After Darkness, Light: The Dawn & Dusk of Reformation | Acts 16:29-31

ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church

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Alright, before we dive into the topic today,

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I did want to make a correction to my sermon from last week.

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I said somewhere along the lines that we should not be ignorant of God's designs.

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What I should have said or what I meant was we should not be ignorant of Satan's designs. So that's according to 2

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Corinthians 2 .10 -11. That concludes our public service announcement for today. And I also, like I mentioned last week,

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I'm going to be drawing from a few resources that we've done in the past. We had a two and a half hour discussion,

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Tim and I did, where we discussed whether Christians should celebrate Halloween, harvest festivals, and their impact on children,

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Satanism and paganism in our society and other holidays, and Reformation Day.

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So I encourage you to check that out. That's episode 18 of Semper Ephraim on the radio at thorncrownministries .com.

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And I'm also going to be drawing from my article called, When Protestants Err on the

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Side of Rome, John Piper, Final Salvation, and the Decline and Fall of Sola Fide at the

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Last Day, also available at thorncrownministries .com.

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Today we are celebrating one of the most important, most significant days in the history of not only the church, but the entire world.

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This is what we call Reformation Day, and specifically today is Reformation Sunday. And yet the sad state of our society is that many, including

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Christians, have no idea what Reformation Day is or what it means. So last week

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I also mentioned that these celebrations are not mandatory, of course, but if we do celebrate them, we must do so as discerning, worshipful

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Christians who observe God's person and work without pagan practices.

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So you'll see the sermon title for today is

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After Darkness, Light, the Dawn and Dusk of Reformation. What this is pointing to is the fact that the fire of the

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Protestant Reformation was kindled by the protest of indulgences and pagan superstitious beliefs about purgatory that were celebrated on All Hallows' Eve, the 31st of October.

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One of the Protestant Reformation mottos is Post Tenebras Lux. It's a

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Latin phrase which means after darkness, light. The light of the gospel is what bursts forth during the

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Reformation and completely exposed the darkness, the ignorance of pagan superstition and of the

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Roman Catholic Church. It literally changed the world. It changed the world.

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And it is the very gospel that redeems sinners from Satan's grip and the

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Savior who will crush him under his feet. And it had many, many effects downstream, positive and negative, but mostly very positive.

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So my thesis for today, pun intended, is that I can only hope to salt your oats that you may thirst to learn more about the

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Reformation because it is a vast, profound, edifying and richly rewarding subject to study.

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So I'll give an overview of what provoked the major conflicts of the Reformation, focusing specifically on Martin Luther's life and his embodiment of both the internal struggle of finding true peace with God and the external conflict with the

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Pope and Church of Rome. A major takeaway for today, major takeaway, is that the truth is highly polarizing, sometimes highly controversial and highly contentious, especially when it confronts falsehoods and lies.

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It's a very intense conflict that happened during the

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Reformation. It is no wonder then that God commands us to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints, according to Jude 1 .3.

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It is also no wonder that there must be factions or schisms or divisions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.

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That's 1 Corinthians 11, 18 through 19. So this is necessary. Sometimes division is necessary in the church to see what side you are on.

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So the doctrine which Martin Luther declared to be the article by which the church stands or falls, which

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John Calvin affirmed as the principal ground on which religion must be supported, which forged the conflict with Rome during the

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Reformation, resulting in the largest schism in the history of the church and a seismic shift in the history of the world, is the doctrine of justification.

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Justification by faith alone, or sola fide, is the answer to life's most profound question.

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How then can man be righteous before God? Or how can he be pure who is born of a woman?

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How does man get into heaven? According to Acts 16, 29 through 31, the

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Philippian jailer called for a light, ran in, and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas.

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And he brought them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? So they said,

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Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household.

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The Heidelberg Catechism thus answers question 60, how art thou righteous before God?

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Only by a true faith in Jesus Christ, so that though my conscience accused me that I have grossly transgressed all the commandments of God and kept none of them, and am still inclined to all evil, notwithstanding God, without any merit of mine, but only of mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, even so as if I had never had nor committed any sin, yea, as if I had fully accomplished all that obedience which

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Christ accomplished for me, inasmuch as I embrace such benefit with a believing heart.

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It is faith alone to understand and assent to the gospel, to agree with the gospel, without any merit of mine that saves sinners.

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And despite their differences, the Protestant Reformers rightly understood and unanimously affirmed this vital doctrine, which is a truth that all

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Reforming leaders in Germany, Switzerland, France, and Britain, and all the confessions which they sponsored, were at one in highlighting, and which they all saw as articulus tantis vel cadentis ecclesiae, the point on which depends the standing or falling of the

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Church. It is the very heart, the very lifeblood of the gospel.

