On this, my seventh Reformation Sunday sermon, I felt it was finally time for me to say something directly about Martin Luther. He always comes up, at least in passing, because of his great prominence in the Protestant Reformation. As you know, he was the man principally used by God to initiate a widespread return to a biblical view of justification by faith alone. Justification by faith alone, a key point in the Reformation, a return, I might add, that is once again greatly needed in our day. I'm going to say more about the doctrine of justification later in this message, and how Luther arrived at its biblical rediscovery. Because the Catholic Church, of course, has a doctrine of justification, but Luther came to a biblical understanding of that doctrine. Now Luther was certainly not the first believer to publicly oppose the heresies and abuses of the Roman Catholic Church. We've studied men like Wycliffe and Huss in the past, but he was by far the most influential man for up to a thousand years previous to that point. I mean, he, to use a sports analogy, ran more yardage than any other who carried that ball. So I want to divide this message up roughly into three sections. First, I want to cover the basics of Luther's life up to the point of the Reformation in 1517. Then in the middle section, I want to talk about what happened at 1517 and following, and how the Catholic Church responded to that. And then in the last third of the message, I want to talk about why the Reformation was needed then, and why our Reformation is still needed today. So with that, here's how the life of Martin Luther began. He was born in Eisleben, about 120 miles southwest of modern-day Berlin. His parents were Margaret and Hans Luther, as it's pronounced in German, the Luther family. He was raised in the town of Mansfeld, where his father worked at the local copper mines. Hans sent Martin to Latin school, and then when he was only 13 years old, to the University of Erfurt to study law. Now in a brief time, Martin earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees. He did so very quickly. He was such a brilliant, gifted student that Luther finished his degrees in the shortest time allowed by university statutes. implying that he could have done it even faster, but he had to go along with their statutes. He was outpacing the system. Then in 1505, there was a dramatic event that changed Luther's life. As the 21-year-old Luther walked through a severe thunderstorm on the way back to Erfurt, a bolt of lightning struck very close to where Luther was walking and where he was standing. Now in fear, his Catholic superstition kicked in at that moment and he screamed, help me St. Anne and I will become a monk. Now I'm curious as to why he prayed to St. Anne because in my research and I've looked up who is St. Anne and why is he appealing to this patronage and there is no definitive patronage assigned to St. Anne. St. Anne is the name, the fictitious name, that was given to the mother of the Virgin Mary. She is nowhere mentioned in Scripture, so it's a traditional name that was simply assigned by the Catholic Church and also by Islam. They both use the name Anne for the mother of the Virgin Mary, but nowhere mentioned in Scripture. Saint Anne is appealed to as the patron saint of family, the patron saint of unmarried women, and also the patron saint of seamstresses. And I couldn't for the life of me think of why would Luther be calling out to Saint Anne in the middle of the thunderstorm, but I'm sure there's another answer, another patronage that someone could say perhaps it's for this reason. And so he prays to Saint Anne, he calls out, and then some people, you know, make rash vows all the time. They just call things out, help me God, and then they forget all about the vow after the trouble is over. But not Luther. Luther did not take vows lightly. He made a vow, and now he must keep it. So after he made it through this thunderstorm alive, he fulfilled his vow. He gave up his practice of law instantly, sold every possession he had except the bare essentials, and he entered an Augustinian monastery. Now his father Hans was absolutely furious when Luther did this. He thought his son had lost his mind for walking away from all of his training and after having invested so many years and so much money to be trained. But Hans also knew that if his son Martin Luther went to the monastery, he would at least have the basics of food, shelter, and clothing because the church did provide well for those who lived under it. Now as Luther had excelled as a student, he also excelled as a monk. His personal nature was very disciplined, very intense, and so monastic life suited Luther to a T. Luther immersed himself into hours of daily prayer, intense fasting, and rigorous asceticism with practices such as going days without sleep, enduring bone-chilling cold without a blanket, and whipping his own back with a chain. He had been taught by Catholic priests that these painful voluntary deprivals and actions would help him to earn his way to salvation, would help him to progressively earn justification, which the Catholic Church saw then and now is the end of a process of you sanctifying yourself through the sacerdotal system, which is the system of the priests through the sacraments of which they have seven. And so this is the way justification was. The word infused is the way it's used. Not given, not an instantaneous act as we understand it, but it's a progressive infusion that can go up or down based on how you go through the sacraments and whether you don't. Whether you sin, your justification can be diminished in this system or it can be increased. So a person in this system never knows