our day. Bring salvation to the many who are lost and without any hope in our area. Spread your gospel to the ends of the earth, beginning right here in our own neighborhoods, in our own location. And I pray that you would revive the churches in our area, that you would revive your people, your redeemed flock as they hear and believe your word. May we see the fruit of biblical reformation everywhere your word takes root. And we ask these things with confidence, believing them to be your good and perfect will for the church. And we do this in the name of Jesus. Amen.