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As the Apostle Paul explains in Galatians 2 .14 -16, So if we turn to Galatians 2 .14

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-16, we'll see how important this is. In Galatians 2 .14

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-16 we read, But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel,

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I said to Peter before them all, If you, being a Jew, live in the manner of Gentiles and not as the

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Jews, why do you compel Gentiles to live as Jews? We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the

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Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.

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Even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law.

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For by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified. So then we can ask ourselves,

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If faith is something that we must do, however, does that make it a work?

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Are we not justified by faith and works? And this was the claim of the Roman Catholic Church. It still is.

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This was the central issue, one of the central issues of the Reformation and beyond. The Roman Catholic Church herself acknowledges to some extent in her joint declaration on the doctrine of justification, which reads,

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The doctrine of justification was of central importance for the

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Lutheran Reformation of the 16th century. It was held to be the first and chief article, and at the same time, the ruler and judge over all other

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Christian doctrines. The doctrine of justification was particularly asserted and defended in its

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Reformation shape and special valuation over and against the Roman Catholic Church and theology of that time, which asserted and defended a doctrine of justification of a different character, a different kind.

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From the Reformation perspective, justification was the crux of all the disputes.

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Doctrinal condemnations were put forward both in the Lutheran Confessions and by the

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Roman Catholic Church's Council of Trent. These condemnations are still valid today and thus have a church -dividing effect.

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For the Lutheran tradition, the doctrine of justification has retained its special status.

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So, do faith and works contribute to our justification? As we saw already, the

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Bible, the Reformers, and historic Protestantism answer both in the absolute negative.

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After Jesus fed the 5 ,000 by multiplying bread and fish, the people sought him again.

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But Jesus tells them, Most assuredly I say to you, you seek me not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.

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Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the

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Son of Man will give to you, because God the Father has set his seal on him. And the crowd apparently misunderstood him because they then asked,

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What shall we do that we may work the works of God?

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And Jesus answers, This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he sent.

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Christ gave an ad hominem reply to contrast faith and works, not to confuse, merge, or conflate them.

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Later, he also reveals that the will of him who sent me, that everyone who sees the

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Son and believes in him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

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So, if it's not a work and it's not about works, how then does faith justify a sinner in God's eyes?

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Question 73 of the Westminster Larger Catechism answers, Faith justifies a sinner in the sight of God, not because of those other graces which do always accompany it, or of good works that are the fruits of it, nor as if the grace of faith, or any act thereof, were imputed to him for his justification, but only as it is an instrument by which he receiveth and applyeth

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Christ and his righteousness. That is the Baptist Catechism question that we also read today.

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Gives the same answer. So, we understand then that neither faith nor works contribute to our justification, for faith is merely the instrument of it, the channel of salvation, and good works are the fruits of it, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.

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It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. What, however, does that and it refer to here in this verse in Ephesians 2, 8 -9?

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Does it refer to grace, to saved, or to faith? And discerning commentators will tell you that they refer to actually all three of those things, salvation by grace and through faith.

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And commenting on this passage, reformer John Calvin agrees, saying,

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Paul's doctrine is overthrown unless the whole praise is rendered to God alone and to His mercy.

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And here we must advert a very common error in the interpretation of this passage. Many persons restrict the word gift to faith alone, but Paul is only repeating, in other words, the former sentiment.

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His meaning is not that faith is a gift of God, but that salvation is given to us by God, or that we obtain it by the gift of God.

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So this is one sense in which faith alone is actually a bad thing, it's not correct, because it is not referring to faith alone, it's referring to salvation by grace through faith alone.

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So, salvation, in other words, is entirely by God's grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, and based on the ultimate authority of Scripture alone.

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These are the five solas of the Reformation. Sola gratia, sola fide, solos

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Christos, soli Deo gloria, sola Scriptura. This is an encapsulation of what

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Protestants believed and taught concerning salvation, our common salvation, all of which is

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God's gift to us. Good works contribute nothing to salvation, but rather result from it in our sanctification, which is why the

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Bible says to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to do for His good pleasure.

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Martin Luther said it very well, Beware then of trusting in thine own contrition, or attributing remission of sins to thine own sorrow.

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It is not because of these that God looks on thee with favor, but because of the faith with which thou hast believed

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His threatenings and promises, and which has wrought that sorrow in thee. Therefore, whatever good there is in penitence is due, not to the diligence with which we reckon up our sins, but to the truth of God and to our faith.

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All other things are works and fruits which follow of their own accord, and which do not make a man good, but are done by a man who has been made good by his faith in the truth of God.

