What is the Reformation and Why Does it Matter?

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up your normal Sunday school class to be in here with us. And what we're talking about is the

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Reformation and why it matters. And so maybe when we talk about the

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Protestant Reformation, maybe you don't have any background in that, or maybe all you remember is back when you took world history, maybe even in high school, and talked about this little aspect of it.

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So what we want to look at today is the Reformation and why it matters. This is what our conference is about this week.

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And so the first thing, we'll kind of go through this and we'll have maybe a couple questions, or if there's questions that you have, we can go through that.

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But first thing that you need to know is, epics of history don't always have hard and fast dates.

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So in our mind, we want a timeline and we want beginning here and ending here.

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But that's really just not how history works. And we also want to remember about history, it's his story, isn't it?

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It's God's story. And so the date that we want to keep in mind is

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October 31st, 1517. October 31st, 1517. What happened on that date, anybody know?

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October 31st, 1517. That's right,

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Luther nailed it, didn't he? Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door of the church,

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Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, spelt like Wittenberg, but pronounced Wittenberg.

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And, or maybe actually as the way history goes, perhaps it was a janitor of the institution.

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That wasn't, okay, so if I go to a church and nail something on the door today, that's a little bit, that's strange, isn't it?

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But that was to spark a debate. Luther wanted to debate. He wasn't trying to start a revolution.

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He wasn't, he sure wasn't trying to start a Baptist church. And little could he have known the impact that his actions would have had on the entire

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Western world. So quite literally, it became the mallet herd round the world.

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October 31st, 1517. So maybe we have about 45 minutes or so, we'll see.

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But excuse the pun, 45 minutes or so to hammer this out. And the goal today is to just give an overview of the

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Protestant Reformation. And why does it matter to us? 500 years later, why are we talking about it? Why are we having a conference about it?

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Why are five men coming from around the state of Arkansas and Louisiana to share with us these truths?

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So the first thing I want to ask is this big, just big point one.

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What is the Protestant Reformation? What is it? The dates are 1517 to 1648.

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And first of all, we need to understand that in history, this isn't just a spiritual event.

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It's also has political and cultural ramifications. It's probably not too much of a stretch to say that the reason we're a country can be traced back to the

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Protestant Reformation, just the things that happened because of it. And nor do we need to look back and think that everyone that is a reformer during this time, that we would say that they are absolutely 100 % right about everything, they weren't.

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And as the old adage goes, the best of men are men at best, aren't they?

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And so these were men, sinful men who had mistakes. But as a whole,

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I consider the Protestant Reformation as one of the greatest revivals in the history of the church outside of the

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Bible. So what is the Protestant Reformation? Let's think about those two words and I'll throw this question to you.

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Protestant, what word do you hear there in the word Protestant? What word? Yeah, you hear the word protest, don't you?

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Protestant there in the word Protestant. So they were protesting the corrupt practices of the

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Roman Catholic Church. And then you have the word Reformation. So Protestant Reformation, what does that mean? What is a

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Reformation? What word do you hear there? Reform, okay?

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So what do you think when you hear the word reform? Change. And so the reformers sought to reform the church that had fallen on hard times.

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And this is extremely important for us to remember. They weren't trying to start something new at all. The Protestant Reformation is not about something new.

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It's not about inventing a new way to do things or even a new brand of Christianity.

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Really, the Reformation is about a recovery. First and foremost, a recovery of the gospel that had been muddied.

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So I just wanna read to you from Romans 1. Turn to Romans 1 real quick. And we'll look at it later too so you can kind of put your finger there.

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But the Reformation is about a recovery of the gospel that had been muddied.

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Romans 1 says, verse 16, Romans 1, 16.

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Paul says, Listen, our only hope in life and in death is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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And during the Reformation, this had been not lost, but it certainly had been muddied. So that leads us to our second big question.

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So what is a Protestant Reformation? It's this protest of the corrupt practices of the Roman Catholic Church, the desire to reform the church according to scripture.

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So how did we get up to this point? How did we get to 1517? And we're gonna do a little bit of backtracking, actually about 1500 years.

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Some of you, this might be boring. Others, you'll find it interesting, but it's helpful to fill in the pieces in our mind.

