Luther And The Reformation

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If y'all remember our last one, we had a passionate.
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Thank you for that very nice welcome.
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How many of you know what October 31st is? Halloween.
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OK.
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Halloween.
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October 31st, every year, is Halloween.
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Does anyone else know what else October 31st is, other than Halloween? It's Day of the King.
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It's Day of the King.
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OK.
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What else? Dress up like a king.
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Yes, young lady.
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Satan's birthday.
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It's who? Satan's birthday.
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It's not Satan's birthday.
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Harvest.
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That's a good guess, but it's not Satan's birthday.
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Harvest Day.
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What's it? Hallow's Eve.
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Oh, Hallow's Eve.
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That's right.
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That's where the term Halloween comes from.
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Is it All Saints Day? It is.
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Actually, November 1st is All Saints Day.
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That's why it's All Saints Eve.
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Hallow's Eve is the day before.
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The reason why I'm asking about October 31st is October 31st is a very important day in church history.
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And what I want to give you today is I want to kind of mix my lesson, my sermon, with a history lesson.
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Now, I know a lot of times you hear history.
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It's like, and I don't embarrass any of the history teachers, a lot of times we don't want to hear about history because we think it's somewhat boring.
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Especially when we think about people who lived before iPods and iPhones and things like that.
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We think about the ancient people who lived like me.
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We used to have to write notes to people.
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You couldn't text them in class.
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So when we talk about history, if I talk about a time when there was not anything like we can imagine today, 1517.
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Can you think about how long ago that was? 1517 was 500 years ago.
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It was 100 years before the King James Bible was written.
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So you've got to think, that is a long time ago.
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But on October 31, 1517, a man by the name of Martin Luther.
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How many of you ever heard the name Martin Luther? Not Martin Luther King, he was important too.
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He was a civil rights leader.
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But the original Martin Luther from 1517, how many of you know who that is? Just a couple of you.
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Martin Luther is one of the most important men in the history of the church.
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Because Martin Luther was one of the men who began what became known as the Protestant Reformation.
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The Protestant Reformation was when the men of God were unhappy with what was going on in the church at the time.
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There was corruption in the church.
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There was mishandling of the word of God.
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There was mishandling of the truth.
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And men stood up against that.
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And they cried out, no, we will have it no more.
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We are going to stand for the truth.
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But you know, Martin Luther did not begin as a man who simply came to fight for the truth.
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Martin Luther began as a man who was scared of his own sin.
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He began as a man who was so afraid of his own guilt that he went to live in a monastery.
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Do you know what a monastery is? Where monks live, where they go to be away from the whole world.
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And they go hide in a monastery where they don't have to deal with the world anymore.
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And they live alone in these almost like castles.
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Martin Luther did that because he hated and was afraid of his own sin.
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See, Martin Luther, when he was a young man, his dad wanted him to be a lawyer.
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How many of your parents want you to be something when you grow up? How many of your parents say, I want you to go in the military? Or I want you to do this.
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Or I want you to do that.
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Do your parents have dreams for you? You ever talk about your dreams with your parents? Well, Martin Luther's father wanted him to be a lawyer.
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And Martin Luther went to school.
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And he did all the things.
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Well, one night when he was on his way home, he got caught in a lightning storm.
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He was in that lightning storm.
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A lightning bolt hit right next to him and, boom, knocked him down.
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And he was so scared.
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He was so afraid that he almost died.
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But he screamed out.
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And he said, Saint Anne, and this was a time in history where almost everyone prayed to some form of saint.
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He said, Saint Anne, if you would save me, I will become a monk.
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And so there, at that moment in his life, he stopped trying to become a lawyer.
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And he went to become.
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And the whole time he was in the monastery, he was trying to find a way to find forgiveness for his sins because he realized every day just how sinful he was.
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And he would go to confession.
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And he would sit down with the priest of the monastery.
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And he would give his confessions.
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And he would give confession sometimes for hours at a time.
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I've done this.
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And I've done that.
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And I've thought this.
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And I've thought that to the point that his higher ups, his leaders would say to him, Martin, don't come back until you have some serious sin to confess.
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You are so consumed with your guilt.
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Don't come back.
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What could a monk do? You know, I was comforting Brother Larry's bread.
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I don't even know what monks do as far as sin.
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I don't know what he could be confessing.
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But he was so concerned with his sin.
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He was so dreadfully distraught that his leaders sent him to Rome, hoping that if he could go to the Vatican, which at that time was a very important place, still is for Catholics, hoping that if he could go there, maybe he would find some peace.
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But he didn't find peace in Rome.
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But he did find peace in Romans.
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And that's what I want to get to today, because in Romans chapter one, Martin Luther became a very intelligent scholar.
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And he began to teach in the university.
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And he was teaching through the book of Romans.
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And he got to Romans chapter one, verses 16 and 17.
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Now, I admit, at this time in history, there weren't verse markings.