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To be a true evangelical, therefore, is to be a true

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Protestant. The word evangelical originally referred to one who believes the material principle of the

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Reformation, which is Sola Fide, justification by faith alone, as well as the formal principle of the

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Reformation, Sola Scriptura, or the final authority of Scripture alone.

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This is what evangelical truly means.

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This term, however, has been robbed of its meaning by many ecumenical and liberal trends in the

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Church. It is nothing new for compromising evangelicals such as Bill Bright, Pat Robertson, Richard Moe, J .I.

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Packer, and Chuck Colson to sign and contribute to and co -author documents like Evangelicals and Catholics Together, which affirms that Evangelicals and Catholics are brothers and sisters in Christ.

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This we cannot affirm, because the Reformation exposed that Rome had a false gospel, which we will see.

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So now, enter one of the unassuming, you can say, stars of the show,

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Martin Luther himself. Martin Luther was born in 1483 in the insignificant town of Eisleben in Saxony.

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His father, Hans Luther, was ambitious for himself and his family, and he was determined to see

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Martin, which he was the oldest son, become a lawyer. So he sent Martin to Latin schools in Mansfield and Magdeburg in 1497, where he attended a school operated by a lay group called the

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Brethren of the Common Life in Eisenbach in 1498. The three schools focused on the

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Trivium, which is the grammar, logic, and rhetoric of the classical education.

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Luther later compared his education there to purgatory and hell. So, much good that did him.

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But God uses everything, right? God uses everything, the good, bad, and the ugly. So in 1501, at age 17, he entered the

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University of Erfurt, which he later described as a beer house and a whore house.

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So things didn't get much better in college. In accordance with his father's wishes, he enrolled in law, but dropped out almost immediately, believing that law represented uncertainty.

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But here, in Luther's later education, we see that he had a very sharp, a very cogent analytical mind.

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He was very good at using logic and being consistent. And unbeknownst to Luther, God was preparing him for something much, much bigger.

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On July 2nd, 1505, while Luther was returning to university on horseback after a trip home, a lightning bolt struck near him during a thunderstorm.

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Later, telling his father he was terrified of death and divine judgment, he cried out, Help, Saint Anna, I will become a monk.

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He came to view his cry for help as a vow he could never break. So he left the university, sold his books, and entered

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St. Augustine's Monastery in Erfurt on July 17th, 1505.

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This is where we see Luther's intense internal struggle.

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He constantly wrestled with how a wretched sinner like himself could ever hope to be right with God.

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No matter how long or how many times he confessed, sometimes for over six hours, confessing his sins to a priest, no matter how many days he starved himself, let himself outside to freeze, and flagellated himself, he could not find true peace with God.

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Martin Marty, who is an ecumenical biography of Luther, wrote that Luther was a scrupulous, almost fanatic confessor.

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His generous main confessor in the Augustinian Monastery, Johannes von Staupitz, had to hear

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Luther tear himself up spiritually in efforts to clear his record before God. It may be hard for moderns to empathize with someone in a monastery who had available all the sacred hours and devices one needed to confess, but poor

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Staupitz heard hour after hour of confession, to the point that he once complained to Luther that he did not have to confess every fart.

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Whether or not Luther was mentally unbalanced, or whether he was a genius at self -examination, a sort of Mozart -level genius at confession, as it were, he certainly was not modeling the life of belief in a gracious God.

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Luther did not understand the Gospel, nor the grace of God at this point.

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Now, skeptics and Romanists and secularists sometimes accuse

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Luther of being insane or mentally unstable. This, however, is a lie that is easily refuted by Luther's highly productive life, contributions, and literary output.

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He in fact penned over 60 ,000 pages. That's enough to fill 102 massive volumes of the famous Weimar edition, making him the most prolific religious figure in history, as well as the most written about since Christ.

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So, needless to say, he was not insane. He just simply understood that the

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Catholic Church did not offer the answer to the problem of a just and holy

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God. Luther was ordained to the priesthood two years later, in 1507.

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He came to reject several teachings and practices of the Catholic Church. In particular, he disputed the abuse of indulgences.

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Luther proposed an academic discussion and debate of the practice and efficacy of indulgences in his 95

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Theses, which he nailed to the Wittenberg church doors on October 31st, 1517.

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It is this iconoclastic day that we are celebrating today.

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And just as a little fun fact here, other accounts claim that he mailed, rather than nailed, the

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Theses to the Archbishop's office instead. But historically, this makes less sense because it doesn't really explain how the

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Theses were spread so quickly through society. After all, you have to ask yourself, why would an

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Archbishop want this scathing protest of indulgences, which likely were paying for his office, be propagated?

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It makes more sense that someone else saw these Theses posted and recognized the potential impact that they would have on society.