where they stand with God. They never know. In fact, it's considered arrogant to say you're going to heaven because you're saying something that you have no right to say. You don't know whether you're going to heaven or not. You can only say, I hope I go to heaven. I hope that God will judge me in that way. And that's why they came up with purgatory. Really, purgatory is the safety net of the whole system. I'll make reference to that in a moment. But the monastery life was something that suited Luther so well because of his personality. He had been taught by the priests that these activities would help him to earn his way to heaven. He believed it. Luther said, quote, if anyone could have earned heaven through monkery, it was I. He believed if anybody could do it, it was him because of his diligence. And so the monastery allowed him to be in a secluded enclave where he could take his quest for study and discipline and asceticism to a religious extreme. Now during these early monastic years, Luther said he felt further and further from God. He wasn't growing closer to God, he was growing further from God. In fact, he confessed that he felt closer to God studying law than he ever did living as a Catholic monk at a monastery. Very ironic. Now through these rituals, he was increasingly burdened by his own sense of unforgiven sin. He felt consumed with the abiding wrath of God hovering over his life. During these years, Luther said, quote, that his soul feels and drinks nothing but eternal punishment, end quote. His religion offered him no rest, only more work. more performances, more activities. But through these, Luther knew in his heart he did not have God's favor. He knew that something was missing. However, Luther was also doing something else during these early years that would eventually lead to his salvation. That is, he was privately studying the Word of God. He was especially studying the Psalms and the Book of Romans in order to give lectures at Wittenberg University. He was reading verses like Romans 1 verses 16 and 17 which say, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, that is in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. Now Luther said, whenever he read those words, his eyes were drawn not to the word faith, but always to the word righteous. He couldn't get past that word righteous. He asked, who could live by faith except those who are already righteous? That makes sense if you've been taught that you have to progressively earn it through your own acts of sanctification. One day you might get that golden ring of justification. And so he said, who can do this if you're not already righteous? Who can have this life of faith? So it was clear to him on that matter, the righteous shall live by faith. He said, I hated that word. Here's a quote. I hated that word, the righteousness of God, by which I had been taught, according to the custom and use of all teachers, that God is righteous and he punishes the unrighteous sinner. And so the young religious and disciplined Luther could not live by faith, according to his understanding and upbringing, because he knew he was not righteous. That was clear. And so it was the Word of God that kept convicting him throughout this period, convicting him of his sin, and it was Scripture that convinced him that he was still lost, even with all of his religious activities, and with all of his rigor, and with all of his self-inflicted wounds, yet he could not ignore the witness of Scripture. And he kept studying the book of Romans in particular. In his journal, he wrote, quote, at last meditating day and night by the mercy of God. I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that through which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith. Here I felt as if I were entirely born again and it entered paradise itself through the gates that had been flung open. He was saved. God regenerated him through the power of the word that he was reading. Scripture did it. Now that's when the truth of the gospel finally fell into place in Luther's mind, and it suddenly became crystal clear. And not only did the way of salvation as a gift become clear, but other related doctrines in the Christian faith also became clear as well. To Luther, now the church is no longer an institution determined by apostolic succession or the headship of the Pope, but instead he now saw the true church as the community of those who had been given the gift of faith. It was a community of the regenerate in Christ, and Christ himself is the head of the church. And he saw that salvation came not by partaking of the sacraments, but by faith alone, apart from any human work or rituals. And the notion that human beings had some spark of goodness on their own to earn the favor of God or to seek after God was not taught in the Bible, but was only taught by fools, he said. Faith didn't require his submission to the aberrant teachings of an apostate church, but of trusting the promises of God and the merits of Christ to oppose those false teachings. And Luther wanted everyone to understand these truths. The mission was in place now. He had a calling, he had a mission, and now he has momentum building. Now Luther was very grieved over the lavish and immoral lifestyles of those in religious leadership that he saw in the Catholic Church. He was especially agitated as many of you know over the church's sale of indulgences pieces of paper. that were being sold as a token of, you give us money, we'll give you forgiveness, ostensibly from God. But they were selling forgiveness for a price, charging people for fake forgiveness that didn't forgive anything. And so the church had this racket going, really we would call it a