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So the official date that the Roman Empire falls is 476 AD. So 1500, back up a thousand years to 476

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AD. And when the empire falls, there is a power vacuum left, right?

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Because you don't longer have an emperor. So who's gonna step in and fill that void? Well, it turns out it's the

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Pope of the city of Rome. And I'm not trying to oversimplify things here, but essentially this is what sets the stage for the abuse of power with a position in the church that was never designed by God to be that way in the first place.

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How many times is the word Pope in the Bible? Zero. There is no Pope in the

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Bible. And so this had become a surefire way to set up a corruption in the church where with power comes responsibility.

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And that was not designed to do that. Hey, how are the Emersons this morning?

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Good morning, good morning. So understand that this is an overview and I'm gonna be giving you large chunks of history here.

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But about a thousand years, you have what's known as the Middle Ages or even the

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Dark Ages. And it's during this time that the church begins to take on some practices that are not only unbiblical, but they're also harmful.

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And so just keep in mind, it's a big overview and I'm not trying to oversimplify it here, but during this time, the church came to believe in seven sacraments, seven.

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They are baptism, confirmation, the

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Eucharist, which is what we would call the Lord's Supper, penance, gotta do penance, extreme unction, which is the last rites.

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Number six is the Sacrament of Marriage. And number seven is the Sacrament of Holy Orders, like the bishops, priests, deacons, when they become that.

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So during this thousand years, this Dark Ages, Middle Ages time, the church comes to hold fast to these sacraments.

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In the 1200s, a man by the name of Thomas Aquinas said that really captures the belief that these sacraments are necessary for salvation.

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You have to, if you don't do these, you will not be saved. These things are necessary.

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Furthermore, in the Eucharist, which again, we call the Lord's Supper, but in the Eucharist, the prevailing thought and still today thought is the thought of transubstantiation.

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That's a fun, use that at lunch if you want today. But here's the idea of transubstantiation, that when the priest says the prayer over the bread and the wine, that those things literally become the literal body and literal blood of Jesus.

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And so these things are, obviously we would say problematic, but the underlying issue is you need grace and works.

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So if you say, for example, well, the Roman Catholic Church doesn't believe in grace, we believe in grace, that would be erroneous.

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They do believe in grace and they do believe in faith. The difference is we believe in grace and faith alone.

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They believe grace plus works. So you have all, again, big picture here, but in the 1300s, you have the office of Pope continuing to grow in power and in corruption.

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For a while, the office of Pope was in France, but in 1378, it is moved back to Rome.

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And then the Pope Gregory XI dies. And the reason I bring that up is because at this point, things get really interesting.

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So from 1378 to 1417, there's a period of turmoil where they can't decide who the

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Pope is. And so you have several different Popes and what they're doing is they begin to excommunicate one another.

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That's a good way to get the other Pope, hey, that Pope, we're getting him, he's not even a

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Christian, right? So they start excommunicating one another, a period of turmoil, things are a mess all over the board.

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And in all this, many of the common people are left not even understanding what Christianity is.

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It's just something that they know they're supposed to go to, are supposed to go to church, but the whole sermon, imagine if I gave you a whole sermon in Latin, how beneficial would that be to you?

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It would not be beneficial to you. I mean, maybe to Bob, who speaks a little Latin, but other than that, it would not be beneficial to you.

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Why, yes, that's not the language you speak. Even, it doesn't matter, any language, right? Other than English, well,

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Perry County English, you would have a hard time, we'd have a hard time understanding because that's not the language that we speak.

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So imagine going to church and the whole service is in a language that you can't even understand.

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Have you heard of the phrase hocus pocus before? Hocus pocus actually comes from this time period.

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That is because, and I can't say it in Latin, but whatever the priest would say in Latin over the

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Lord's Supper, it sounded kind of like hocus pocus. And so the phrase around would be, that's hocus pocus, right?

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So you can imagine the confusion there of what all is actually going on.

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Furthermore, now there are some good guys, but many of the leaders of Christianity are morally bankrupt.

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So the priest can't have wives, but they're having mistresses and they're having children, illegitimate children, and power is corrupting and financial, you know, financial greed.