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In fact, most of us, many of us homeschool, and the classical conversation song goes, in 1517,

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Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation. This, however, is also not entirely accurate.

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He did not really begin the Reformation. There were, in fact, many forerunners to the

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Reformation, stemming all the way back from Augustine to John Wycliffe, John Hus, and others.

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In fact, Luther and Calvin, and many of the Reformers, drew heavily from them, especially

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Augustine. It's no wonder that Luther became an

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Augustinian monk. Remember, he joined St. Augustine's Monastery in Erfurt.

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So I would propose a slight revision to the song. On 1517, Martin Luther kindled the

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Protestant Reformation. He kindled the Reformation. This is more reflective of what

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Luther did. He agitated, he fomented, he adjuvanted the

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Reformation. So, now

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I'm going to go ahead and give a summary of these 95 theses and give some drive -by commentary on them.

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Luther's preface begins with this, Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following propositions will be discussed and defended in Wittenberg under the presidency of the

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Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts in Sacred Theology and Lecturer and Ordinary on the same at that place.

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Wherefore, he requests that those who are unable to be present and debate orally with us to do so by letter.

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In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. And here we see, he begins with the very first thesis.

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When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, Repent, in Matthew 4 .17,

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he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

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Repentance is not some sacramental penance you do whenever you go to confession. That's not what it means.

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In fact, the term, the Latin term from the Vulgate was Poenitentiam agitate.

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Louis Burkhoff gives a really good history of this term and how it was used and translated in the history of the

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Church. He says, Sad to say, the Church gradually lost sight of the original meaning of metanoia.

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That's the Greek word for repent. In Latin theology, Lactantius rendered it recipiscentia, a becoming wise again or wising up, as if the word were derived from meta and anoia and denoted a return from madness or folly.

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The majority of Latin writers, however, preferred to render it Poenitentia, a word that denotes the sorrow and regret which follows when one has made a mistake or has committed an error of any kind.

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This word passed into the Vulgate as the rendering of metanoia and under the influence of the

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Vulgate, the English translators rendered the Greek word by repentance, thus stressing the emotional element.

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The emotional element making metanoia equivalent to metameleia, thus stressing an emotional outward response.

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In some cases, the deterioration went even farther. The Roman Catholic Church externalized the idea of repentance and its sacrament of penance so that metanoite of the

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Greek Testament became poenitentiam agitate or do penance in the

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Latin version. Now, there's a major difference between doing penance and being penitent.

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One is internal, the other is external. So, this has application even to modern time, even to our very day we have this problem.

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There are many churches, many teachers who fail to adequately define repentance even in Protestant churches.

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Men who hold to lordship salvation such as John MacArthur and the like define repentance, they tend to externalize it and rather than distinguish repentance as the internal change of conviction from the outward fruits of repentance.

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We cannot confuse the cause and the effect. Repentance, the inward change of conviction, results in a change of life and good works and etc.

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So, in the first few theses, Luther develops the idea of repentance as the Christian's inner struggle with sin rather than the external system of sacramental confession.

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Theses 5 -7 then state that the Pope can only release people from the punishments he has administered himself or through the church's system of penance, not the guilt of sin.

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The Pope can only announce the forgiveness of the guilt of sin in his name.

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And here we see Thesis 10 says, those priests act ignorantly and wickedly who in the case of the dying, reserve canonical penalties for purgatory.

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And it's like Votibach says, if you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch.

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He is sharply rebuking the priests of the time. In Theses 14 -29,

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Luther challenged common beliefs about purgatory. They discuss the idea that punishment of purgatory can be likened to the fear and despair felt by dying people.

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In Theses 17 -24, he asserts that nothing can be definitively said about the spiritual state of people in purgatory.

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Theses 18 for example says, furthermore, it does not seem proved either by reason or by scripture that souls in purgatory are outside the state of merit that is unable to grow in love.

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I want us to focus very carefully on this phrase that Luther uses, either by reason or by scripture.

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And I was surprised when I read these again that I hadn't really seen anybody call attention to this because it's something that really stands out and should be brought up.

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This should sound familiar to you who are familiar with the history of the Reformation and about Luther.

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In one of his speeches before the Diet of Worms. But even this early on, in 1517,

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Luther was already developing and solidifying his conviction in the formal principle of the

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Reformation, of Sola Scriptura, of scripture alone. Here we come to our maxim, one of the axioms, in fact the

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Christian axiom for believers is Sola Scriptura.

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It is that in order to be grounded in truth and sound doctrine, we need two things.

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We need scripture and clear reason. Clear, logical consistency.