scam, taking advantage of people. The church had been selling these indulgences to people as a way for them to pay for their sins financially. and also as a purported way to get their dead relatives out of purgatory, which doesn't exist. There is no such place as purgatory. There is only one place in all creation where sins are purged, and that's at the cross of Jesus Christ. No other place. No person can pay for their sins either in this life or in the next. They can only be punished, and only Christ can pay for them. And so Luther now realized that this is not only contrary to the teaching of Scripture, but it's also a wicked abuse of the poor who are dying of poverty to pay for these meaningless indulgences, all for the building of more cathedrals to propagate more and more error. Now Leo the 10th was the Pope at this time. Leo was spending money like it's going out of style. He is living in excess. He is just spending so much money that the lavish church still has trouble taking in enough money to accommodate the spending habits of Leo the 10th. And so Luther sees the church getting wealthier and wealthier and more unrighteous at the same time, while the poor, where he's living, are being led further and further away from the truth. Now that brings me to the second part of the message. That's where we get to the head. Now it's October 31st, 1517, 498 years ago yesterday. It was then that Luther publicly objected to the scandalous way that a very enterprising, and we would call him maybe even an emergent, Catholic friar named Johann Tetzel was selling indulgences. I mean, he was a master salesman. He was just out there selling these indulgences, and Luther heard about this. He heard about his fame. Now remember, Leo X is trying to build St. Peter's Basilica. They are trying to finish this massive edifice, St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, but also Leo X had recently, like five years before this, had hired a very expensive painter to paint part of the Vatican. And the painter is famous. In fact, you know him. His name is Michelangelo. And the part of the Vatican he was painting was the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. That was 1512, so now we're five years later and he sees all this money being spent on fixing up the Vatican and on other opulent expenses. Now, Tetzel's famous slogan was, once the coin in the coffer clings, a soul from purgatory heavenward springs. And people were buying into that and they were pouring money into these coffers for fake forgiveness. And so Luther wrote his objections. They were composed of 95 specific protests, largely about these indulgences. And he nailed them to the public bulletin board on the church door at Wittenberg. This is where everybody got their news. It wasn't like the only standout as if there was nothing else on the door. It was a public bulletin board. So Luther wanted to help the church. Keep in mind, Luther is still Catholic at this point. He's not against the Pope. He would have called himself an ardent Papist at this time, but he wants to help the church. He wants to reform these abusive, sinful practices, and so he called for a public debate of these theses. And he even wrote a supplementary defense to explain all of these points. His goal was to help Roman Catholicism be healthy. He wanted them to be reformed according to Scripture. But instead of a public debate, his 95 theses spread across Germany and then across Europe as a call to reform. It went viral. It was everywhere. It was being translated into so many different languages. Everywhere there was a church, there were the writings of Luther. And almost overnight, the issue quickly became not just indulgences, but the authority of the church. Did the Pope have the right to issue such indulgences as a payment for one's sins? Could the Pope forgive sins? Can the church forgive sins? Now, at a public debate in Leipzig in 1519, when Luther said, quote, a simple layman armed with the scriptures is superior to both Pope and councils without them, he was threatened with excommunication from the church. And keep in mind, the line between excommunication and execution is very slender in these days, very slender. But Luther wasn't intimidated, at least not on the surface. He has a very cool front. Now to this threat of excommunication, Luther wrote what became his three most important works, The Address to the Christian Nobility, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and On the Freedom of a Christian. In the first book, he argued that all Christians are priests, and he urged church leaders to take up the cause of church reform from within the church itself. In the second book, he reduced the Catholic Church's seven sacraments down to the original two ordinances given in Scripture, baptism and the Lord's Supper. And in the third book, he said that true Christians were free from the ceremonial law, especially church laws, but bound in love to their neighbors in the gospel. That was very clear, very helpful. So did Luther's clarity in print finally resolve the issue? Did it settle the dispute? Far from it. This was like pouring gasoline on a smoldering flame of discontentment and abusive system. The people of Germany demanded reform in the church, not tomorrow, but now. It became a call to reform this abusive system. They saw what was going on. It's like somebody had taken the blinders off. And in 1521, Luther was summoned to an assembly at Worms, Germany. He was to appear before Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, Luther was prepared to have another debate. He thought, good, we will get a chance to debate these things. Finally, I'll have an honest hearing. So he thinks he's going to