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It truly is a dark time in Christian history. This is what important though that we wanna remember, and I'm gonna give you a few names here.

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During the, well, let's pause for a second. Any questions, thoughts, anything like, that's a big kind of big overview.

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We're getting into the meat here in just a minute, but anything that you wanna say, could you make this clear?

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Yeah, yeah, there are people who are true Christians in the Roman Catholic Church. However, if they are

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Roman Catholics, they will hold to that we're anathema, because the

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Council of Trent in the 1500s says anybody that holds to justification by faith alone is anathema, and the

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Roman Catholic Church has to, I mean, they hold to all the councils still.

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So that is certain, that's problematic. However, I do wanna affirm, because I think some people, I think some people take this too far.

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I do think there are Christians in the Roman Catholic Church, 100%, I do believe that. But it's not because of what they believe, it's in spite of it.

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And I would hope that there would be a great revival there, but so far, we haven't seen it as a whole.

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But I do appreciate you bringing that up, because we do wanna hold that. Now, during the

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Middle Ages, God had not left himself without a witness. I'll give you a few names. There are people like Peter Waldo, that's fun, where's

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Waldo? Waldensians, they come to be known as in the 1100s. He's in France, he's preaching holiness, he's saying that grace doesn't come through the sacraments.

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Then maybe a couple other more well -known people, John Wycliffe, I don't know if you've heard of that, have you heard of the

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Wycliffe Bible translators? John Wycliffe, his dates are 1330 to 1384.

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Here's a few things he says. He says, the church's papal decrees and traditions should be tested against the norm of scripture.

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Then he also says this, and this is, we take this for granted. You say, that doesn't sound very revolutionary.

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But when he says it is, he says that all Christians should be able to read scriptures for themselves.

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He goes, well, yeah, duh. But that was not the prevailing thought. The Bible was in Latin, and that's what you do, right?

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I don't wanna stir any controversy here, but I would say this. Here's one reason, one reason

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I'm not a King James only -ist person. I think the King James is a good translation. I love it, it's poetic, the way it flows.

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And I have several copies of King James, and I read King James, I used to preach King James. However, I would say one of the reasons

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I'm not a King James only -ist is I think the Bible needs to be in the language of the people. And nobody that you know speaks 1611

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English. I mean, they just don't. And so we wanna be faithful in translating.

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But anyway, so he says that they should have the Bible to be able to read themselves. He says that many of the problems in the church could be traced back to overwhelming wealth of the priests in the church.

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The church here has a lot of money during this time. He advocated actually not attending churches where the priests are corrupt.

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If the priests are corrupt, don't go. He said, you go somewhere else. Said church should abolish the papal office.

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He dies of a stroke on December 31st, 1584. But here's what's interesting. Later on, the

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Roman Catholic Church says he's a heretic. So they dig him up and they burn him. Serious about that.

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The next, Jan Hus, which we'd probably call him John, it's J -A -N, Jan Hus, 1372 to 1415.

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He's in Bohemia. He admires Wycliffe. He stressed the importance of preaching. He attacked the abuses of clergy.

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He opposed the veneration of the Pope. He said only Christ can forgive sins and Jesus is the head of the church.

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And he stressed, and I'm gonna ask you this question. He stressed the universal priesthood of all believers.

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What does that mean? We believe that. Baptists, Southern Baptists believe that. We believe in the universal priesthood of all believers.

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But what does that mean? What does the universal priesthood of all believers mean?

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Yeah, yeah, that's right. And I 100 % agree with what

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Jim said, but the only, maybe, Jesus juke I'd give here is there is one priest. Who is it?

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It's Christ, right? The great high priest. I mean, Jim is exactly right. I knew what he was saying. Jim is saying there's not an earthly priest that you go to to get access to God.

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You don't need access to God through Mary. You don't need access to God through me.

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You get access to God through who? Christ. And so stressing the universal priesthood of all believers.

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He ends up being tricked into coming to a church council. At this church council, they said that he was gonna debate.

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They were gonna have a debate. But instead, he comes and they say, you're a heretic. And he's burned at the stake in 1415.

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It's something kind of interesting. Jan Hus means goose.