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We must interpret the scriptures according to sound reason. Fascinating. Now, I want to fast forward to when

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Luther was called into question and demanded that he recant his writings before the

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Diet of Worms. Here we read. And most of these sources, you can find most of this information from Wikipedia, actually.

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But here we, there's an article by David Bann, he says, The Pope and Emperor Charles of the

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Holy Roman Empire required Luther to attend a hearing to defend or retract his writings, his teachings.

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When Luther appeared before Emperor Charles V at the imperial hearing in Worms, which is known as the

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Diet of Worms, Germany, he asked if he would recant his writings. After, he actually, they were demanding, of course.

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After a fitful night and a remarkable prayer, he appeared on April 18, 1521, and made a significant speech, which concluded with these words,

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Since your most serene majesty and your lordships require of me a simple, clear, and direct answer,

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I will give one, and it is this. Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the scriptures and by clear reason, for I do not trust in the

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Pope or councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves,

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I am bound by the scriptures I have quoted. My conscience is captive to the word of God.

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I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.

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Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me.

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Amen. So Luther then denies that the

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Pope, so this is where we see, very early on, this is the

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Protestant way, the right understanding of how to interpret the Bible. Biblical hermeneutics requires you to affirm the scriptures as the final source of truth, of infallible source of truth, and we need to use our minds logically to make sense of it, because God is not an author of confusion, but of peace, love, and a sound mind.

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So, Luther then denies that the Pope has any power over purgatory in Theses 25 and 26.

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Thesis 25 says that the same power which the Pope has in general over purgatory corresponds to the same power which any bishop or curate has in any way in his own diocese and parish.

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Moment of suspense there, sorry. Luther here is provocatively limiting and restricting the

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Pope's power. This is something that was virtually unheard of.

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So in Theses 27 -29, he attacks the idea that as soon as payment is made, the payer's loved one is released from purgatory.

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He sees it as encouraging sinful greed, and says that it is impossible to be certain because only

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God has ultimate power in forgiving punishments in purgatory. So Theses 27 says, they preach only human doctrines or vanity, who say that as soon as the money clinks into the money chest, the soul flies out of purgatory.

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Theses 28 says, it is certain that when the money clinks in the money chest, greed and avarice increases.

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But when the church intercedes, the result is in the hands of God alone. So here we see

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Luther escalating his attacks on indulgences and rebukes and mocks those who advocate them.

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And one of the main peddlers of indulgences was a man named

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Johann Tetzel who was a Dominican friar. He was one of the main indulgence preachers back in Germany.

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And Luther despised him and all the others because he was preaching a false assurance.

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And so we see now that Luther had some very strong remarks against these teachings of the

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Roman Church. Theses 30 -34 deal with the false certainty that Luther believed the indulgence preachers offered

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Christians. Since no one knows whether a person is truly repentant, a letter assuring a person of his forgiveness is dangerous.

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Theses 32 says, those who believe that they can be certain of their salvation because they have indulgence letters will be eternally damned together with their teachers.

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And if you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch. This really is just a sharp rebuke and condemnation of what was going on at that time.

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And in fact, you see the history of prosperity preaching originating here.

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This is where prosperity preaching came about. It was through these indulgence preachers saying, hey, if you pay some money, you can have anything forgiven.

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You can have your loved ones forgiven, even if, as Tetzel said, you violate the mother of God herself.

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These men were no different from Benny Hinn or these other perverts of God's grace and truth.

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So, thesis 33 says, men must especially be on guard against those who say that the

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Pope's pardons are that inestimable gift of God by which man is reconciled to Him.

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Again, calling many things into question simply because he was thinking, he was trying to think clearly about the problem and seeing a lot of inconsistencies in the

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Catholic Church's teaching and with what he was seeing in the Scriptures. So, in theses 35 and 36, he attacks the idea that an indulgence makes repentance unnecessary.

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This leads to the conclusion that a truly repentant person who alone may benefit from the indulgence has already received the only benefit the indulgence provides.

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Truly repentant Christians have already, according to Luther, been forgiven of the penalty as well as the guilt of sin.

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In thesis 37, he states that indulgences are not necessary for Christians to receive all the benefits provided by Christ.

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So, let's read here thesis 37 which says, And every true

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Christian, whether living or dead, participates in all the blessings of Christ and the

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Church, and this is granted him by God, even without indulgence letters.

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Ouch. So, indulgences, therefore, are detrimental and even unnecessary is what he's getting at.

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Now, here we see in thesis 38, Nevertheless, papal remission and blessing are by no means to be disregarded, for they are, as I have said, the proclamation of the divine remission.

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So, here we see that Luther is showing, as he reflected later on in life, when he wrote the theses, he was still, in his words, a raging papist.

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So, it took more time for Luther to solidify his Protestant and Biblical convictions.