a debate, but he quickly learns that there's no debate planned with Luther. This is going to be a trial. A trial at which he's going to be asked to renounce all of his views in a blanket way, without specifying which views were in question. They simply wanted a blanket denunciation of everything Luther had ever written. They said on the first day of the trial, do you recant of these errors? Now when Luther first heard this, he actually said he wanted 24 hours to think about his answer. And they gave him the 24 hours. So they met again and they reconvened at 4 p.m. the next afternoon in forms. And when asked again, do you recant or not? Luther replied softly, unless I can be instructed and convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures or with open, clear, and distinct grounds of reasoning, then I cannot and I will not recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience. Then he added, here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen. They were shocked. The gauntlet had been thrown down and now the response to this outrage was being drafted. The wheels of the religious bureaucracy were quickly set into motion against Luther and all would-be reformers. Keep in mind, if they let him get away with this, it's going to spur other people to do these type of actions and to speak out against the church. They're not going to hear of it. The Catholic Church responded to the entire Reform movement later by convening the Council of Trent. Council of Trent is the Catholic Church's official response to all of the Protestant Reformation, point by point. The Council of Trent continues to be binding on all Roman Catholics today, whether they realize it or not, it's part of their official dogmas. And if you call yourself a Roman Catholic, you are bound by all of those dogmas. But the Council of Trent contains, among other things, a repeated denunciation of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. That's their official response to this day. But the immediate response was somewhat more direct. The immediate response was an imperial edict calling Luther a convicted heretic. That's a huge thing. That's like a death sentence. He's a convicted heretic. But Luther escaped to Vortburg Castle, where he was hidden for 10 months. He took on the identity of a knight. And while in seclusion, Luther grew out his beard and continued to study the scriptures and to write other books. In early spring of 1522, he was able to return to Wittenberg to lead the early Reformation movement with the help of faithful men like Philip Melanchthon. And over the next years, Luther entered into many other disputes, many of which divided both friends and enemies. In 1525, Luther married a runaway nun named Katharina von Bora, which scandalized many. A former monk marrying a former nun? What is that, they said. Well, Luther came to realize that nowhere in scripture are God's servants forbidden to marry or to take along a believing spouse, as Simon Peter did in the New Testament, whom they regarded to be their first pope. Very ironic. Now, the whole idea in the Catholic Church of forced celibacy for priests was resulting in rampant sexual problems like unbridled lust, rape, and homosexuality. All of that was notorious going back for hundreds of years in the Catholic Church. So there is nothing new under the sun today. What's going on in the church today with regards to the sexual scandals is nothing new. And the Reformation that Luther initiated was nothing new either. It was not the introduction of any new doctrine. Rather, this was the rediscovery, the reassertion of something very old. It all goes back to the Bible. It all goes back to the Bible. The Word of God really is the hero of the Reformation, not Martin Luther. It was Luther's use of the Word, it was the Word that brought Luther to faith, and now it's the Word of God that Luther is appealing to as the whole basis for his Reformation. I mentioned earlier that it was over the doctrine of justification by faith alone that the Reformation was principally ignited. We would say this was the material cause of the Reformation, but the formal cause of the Reformation was Scripture itself. It's Scripture itself as the authority over the true church. I wanted to get back to this. Justification is about how a person is declared to be right and righteous in God's eyes while still in a sinful state and condition because of what Jesus did on their behalf rather than what they did. That's the biblical view of justification. This enables a person to go to heaven instead of hell. So that's a key thing to know. Justification permanently and instantly changes a believer's legal and positional standing before God. And through sanctification, we grow in likeness to Christ. Now that brings me to the third major section that I want to address in this message. This all goes back to how an individual is saved from sin. Let's talk about whether reform is still needed and why it was needed then and how it's needed now. Keep in mind that justification is one part of salvation. There's a whole package that God does all at the same time, really, whenever he saves a person. Justification is one aspect. Regeneration, forgiveness, there's so many different aspects that come with salvation. But justification is the positional, legal standing that is part of salvation. Now, salvation really is the watershed issue in all comparative religions. That's really what all comparative religions comes down to is how is a person saved? We use the word saved. How is a person made right with God? How does a person go to heaven instead of hell? That's the key issue. All false religions claim to have some way of getting us to heaven or of earning