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And so before he's burned at the stake, he says, you can cook this goose, but a century later, there'll be a swan that comes that you won't be able to extinguish.

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And it's pretty interesting because if you go 1415, Hus dies, what's 100 years later?

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1515, and that puts you right near who? Luther, and that doesn't, that's pretty interesting.

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So here's the reason, and there's so much more I could share but it's kind of like the comment we made earlier.

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And so when Mary made that comment, this is the reason I share this because there were many

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Christians during the middle ages. But what we're saying is Christianity as a whole had become something apart from what the

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New Testament says that it is. And it's not my goal. It's not my goal to run down Roman Catholics, but yet you expect to hear in the

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Southern Baptist Church for me to say they are wrong, right? They are wrong and is my great hope that they will come out of that.

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And some of you I know have family members in the Roman Catholic Church. And so it's not my goal in the least bit to run them down or to hurt anybody's feelings, but I would say they are wrong and is my hope that they would come out of that.

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And I would expect that they would say the same thing. I would expect that they would say you're wrong and I hope you come out of that.

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I mean, we can't both be right. I know we live in an age of kind of pluralism that says, well, everybody's right.

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But that just can't, I mean, that's impossible. So hundreds of years of tradition, corruption and poor theology had seemingly left the

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Christian church on life support, but God was about to change all of that. So here's, this is gonna get us to the

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Reformation. Steph, you got your phone? Somebody, there, let me borrow it.

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Keep us on track here so I can get through all of this. Okay, so Pope Leo X, that's probably a name you wanna remember.

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Leo X becomes Pope in 1513.

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This is during the Renaissance. Do you remember from history, the Renaissance? The Renaissance is essentially a, it means rebirth, but it's essentially a revival in the arts, in literature, art, culture, rediscovering the classics.

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So this is coming out of the Dark Ages and the people are rediscovering these things. The phrase of the time is ad fontes, which means to the fountain, to the sources.

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So people wanna get to the sources of literature and classical art, culture, et cetera.

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So Leo X, during this time, he wants to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica. That's the papal enclave in the city of Rome, the big church there.

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And you have to understand that during this time, popes and priests and cardinals are living very extravagant lifestyles for the most part.

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Wild parties, multiple mistresses, lots of money spent. And Leo, Pope Leo X is no different.

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And so how do you rebuild St. Peter's Basilica? You wanna build this beautiful, and let's, hey, let's be careful because sometimes we can get kinda in this in churches, can't we?

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We wanna just build something so beautiful as maybe a testament to us instead of the glory of God.

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Now, I'm not against beauty. I think beauty is good. But we wanna be careful about that. So Leo, he wants to build

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St. Peter's Basilica as a, really as a rebuild, as a testimony to himself. And so how do you get money when you don't have money?

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Well, here's one way. You could sell indulgences. What are indulgences?

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We should discuss that just real quick. What's an indulgence? That's right.

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Helps take away your sin. Essentially, I'll give you a real quick narrowed down version, but essentially, the thought is that the people who have gone before us, the saints, have created this treasury of merit.

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So let's take Paul, for example. Paul was so good, since he's a saint, he was so good that he had a little goodness left over.

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And that goodness goes into a bank, so to speak. And now, we can draw out of that.

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And we can get some of his goodness. So over the last, well, in that time would be 1 ,500 years, all these saints, they've just stockpiled this merit of goodness.

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And so now, what the Pope can do is he can issue an indulgence. Indulgence, and it's not as bad, but the

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Roman Catholic Church still does indulgences today. But during this time, you could buy an indulgence.

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So if you give money to help rebuild St. Peter's Basilica, you buy off a little time in purgatory for yourself.

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Or let's say you've lost a child. Let's say you lost a child, and I, an official of the church, come to you, and I say, you know, your child's in purgatory, suffering.

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All you gotta do to get them out is give a little money to the church, and you're gonna sit there and go buy you a loaf of bread, and you're not gonna get your child out of purgatory?

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That's despicable. What do you think people were doing? Oh, you're telling me if I just give this little money, my child is gonna be set free from purgatory and then go into heaven?