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Now, theses 39 and 40 argue that indulgences make true repentance, in fact, more difficult because true repentance desires

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God's punishment of sin, but indulgence teaches one to avoid punishment since that is the purpose of purchasing them in the first place.

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So, then in theses 41 through 47, Luther criticizes indulgences on the basis that they discourage works of mercy by those who purchase them.

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This is where he begins the phrase, Christians are to be taught. So, in several of the theses following, he says

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Christians should be taught this instead. So, they should be taught that giving to the poor is incomparably more important than buying indulgences, that buying indulgences rather than giving to the poor invites

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God's wrath, and that doing good works makes a person better while buying indulgences does not. So, here thesis 43 says,

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Christians are to be taught that he who gives to the poor or lends to the needy does a better deed than he who buys indulgences.

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And he is, what he is saying here was completely contrary and opposite to what the indulgence preachers sanctioned by the

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Pope were saying. Thesis 45 says, Christians are to be taught that he who sees a needy man and passes him by, yet gives his money for indulgences, does not buy, does not receive people indulgences, but instead receives

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God's wrath. Ouch. So, there you see again, 47, thesis 47,

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Christians are to be taught that their buying of indulgences is a matter of free choice, not compulsion or obligation.

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So, you see there, he's not completely throwing indulgences out, but he's trying to make sense of this biblically and rationally.

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And of course, when you do that, you will naturally move away from this altogether, because the

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Bible is very clear and says otherwise. So, thesis 48 -52 is where Luther takes the side of the

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Pope, saying that if the Pope knew what was being preached in his name, he would rather that St. Peter's Basilica or Cathedral be burned down than to be built up with the flesh, skin, and bones of his sheep.

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This is what it says in thesis 50. Christians are to be taught that if the Pope knew the exactions of the indulgence preachers, he would rather that the

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Basilica of Peter were burned to ashes than built up with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep.

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So, you notice that he's still trying to give the Pope the benefit of the doubt, and assuming that he is a wise and benevolent leader.

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This brings us now to the question of who the Pope was and what was he like. Pope Leo X, who was born

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Giovanni di Lorenzo de Medici, he was one of the Medici Popes, a family of merchants, and there was a significant amount of corruption in that family.

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He was by nature pleasure -loving, and that the anecdote reflects his casual attitude to the high and solemn office to which he had been called.

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On the other hand, in spite of his worldliness, Leo prayed, fasted, and went to confession before celebrating

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Mass in public, and conscientiously participated in the religious services of the Church. To the virtues of liberality, charity, and clemency, he did not have charity or clemency, when you see what he said about Luther.

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He added Machiavellian qualities of deception and shrewdness so highly esteemed by the princes of his time.

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So this guy was basically a bag of contradictions. He was no saint, and he wasn't even a priest.

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Most Popes, I think he was in fact the last Pope who wasn't a priest who became the

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Pope, because the Medicis essentially purchased their way into power and ascended into the

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Church. Structure. Now, this is the time in the

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Pope that he was dealing with. Thesis 52 says, It is vain to trust in salvation by indulgence letters even though the indulgence commissary or agent or even the

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Pope were to offer his soul as security. So, you see him continue to, the main subject of what he's talking about here is trying to offer boundaries, the proper boundaries for indulgences.

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And, here in Thesis 62 he says, this is very important.

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Now, in Thesis 53 -55 he complains about the restrictions on preaching while the indulgence was being offered.

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In 55 -56 he criticizes the doctrine of the Treasury of Merit on which the doctrine of indulgence is based.

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The Treasury of Merit was the belief that the people in the

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Catholic Church who were canonized as saints because they had a super -arrogated amount of works meaning that they had more works than were necessary for them to be justified before God was stored and deposited in a

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Treasury of Merit that the Magisterium of Rome or the Pope maintained.

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And that's why the Church supposedly had the authority to release these merits and apply them to other people in purgatory or to people alive through indulgences.

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So, Luther states that everyday Christians do not understand the doctrine and are being misled. For Luther the true treasure of the

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Church is the Gospel and this treasure tends to be hated because it is unnatural to men.

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Get this! Thesis 62 This is just a fascinating piece of history and it's important to be familiar with this.

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Thesis 62 The treasure of the Church is the most holy

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Gospel of the glory and grace of God. To that we can say a hearty Amen.

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Thesis 63 says But this treasure is naturally most odious or hateful for it makes the first to be last.

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So, even here you see, even as early as 1517 you already see

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Luther's internal convictions are being aligned and adjusted towards Scripture because the

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Bible says that which is of first importance is obviously the

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Gospel. It is the power of God unto salvation that Christ died for our sins that He was crucified and buried and rose again the third day for our sins.