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When you open your Bible and you see chapters and verses, at this time in history, those didn't exist.
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So people say you got to Romans 116.
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That's a little bit of an anachronism.
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He didn't get to Romans 116.
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He was in the first part of the book of Romans.
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And he was reading through.
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And he read these words.
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I want you to listen to them.
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For I am not ashamed of the gospel.
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For it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
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For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just or the righteous shall live by faith.
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Martin Luther said when he read that and he came to a proper understanding of it, it was like the scales that were over his eyes fell off.
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And he finally realized that all the work that he was trying to do to atone for his own sins, all of the penance he was trying to pay to try to get rid of his own sins, all of the things he was trying to do to establish his own righteousness were for nothing because the Bible says that our righteousness, our goodness does not come from what we do, but it comes from faith in what Jesus Christ has done.
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And Luther said at that moment, it was like he had been born again, because at that moment he began to realize that all of the things that he thought about and had been concerned about, all of the sins that he had done that made him feel so dirty and so unclean and so separated from God had been paid for by Jesus Christ on the cross.
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They had been nailed to the cross, as the apostle Paul said, and he bared the weight of the guilt of those sins no more.
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And now he could have peace with God through his Lord Jesus Christ.
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And everything in his life changed.
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And from there, he became a hero of justification by faith.
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And that is what he would preach.
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And that would become the great argument of his life, that we are saved not by what we do, but we are saved by what Christ has done.
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Justified before God, legally made righteous before God, not because of our works, but because of the works of Jesus.
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Martin Luther would fight a battle his whole life over that truth.
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He would fight the Roman Catholic authorities for his whole life over that truth.
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There would be men who would seek to kill him over that truth.
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And he would end up going before an entire council called the Diet of Worms.
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And he would stand at the Diet of Worms and they would say, Martin Luther, look at all these things that you have written.
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Look at all these things that you have said.
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Look at all these sermons that you have preached.
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I want you to recant them.
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That means to say that they're not true.
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And Martin Luther stood before them.
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And after a day, he asked for one day.
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Because when he was brought before the council, they said, we want you to recant or you will be condemned.
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And he said, give me one day.
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One day.
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You might think that's kind of a cowardly thing, that he wouldn't just immediately stand up for himself.
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But you have to remember what he's doing.
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He's standing against the whole world at this point.
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He's standing alone at this point.
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He's standing knowing that if he does not recant, it could mean his death.
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So he says, give me one day.
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And he went to pray.
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And he came back the next day to the Diet of Worms.
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And he stood before the council.
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And the councilman said, do you recant? And Luther said, my conscience is captive to the word of God.
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Unless I can be convinced by scripture and reason, I cannot and I will not recant.
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So help me, God, I can do no other.
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Amen.
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He put his life on the line for truth.
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And God spared him.
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And he ended up being the father of what is now called the Lutheran Church.
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Were there any of you who are Lutherans? Anybody go to the Lutheran Church? Well, know this, Martin Luther's not just the father of the Lutheran Church.
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Martin Luther's one of the men who is most responsible for bringing about the Reformation through the power of God.
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And it was through that Reformation that we get Baptists.
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Presbyterians, Methodists, and all the rest.
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So if you today are in a church that is the result of the Reformation, you owe a debt of gratitude to Martin Luther who stood against the world and proclaimed Jesus Christ.
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And his grace and his mercy for the church.
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Let's pray.
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Our Father and our God, we thank you for raising up men like Martin Luther.
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We thank you that you have used men like him in the bringing about of change when change was so desperately needed.
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We know, Father God, that what changed Martin Luther was your grace.
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What changed Martin Luther was an understanding of salvation by grace through faith alone.
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And not of works, lest anyone should boast.
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We know that, Father, it is your wonderful grace that allows us to know that nothing that we do can cause us to go to heaven.
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But also, that no sin that we've ever committed is so great that it can't be covered by your blood.
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So if we know, oh Lord, we know that salvation comes through the work of Jesus Christ.
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We were taught this by the Apostle Paul who said, for it is by grace that you are saved through faith.
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And that is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.
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And not of works, lest anyone should boast.
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The Apostle Paul was so convinced in justification by faith that he made the argument over and over and over throughout his epistles.
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And Martin Luther, having rediscovered this great truth and gone in 1517 to nail those theses to the wall to remind us of the truth.
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Father, we thank you.
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And we thank you that today churches still stand proclaiming justification, salvation, not by works, but by faith alone.
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Father, I pray for these young people.
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I pray that they have been encouraged by the life of Martin Luther, that they understand that if they are living with a sense of guilt, a sense of heart longing, Lord, for forgiveness that they would find that forgiveness in Jesus Christ.
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As Luther had the scales fall from his eyes spiritually, Lord, let the scales fall from their eyes that they might see the forgiveness that comes in Christ alone.
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For we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to scripture alone, and all glory to you, O God, alone.
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In Christ's name, amen.