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Or you're telling me that my parents who passed away, who did so good raising me up, that if I just give a little bit money, now they'll get out of purgatory too?

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Well, what do you think's happening? People, yeah, Pope Leo was raising money, okay?

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This is gone. All you gotta do, and it can be, I'm not trying to oversimplify it, but let's say

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Friday is a big party. You're like, man, if I go to that, I probably will sin. You know what?

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Let me just buy some indulgences. Let me cover that, you know? So let me buy these, then I'll go and sin. No big deal.

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Are we, there's little, there's problems here, aren't there? So Johann Tetzel, we would just say

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John, but Johann Tetzel, as a servant of the Pope, he's fleecing the flock in Germany, and here's a famous saying.

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He says, as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.

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So you throw your money in the coffer, soul from purgatory springs.

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Luther is livid. These are people that he's around, and centuries of corruption have sort of set the stage for change, and so Luther writes out 95 theses on things that need to change in the

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Roman Catholic Church, and what he wants to do, he's not trying to start a new church. He wants to debate these practices and fix them, but God has bigger plans.

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Isn't it amazing? You guys know this in your life, but isn't it amazing how God is doing, as Piper says, not

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R. Piper, John Piper says, God is doing 10 ,000 things at once in your life, and you may be notice one of them, right?

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In 1440, there's a man by the name of Gutenberg. Why does that name stick out?

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Anybody know? Printing press. 1440, this man, coincidentally, invents the printing press.

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1517, Luther nails his 95 theses, and some of his friends, aren't you grateful for friends, take it, because it was written in Latin, and they translate it to German, the language of the people, and they use the printing press, and they send it all across Germany.

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Guess what? Now people who can read, so a small amount of people can read

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Latin. A small amount of people can read anyway, but even fewer can read Latin, but now a much broader audience can read the common vernacular, and so this gets sent all across Germany, and Luther's posts went viral.

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I was hoping some of you would get that. The protest had begun. It's like everybody in the room is thinking something.

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I was gonna use the illustration of the emperor's new clothes, if you remember that story, and it's like everybody's thinking that guy's naked, but nobody wants to say it, right, and then there's the little kid that's like, yeah, he doesn't have any clothes on.

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Everybody's like, okay, all right, well, I'm not the only one, so everybody in the room's kind of thinking the same thing, like this doesn't, something is not jiving, but this is just all

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I've known. This is all my grandparents have known. This is all my family has known. For hundreds of years, it seems like, something doesn't seem right, but I guess we just gotta keep going, and Luther says, ah, let's talk about it, and that's similar to what happened, and so you have

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Luther who gets the ball rolling, and then you have men in other parts of Europe like John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli.

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They're reading Luther's work, but they're also contributing their own, and boom, you have the

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Reformation, and this is why the spirit of the Renaissance was important is because here's what the

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Reformers were doing. They were going ad fontes. They were going to the sources. Instead of reading the

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Bible in Latin, they were going to the original languages. They were Erasmus that translated the

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New Testament, or had produced a Greek New Testament from some of the early manuscripts, and so they're going to the

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Greek, and they're going to the Hebrew, and they're saying, this is what the Bible is really saying.

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They want to recover the truth, which, of course, didn't lead to a reforming of the Roman Catholic Church.

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Instead, although there were some things, like the Roman Catholic Church did, they cut down hard on immorality, so that was maybe a benefit, but as a whole, the

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Roman Catholic Church refused to heed the Reformers, and they doubled down, they maintained their error, and they refused to repent, even many today.

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Third question is what was the Reformation really about, but before we do that, up to this point, do we have questions, comments, thoughts, anything

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I help? We kind of talked about what is the Reformation, then we talked about how did we get there, and now we're going to talk about, really, what was it about, yeah, yeah, that's right, and let this serve as a warning to us, right?

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Let it serve as a warning not to let tradition trump scripture, we'll just talk about that more in just a minute, okay, anybody else?

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Absolutely, well, yeah, your herald's right, yeah.

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It's an amazing act of providence that Luther is not killed, because all these other pre -Reformers are killed.