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It is not the indulgences that save us but Christ's blood and righteousness as that precious hymn that we sang today says.

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So, as we approach the end of the thesis here, we see that Luther discusses the way indulgences are being preached and abused and how the preachers were abusing the people with them and he attacks the belief allegedly propagated by the preachers that the indulgence could forgive even those who had violated the

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Virgin Mary. So, Luther states that indulgences cannot take away the guilt of even the lightest of venial sins.

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And so, here we see Thesis 79, to say that the cross emblazoned with the papal coat of arms and set up by the indulgence preachers is equal in worth to the cross of Christ is blasphemy.

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So, blasphemy. Thesis 80, the bishops curates curates is another word for priest, it's a

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Latin word for curia. And theologians who permit such talk to be spread among the people will have to answer for this.

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So, Luther, this is where it gets very interesting now. Very interesting in Theses 81 through 91.

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He starts to list several criticisms advanced by the lay people at the time.

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So, he presents these as difficult objections that his congregants are bringing to him rather than his own criticisms.

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How should he answer to those who ask why the Pope does not simply empty purgatory if it's in his power?

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So, he continues a string of these concerns and Luther claimed that it seemed strange to some people that pious people in purgatory could be redeemed by living impious people.

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You see, he's using simple logic here. How could somebody in purgatory who was pious but still fell short of heaven be redeemed by somebody who was impious and sinful and wicked by simply buying an indulgence for them?

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It doesn't make any sense. So, this is where the rubber really meets the road.

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Even though we already saw the skid marks way before that. So, Theses 81

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This unbridled preaching of indulgences makes it difficult even for learned men to rescue the reverence, which is due the

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Pope, from slander or from the shrewd questions of the laity. So, Theses 82 now.

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He says, such as, why does not the Pope empty purgatory for the sake of holy love and the dire need of the souls that are there if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a church?

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The former reason would be most just. The latter is most trivial. Theses 86

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He says another concern that the people had. Again, why does not the

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Pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest crasses, build this one

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Basilica of Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers? Theses 91

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If, therefore, indulgences were preached according to the spirit and intention of the

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Pope, all these doubts would be readily resolved. Indeed, they would not exist.

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So, here we see he is giving the Pope the benefit of the doubt once again.

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But notice, this is something that men back then did sometimes such as a medieval writer,

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Geoffrey Chaucer. They would pretend, when they were writing something they would say, well,

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I had a dream and this is what my dream said and he's like calling out the king and all these other people for fear that they might face retribution.

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So Luther may have been doing the same thing here and saying, this is what the people are saying even though it is very likely that is likely what the people were in fact saying.

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There was a lot of disgruntledness regarding these indulgences. So Luther closes the 95 theses by exhorting

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Christians to imitate Christ even if it brings pain and suffering. Enduring punishment and entering heaven is preferable to false security.

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This essentially is what summarizes the brunt of Luther's theses.

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I encourage you to read them for yourself and to read and study more about the Reformation because it is a very important topic even to this day.

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Note what Luther says in these theses. This is something that people kind of miss,

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I think, because people will say Luther wrote these theses in order to debate them.

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It was a matter of academic debate. He wrote them up in Latin and he posted them at the door because he wanted to discuss them internally and dialogue and debate with them, those points.

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But I think something is being missed. I don't know if Luther was being disingenuous or if people who are explaining what happened are missing the point because these do not appear to be merely points of academic debate.

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They are scathing rebukes of indulgences and indulgence preachers and those who support and buy them.

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And they are indirect rebukes of the Pope himself but spoken through the voice of the people which was, again, like I said, perhaps to maintain plausible deniability.

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So this reveals something about Luther's personality. You see the theses, the boldness and the bullheadedness with which he presents them.

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They are scathing rebukes and condemnations. And this reveals that he was a very bold and very bullheaded, sometimes brash and also with a side of a nasty temper.

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Now, this could be a good thing when it came to taking a stand and opposing the errors of Rome.

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It made him a formidable leader. God will use flawed men.

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And that's another important lesson from Church History. God uses men who are sinful and men who are flawed and sometimes men who are seriously wrong about important issues.

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But he uses them to glorify his name and to advance his kingdom on earth.

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So sometimes he was bold and very fierce when it came to challenging

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Rome. But sometimes he would carry that over into the arena of like -minded believers and Protestants and it wouldn't always go so well.