a place in the afterlife that is good, according to them, whether it's heaven or nirvana or whatever they want to call the afterlife. But except for biblical Christianity, all other religions promote salvation by works. They are all do-it-yourself religions. You earn it. It's always something you must do or avoid doing or because of something you must say or pay or eat or pray or recite in order to be saved. It was all works. Biblical Christianity has the only message that tells people they can be saved and completely forgiven of every sin by grace alone, through faith alone, in what Jesus alone has done in their place to earn the eternal favor of God. That's the gospel. No other religion has that message. And so, here's what we need to talk about. Why was the Reformation needed in light of this, and is it needed now? For centuries now, the Roman Catholic Church, embodied by the Vatican and its head, the Pope, has been preaching and requiring its adherents to affirm a different gospel, a contrary gospel. It's a message of self-salvation. It's not the message taught in Scripture. Now, when someone asks, can Roman Catholics be saved, The answer is absolutely. Of course, Roman Catholics can be saved, but not by believing Roman Catholic theology or Roman Catholic dogma. If they believe Roman Catholic theology and continue to believe it and continue to believe its dogma and teachings, they cannot be saved until they stop believing it and believe the gospel, which is the opposite. The only way for a Roman Catholic to be saved is by circumventing and rejecting their own church's theology and teaching to hear and believe the true way of salvation. And once they do believe that gospel, they aren't Roman Catholic anymore. Even if they don't realize it, according to the church itself, the Roman Catholic Church does not regard someone who disagrees with their doctrine on this issue especially as a true Roman Catholic. You're now a renegade Roman Catholic and soon to be a former Roman Catholic. But they're not a true Catholic if you believe the gospel that saves you. Because it's a different message than the Roman Catholic Church has. They are believing the very gospel that is condemned by one anathema after another in the official dogmas of that religion. Listen, biblical Christianity and Roman Catholicism are two mutually exclusive systems. They cancel each other out. A person can be one or the other, but not both, because the doctrines of each condemn the other. You might wonder, is this still true? Does the current-day Roman Catholic Church still promote a different way of salvation than is presented in the Bible? I mean, aren't Catholics more evangelical now? Well, externally, I guess you could say yes. In an external sense, they do appear to be more evangelical after Vatican II, and that's an external change that's been made. The hyper-ecumenical movement has certainly blurred the lines between Christians and Catholics. In fact, many think that Catholics today are just another group of Christians, but with different customs and rituals. But is that the case? Are the differences merely superficial? Well, we can let the Catholic Church and its leaders speak for themselves. Official pronouncements, again, become part of the church's active dogma, which is required of all professing Roman Catholics. Whether they knowingly agree to them or not, it goes with the title Roman Catholic. So listen to this. When it comes to rejecting the exclusivity of atonement through the blood of Jesus Christ alone to be saved from sin, 15-20 years ago, Pope John Paul II issued a bull of indiction in which he made this official pronouncement about alternative ways to deal with sin other than the blood of Christ. This is official teaching now. Sin's punishment can be remitted by abstaining from unnecessary consumption of tobacco and alcohol and by donating a proportionate sum of money to the poor." So Jesus is part of the system, but there are other temporal ways that you can deal with your sin. We're talking about having it remitted, that is to have it removed, forgiven. There are many temporal ways to deal with sin according to Catholicism. Yes, this is current teaching. This is still binding on Roman Catholics. And so the official teaching about how sin is forgiven is related to external non-essentials we can choose to give up if we desire. Here's another one. Is Jesus the only way to the Father? Or are there other ways that people can enter the kingdom of God? Now, the Lord Jesus was very clear about this in John 14, 6. Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. But in December of 2000, Pope John Paul said, quote, all who seek God with a sincere heart, including those who do not know Christ, will enter God's kingdom, end quote. And so according to Roman Catholicism, knowing Christ is not necessary for one to go to heaven. Christ is not needed, so faith in him alone becomes a rather moot point. It's a moot point if it's faith in him alone, if he's only a part of that system. More recently, you may have heard Pope Francis. Back in 2013, he said even atheists who do good will go to heaven when they die, whether they believe in God or not. That's moralistic universalism. This is still current teaching. This is binding. The Catholic religion clearly teaches another gospel. This is a different religion from Christianity. And it condemns the true gospel. It condemns it. It is a contrary gospel, which Galatians 1-6-9 says is a curse by God. This is a curse by God. The Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 1-6-9, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one. But there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed." Now that word, accursed, is