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Jan Hus is burned at the stake, right? And so Luther, one of the ways he's not killed is in 15, so 1517 is the 95

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Theses, in 1521, the diet of, it looks like the diet of worms, but it's actually verms, and there, in April of that year, of 1521,

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Luther goes to stand trial, essentially, and they ask him to recant, and he says,

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I need to think about it, and he comes the next day, and that's when he gives his famous, you know, here I stand, my conscience is held captive by the word of God, here

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I stand, I can do no other. Luther leaves that place, I mean, thinking he's gonna die, right?

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I mean, and on his way home, he's kidnapped, and he's like, here it is, I'm gonna die.

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Well, actually, what happens is, one of the good guys kidnap him and hide him, and it's during that hiding that he's able to do, translate the

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Bible, or at least the New Testament, I think, into German, he's able to do a lot of things because he's in danger.

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And so Henry VIII is a little bit later, although here's what Henry VIII does, because of this spirit of reformation, because people are saying, we don't gotta listen to the

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Pope anymore. Henry VIII, because of not good reasons, says, you know, I don't gotta listen to the

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Pope either. I wanna divorce, I'm gonna get one. Now I'm the head of the church, not the Pope. And so that's how you really start the

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Church of England. And anyway, so that's very good. This is tumultuous times.

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You don't just get to say, I'm gonna reject some of these things and think that you're gonna keep your head, because a lot of people are dying.

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All right, so what is the Reformation really about then? A good Southern Baptist, I've alliterated three points for you, okay?

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First, I know Adam's gonna appreciate that. Well, before we get to those points, the Latin phrase, post tenebrus lux.

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I have a picture in my office, I look at every now and then, I'm just encouraged by it, just reminding what some of these men did, but it means after darkness, light.

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So after a time where the church was caught in sin, many had abandoned the gospel, God brought revival and hope.

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Essentially, if you got nothing else out of today, just know this, the Reformation is essentially about the recovery of the gospel.

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Not a new gospel, the recovery. But let me give you three alliterated points. First, what is the

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Reformation about? First, authority, authority. Who has ultimate authority in the life and practice of the church?

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The Roman Catholic Church says, it's the Pope. They still say this, it's the

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Pope, it's church councils, it's tradition, and what?

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The Bible, and the Bible. It's the Bible and the

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Pope, church councils, tradition. All these things have equal footing. But the Reformer said, that's not right.

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Those things don't have equal footing. It's not the Pope. Pope is a man -made tradition. It's not church councils.

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Because church councils have been wrong before. And it's not tradition, because it too can be corruptive.

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So what is the ultimate authority in the church? Anybody wanna guess? Scripture, scripture alone.

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I'll just read to you from 2 Timothy, and then by the way, this is Adam's sermon this morning, so we won't step on his toes too much, but I do wanna read from 2

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Timothy 3 .16. Says, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

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Now, let's be careful. This doesn't mean that tradition and church councils aren't beneficial.

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I like tradition. Hey, we're fixing to put up our Christmas tree. I like that tradition, right?

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There's traditions in the church that are good, that are beneficial. However, it does mean that scripture alone has the final say.

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What's the Baptist motto sometimes? The Baptist motto sometimes is, we've never done it, what?

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That way before, right? So tradition can be important, it can be helpful, but it does not trump scripture.

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Scripture alone has the final say. In fact, it's the word of God that sparked a reformation.

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Luther said it this way. All I have done is put forth, preach, and write the word of God.

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And apart from this, I've done nothing. He's just saying, it's just a word. It's not me, it's the word has done the work.

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And by the way, you go home and you Google and read some things about Luther and Calvin and Zwingli, you'll very quickly find they had flaws, right?

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And so I said that, they'd had flaws and they weren't right about everything. And we'll talk about that more in just a minute. But it's

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God using these men because they were using the word. They recovered the truth that scripture alone is completely authoritative and wholly sufficient.

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W -H -O -L -L -Y, wholly sufficient. We don't need a Pope to tell us what God wants because we have the

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Bible. And then we have a whole litany of problems like purgatory, church hierarchy, praying to the saints.

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They all, none of those things have their origin in scripture. They're outside the

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Bible. They're unbiblical. They should be rejected. The Reformation was about authority. Who has the right to bind the

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Christian conscience of what is right and wrong? Where is our only sure hope of understanding the

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Christian gospel and what God has done for us in Christ and what he requires of us? It is scripture alone.