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He was sometimes volatile and he would condemn fellow Protestants whenever they didn't fully agree with him, most famously in an event called the

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Marburg Colloquy. At this colloquy or meeting, after the

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Diet of Speyer had confirmed the Edict of Worms, Philip I felt the need to reconcile the diverging views of Luther and Ulrich Zwingli, another reformer, a

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Swiss reformer, in order to develop a unified Protestant theology. Besides Luther and Zwingli, the reformers

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Stephen Agricola, Johannes Brands, Martin Busser, Caspar Hedio, Justice Jonas, Philip Melanchthon Melanchthon was one of the

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Luther's close, he was Luther's right -hand man. Johannes Okalampadius, Andreas Osiander and Bernard Rothman participated in the meeting as well.

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So, the two prominent reformers were Luther and Zwingli. They found a consensus on 14 theological points.

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They agreed on 14 out of 15 points. But they could not agree on one point.

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And that point pertained to the body of Christ or the Lord's Supper.

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They failed to find agreement resulting in strong emotions on both sides. And Luther ended up condemning

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Zwingli because he didn't agree that with his view, which is called the sacramental union view it's the belief that Christ is in with and under the bread when we offer it.

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It's called sacramental union. It is not to be confused with consubstantiation. We want to be mindful of not misrepresenting

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Lutherans which is important to study church history because consubstantiation was a medieval view that Luther himself rejected.

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That's the belief that Christ was locally present with the bread but that's not what they would only affirm.

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It's within, with and under the bread. This stemmed from Luther's Christology which is called the

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I'm drawing a blank with the Latin but it's the belief that Christ's human nature would sometimes bleed over into His divine nature.

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And so because God, because Christ in His God divine nature was ubiquitous or present everywhere, therefore

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Christ in His human nature because Christ is one person was also ubiquitous everywhere and that's why they would say that's why

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Christ was present in, with and under the bread because of that Christology.

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So theology matters and theology is important and these differences may seem subtle at first but they have drastic consequences with how you view even the

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Lord's Supper. Now the sadly

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Luther, they could not come to agreement on that last point and this fractured in a sense the

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Reformation. It created a distinct Lutheran movement with other movements such as the

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Reform movements of John Knox who was the founder essentially of Presbyterianism and Zwingli as well.

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So we have, and also the Dutch Reform who hold to the three forms of unity in the

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Belgian Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism which I read earlier in the Belgian Confession and the

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Canons of Dort excuse me. So here now I wanted to make a few clarifications, a few more clarifications about some misconceptions that we often find.

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This will help us I think to understand properly the impact and the benefit and where we disagree with Luther and with what happened in the

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Reformation. So Luther's theology sometimes evolved for better and sometimes it devolved for worse and we have to be conscious of this because it can be confusing because he wrote a lot of material and he changed his views throughout as he got older.

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One of those things he wrote was an excellent treatise called The Bondage of the Will which

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B .B. Warfield the Princeton theologian dubbed as the Manifesto of the Reformation. If you have not read this book

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I highly recommend that you put it on your reading list at the top of your reading list. It is an excellent masterful treatment of the issue of human will and divine sovereignty.

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But Luther's view of hermeneutics and of free will degraded with time and so he ended up essentially recanting or disagreeing with this earlier work that he wrote against Erasmus.

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This is when he got into a fight a theological battle with Erasmus about free will. In fact the bondage of the will is actually more reflective of reformed theology which is a theology that we hold to because it emphasizes the sovereignty of God and the inability of man to do any good whatever.

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So read it and we have to keep in mind it's also important when you read somebody to realize that they are humans and humans change sometimes.

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Many of Luther's theology or convictions did become more solidified but sometimes that wasn't always the case.

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Sometimes he kind of diverted from the Bible such as in this situation and in the situation of the

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Lord's Supper as well. So as we wrap up here today our precious

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Heavenly Father we thank you Lord for this beautiful day and this opportunity to gather as your saints

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Lord. We ask that you would bless the teaching and the preaching of your word that you would help us to apply, understand

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Lord, grasp and apply these doctrines as of first importance in our lives

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Lord to apply them and to have true eternal security and assurance in the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ and on his finished work on that cross where he declared it was once for all finished and by which we can take hold of solely on account of faith alone and the means of faith alone.

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Lord we thank you for your blessings. We ask that you would help us to continue to grow in the knowledge and grace of our

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Lord and Savior and to treasure and to recognize the importance of church history in our lives

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Father God and in the life of the church most importantly. We thank you Father and we ask these things in Jesus mighty name.

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Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorn Crown Covenant Baptist Church where the

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Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety is applied to all of faith and life. We strive to be biblical, reformed, historic confessional, loving, discerning

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Christians who evangelize, stand firm in and earnestly contend for the Christian faith.

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If you're looking for a church in the El Paso Texas area or for more information about our church sermons and ministries such as Semper Reformanda Radio and Thorn Crown Network Podcast please contact us at thorncrownministries .com