the strongest denunciation in the Greek. It's the word anathema. Anathema literally means, let him be damned. Verse 9, as we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. That's God's answer to other gospels, other ways. And so the answer to the question again, can Roman Catholics be saved? The answer is this, those who are currently in the Roman Catholic Church who continue to believe what the Catholic Church says about justification cannot be saved until and unless they stop believing it by the grace of God. But it does happen. It does happen. It happens every day. That's what happened in Martin Luther's life. Martin Luther stopped believing what the Catholic Church teaches about how to be saved, how to be made right with God. It happened by his continual exposure to scripture day and night. And Christ has redeemed many Roman Catholics through his word across the centuries, praise God. As most of you know, my wife was saved out of that same false system that condemns the only true way of salvation. She was gloriously redeemed. And former Roman Catholics who now understand the true gospel message, they are the ones who most see the need to evangelize Roman Catholics with the truth of the gospel. They get it. They get it more than most Protestants, more than most evangelicals get it. They say, we need to reach these Roman Catholics because I was saved out of that system and I want them to go to heaven. You see, they see it as a false system. It's the people who either don't understand the gospel where they don't understand Catholic beliefs, who tend to be the most offended by the call to evangelize Roman Catholics. But listen, underneath the semantics, underneath the shared terminology, they are two different religions. Catholics need the gospel. But hear me, Catholics are not the enemy. Roman Catholics are not our enemy. They are the mission field. They are dear people. We need to reach them with the gospel of Christ. Morality won't save you. Doing the right things in your life and trying to make your life look clean, that won't save you. You need to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ alone. They are part of the mission field just as the Muslims and the Hindus and the Buddhists are. The mission field is wide and it is very present. For that matter, there are many Protestants and Baptists who need the gospel as well, the true gospel. But such devout religionists may have an external form of godliness, but without the power, without the regeneration, without the indwelling Spirit of God at work within them to do what pleases God. Every member of a false religion or cult needs to hear and believe the gospel. And, you know, some of us have family members who still haven't believed the gospel, who are among these numbers who haven't believed the true biblical message that brings salvation. We pray for them. We pray for them every day. I know they're on our church prayer list. They may have heard it and rejected it many, many times. But belief has not yet been granted in many of those cases. And the issue is justification. How is a person made right and righteous with God? Is it through the sacraments? Is it through the church? Or is it through some other human effort, something that I must do? Or is it entirely by God's grace alone? That's the issue. Ephesians 2 verses 8 and 9 say, 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. Luther did everything he could in his day to help the Roman church see the error of its ways. He wanted that church to be reformed according to scripture. But the Vatican rejected him and his message. Luther's later years were spent in both illness as well as tireless activity. In 1531, he was ailing for six months and suffered from exhaustion, yet he still preached 180 sermons, wrote 15 tracts, worked on his Old Testament translation, and took a number of trips. But in 1546, Luther went to sleep for the last time, and he slipped into eternity. His legacy remains immense to this day. He not only launched the Protestant Reformation and the evangelization of Europe, but the message he preached also changed the course of Western civilization. Every Protestant reformer like Calvin, or Zwingli, or Knox, or Thomas Cranmer, and every Protestant variation, Lutheran, Reformed, Presbyterian, Anglican, Anabaptist, they were all inspired in one way or another by Martin Luther. His reform movement initiated the process that literally ended the Middle Ages and began the modern era. And so we pause on this Sunday closest to October 31st every year to reflect on the great Reformation doctrines and on the people that God used to bring about reform to a biblical way of expositing the scriptures, explaining the scriptures, and biblical regeneration in the church. But now the baton has been passed to our generation. We have a great company of faithful witnesses before us who ran their race faithfully in their time. But now you and I have a race to run and a charge to keep. Let's ask God to help us. Pray with me. Father, we do appeal to you this hour. Your faithfulness to your Word is witnessed across the centuries as we study these different slices of history and find inspiration in them for our call this hour. We thank you for using redeemed sinners like Martin Luther, John Wycliffe, Hus, Tyndale, and our prayer is that we might be so used in your service as well. that each of us here would be faithful to the advancement of your word and in sharing that true gospel message with those still living in religious darkness. Cause the light of your word and the light of the glory of Christ to break upon their hearts that they might be saved. Thank you so much for saving us. We ask all of these things in Jesus name. Amen.