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And here's something again, not novel for us, but it was novel then. They adamantly believed and advocated very strongly that every believer should read the

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Bible in his own language. They did something revolutionary.

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You walked in, imagine the elderly couple and she says, honey, we should go to church today.

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And he's just like, I don't understand all that anyway. Okay, fine. She wins.

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They go to church. They sit down. Again, hearing the pastor. And all of a sudden he realizes he's speaking

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English or German or French. That's what the

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Bible says. I thought that, you mean, if I repent of my sins and believe in Christ, I can be saved.

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You see how this is just revolutionary. People's eyes, God is opening people's eyes and shame on us sometimes when we neglect to read the

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Bible because this is not a big part of history.

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What I'm saying is, so you take into consideration literacy rates and then you take into consideration the dark ages.

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You take into consideration the Bible being preached in Latin. And then you take into consideration that we have the 66 books of the

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Bible leather bound in English that we can understand. That's a small percentage of church history. And God has blessed us with living in a time period that we can open up the

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Bible in our own language and we can read it. That's amazing, isn't it? And today, not that I'm aware of,

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Adam will be preaching in a language that you can understand. You can hear that, right? Is that right? Yeah, okay.

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And you can hear that and you can respond because you can understand. So as they put the word of God in the hands of the people, what happened?

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Reformation and revival. Praise God for His inerrant, infallible, sufficient, effectual, authoritative word.

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We gotta keep moving. 10, 16. Two. So first, authority. Two, what's the

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Reformation about? Assurance. How can I really be sure I'm a Christian? Must I keep doing all these sacraments or do

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I just hope that I'm good enough in the end? How can I know? This is a recovery of the one true gospel.

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In the Latin translation, Matthew 3 .2 says, do penance. It says that Jesus says, do penance.

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But if you understand it rightly and you understand the Greek rightly, He doesn't say, do penance.

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He says, repent. Okay? It's a huge, important understanding. So Luther understands his own sinfulness.

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He understood that on his best days, that even his best works were tainted with impure motives.

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He realized that he could never do enough to merit God's salvation. How then could he ever be sure that he was a

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Christian? One time, early in Luther's life, they said, Luther, do you love God? And he said, love

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God? Sometimes I hate God. How could God be so cruel to us?

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He knows that we can never meet these righteous demands of the law, but then He requires them. How could

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He ever require? And then God graciously opened His eyes to Romans 1, 16 and 17, which we read earlier.

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For I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God and His salvation for everyone who believes, the

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Jew first and also the Greek, to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

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And God put a light bulb in Luther's heart. And He understood that the righteous requirement of the law is not met by us, for it never could be.

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It is met by Christ. And the way that that is applied to us, which has been the message of Christianity for 2 ,000 years, is how?

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By faith. Even in the Old Testament, Abraham believed, and God counted it to him as righteousness.

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That's Genesis 15, 6. So, Luther's eyes are opened. The answer to Luther's dilemma and ours is the same, faith alone, not faith plus works, faith alone.

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Justification, which is right standing with God, is by grace alone through faith alone in the finished work of Christ alone.

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It's not God plus us. It's God's work in us.

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We cannot trust in our efforts or in the sacraments or in anything other than the finished work of Christ if we hope to receive

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God's free gift of salvation. Jesus bore the wrath of God on our behalf, and the way we receive all the gospel benefits is by grace through faith.

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If we had time, I'd read to you Romans 3, 21 through 26. If you wanna jot that down, you can read that yourself.

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Romans 3, 21 through 26. But this comforts me at night, and it should comfort you, that at the end of the day,

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I rest securely in Christ and not because of my works, but because of His. Well, what about good works, right?

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Well, what about good works? It's a question of the ages. Good works flow out of saving faith.

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John Calvin said it this way, it is faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone.

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In other words, true faith results in good works. Good works are a fruit of justification, which is received by grace alone through faith alone.

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However, even these good works aren't what bring us to God. It's grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, and that is all to the glory of God alone.

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And this gives us the five solas that we'll be looking at this week. Sola is the Latin word for alone.

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And so no one wrote these down. Don't think of history that way. No one woke up, Luther didn't wake up and say, okay, what is the

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Reformation gonna be about? I need to alliterate it somehow. Okay, we'll use, no, no, no, that's not how it worked.

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But as we go back and as we look at what the Reformation was about, we see that these things cover, capture the heart of the

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Reformation. Here's the five solas. Sola Scriptura, which is scripture alone.

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Sola Fide, which is faith alone. Sola Gratia, which is grace alone. Sola Christus, which is

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Christ alone. And fifthly, Solae Deo Gloria, the glory of God alone. This is what we're gonna be looking at this week in our

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Bible conference. These truths, I want you to think of them this way. They are like glasses.

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These truths aren't the end in and of themselves. They're like glasses. Right now, all I see is a beautiful fuzzy blob, okay?

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Don't take offense that you're a blob. You're a beautiful fuzzy blob. That's really all I can see. But when

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I take these glasses, these are the five solas of the Reformation. I put them on and I say, it's a good looking crowd.

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But the solas are the glasses to see, to not make

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Christ beautiful, He is beautiful. It's to see Christ in His supreme beauty. The Reformation is a giant arrow pointing to Jesus.

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If we get so wrapped up, and some people do, just to warn you, we get so wrapped up in the Reformation that we lose

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Christ, the Reformers would kick us in the head. You're missing the point, okay?

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It's not about to argue, who's my hero, right? I got the T -shirt, you know? Luther's my hero, or Calvin, or Zwingli, or whatever.

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They would be frustrated about that, because it's not about them. It's about Christ.

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Lastly, so what's the Reformation about? It's about authority. It's about assurance. And lastly, and a little bit of stretch, but it makes the alliteration work, assembly, about the church.

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The Reformers got rid of the sacraments that weren't in the Bible, narrowed them down to two, which are what?

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That are in the Bible. Baptism and the Lord's Supper. And they begin to see that the sacraments didn't save us, but instead are symbols that point to what

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God has done for us in Christ. And that's why we don't call them sacraments, do we? What do we call them? Ordinances.

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These are the ordinance of the church. And here's where Baptists come in. And I'm okay with saying this.

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As much as I appreciate Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, they didn't go quite far enough.

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And frankly, maybe if I was alive during that day, they might've drowned me, right? So how's that for your heroes?

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But I love them. We should read them. And they were a gift of the church. But they didn't go far enough.

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They never separated from the unbiblical practice of infant baptism. It was too ingrained in their tradition.

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But as they preached and taught the priesthood of the believer and put the Bible in everybody's hands, guess what happened?

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People began to say, now where's this infant baptism in the Bible? I can't find that anywhere.

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Yeah, well, there's a reason for that, right? The Bible is being read. The Reformation spread to England.

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You have there, you have men that realize, hey, we're gonna take the Bible seriously. We've got a few things left to do. And we've got to see the church not as part of the state, but as its own autonomous entity.

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And these became separatists, which are Baptist forefathers. We've got to see that members of the church aren't members of the state, but rather those who've been born again by the power of God and the gospel.

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And it's for those who have been born again that the ordinance of baptism should be applied. And it's those men who came over from Europe, and we can trace a direct line from the

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SBC, which began, what year? Pop quiz, what year did the SBC begin?

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Southern Baptist Convention, what year was that? Did I hear 1845? That's right, 1845, good.

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So this is really two things, and then we're done. This is really why I say the Reformation still matters today. One, the recovery of the biblical gospel and how a man is reconciled to God.

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Two, because of the principle of semper reformanda. Semper reformanda means always reforming according to Scripture.

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Psalm 113 says, if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? Beloved, our foundation is what?

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It's the Bible. So as we go through this week hearing these messages, I want us to be grateful for this book.

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I want us to cling to its promises. Let me have a word of prayer. Father, thank you for this time that we've got to talk about the

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Reformation. And Lord, we just pray that you would move during this week as we've kind of given an overview that you'd help us to understand the truths that we're gonna hear from these men this week.

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Not because some man said it, but because they're rooted in your eternal word.