On Transubstantiation and Other False Teachings

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If you have your Bibles, I would invite you to take them and open them, if you can see them, in the dark.
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You can open them to Isaiah 55, verses 10 and 11.
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And I want to remind us that even though we're dealing with this power outage this morning, that we've still come here to worship the Lord.
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We've still come here to learn and to study together.
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And as I mentioned to our Sunday school class this morning, the earliest records that we have of the church, the earliest information that we have of the church, is that they gathered in homes for worship.
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But shortly thereafter, when Christianity became something that was an affront to the sensibilities of the people, and the people were hated and sought after for arrest and even execution, the churches began to worship in a lot of other places that we might not even think are even possible to worship in.
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They would worship in cemeteries, they would worship in catacombs, they would worship in caves, just so as to be away from the society and away from places where they would be caught and arrested.
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And so what little discomfort we may be experiencing today, let us not forget that our earliest ancestors in the faith dealt with so much more, and yet were able to sing and to pray and to worship and to study with great vigor and great confidence.
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So let us remember that today as we study.
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Now our passage for the morning is Isaiah 55 verses 10 and 11.
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I'm going to read it and then I'm going to pray.
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For as the rain and snow come down from heaven, and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower, and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth.
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It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
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Father God, I thank you for your word.
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I pray even now that as we study the word together, that you would, by your grace, keep me from error.
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For I know that I am a fallible man, I am capable of preaching that which is incorrect, and I do not want to do so.
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For the sake of my own conscience, for you tell us in your word that teachers are held to a higher standard, but also for the sake of your people, that their hearts and minds not be confused, but Lord God that I would teach what is true today.
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And I pray Lord that we would have a time of study which is focused and intent, and that we would understand why we have come today to worship the God of heaven, through his son Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, by the power of the Spirit, and in this triune God we find our comfort.
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And it's in Jesus name we pray.
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Amen.
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Now last week we began a series on the subject of the Protestant Reformation.
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And I pointed out that to do a series on the doctrines of the Reformation, I needed to lay some foundational groundwork as to why the doctrines that came out of the Protestant Reformation were important.
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Because not everything about the Christian faith was debated during the Reformation.
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Doctrines like the Trinity, and the deity of Christ, and the nature of Christ as both God and man.
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These things were long understood by the church, and were really not up for debate during the Reformation.
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These were not the things that were at issue.
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And even though there were men like Michael Servetus and others, who were trying to wedge those into the Reformation and make the deity of Christ an issue, that wasn't an issue that really was the heart of the foundation of the Reformation.
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The issues that faced the Reformation were more in line with the issue of the nature of the Bible, the nature of salvation, and the nature of the church and how it exercises authority among God's people.
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And the reason why this became such an issue was because during the Middle Ages, the power of the Roman Catholic Church had begun to rise and rise and rise, and because of this powerful influence, many false teachings had entered into the church.
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And with those false teachings had come a wrong understanding of Scripture, a wrong understanding of the nature of the church and her authority, and a wrong understanding of salvation.
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And so by the time you get to the birth of the Protestant Reformation, you have a church in crisis.
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You have a problem that has met itself throughout the Western Church.
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And I say the Western Church because in the midst of the Middle Ages in 1056, there was a division between the Western Church in Rome and the Eastern Church, which is now referred to as Orthodoxy.
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And most of you are probably familiar with the Orthodox Church.
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In our previous lesson, I noted that the time period which gave birth to the Reformation was the Middle Ages, and throughout those, I read you off a list of some of the things that were born out of that time, some of the false teachings.
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I want to remind you of a few of those.
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First was the prayers to Mary, to saints, and to angels.
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That is not something that goes back to the time of the Bible.
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In fact, it's not even something that goes back to the first 500 years of the church.
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Prayers made to saints, prayers made to Mary, prayers made to angels, was not something that came in until the 600s.
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Half a millennium after the church was established.
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The worship of relics was in the 700s.
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This is where they would find, like, they would say, well, here are pieces of wood from the cross.
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And these pieces of wood that were supposed to be from the cross were taken and put in places where people would come and look at them, and would bow down to them, and would pray in their direction.
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And that relic would be a vestige, or rather not a vestige, but a vessel of grace.
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There were even those who believed they had the bones of Saint Peter.
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And you could go and you could see the bones of Saint Peter.
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And one even boasted of having breast milk from the Virgin Mary.
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A vial of milk from the breast of the Virgin Mary.
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So you have all of these things called relics.
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And during the Middle Ages, they took on almost superstitious supernatural power.
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Where you could go to them and touch them and be healed, or all kinds of things.
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The holy water by the priest, which was introduced in 850.
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Of course, you've seen today when you go into a Roman Catholic church, there's a little vial of water.
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And that water's been blessed by a priest, and that water's to be placed on your head as a sign of sanctification as you walk through the door.
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As having been washed there again.
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The praying of the rosary in 1090.
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A thousand years after the church's establishment.
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We have this little line of beads.
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Each one carrying a time of prayer.
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And of course, the prayer itself is a blasphemous prayer.
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Hail Mary, full of grace.
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And you pray this prayer to Mary for forgiveness of sins.
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And for her grace.
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In 1190, you have the sale of indulgences.
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Do you know what an indulgence is? An indulgence piggybacks on the idea of purgatory.
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Purgatory in the Roman Catholic system of belief, an unbiblical belief by far, is that when you die, you will go not to heaven, you will either go to hell, or you will go to purgatory.
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Purgatory comes from the word meaning to purge.
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And the idea is that you will die unclean.
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Unless you die right after confession.
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Unless you die right after receiving the mass, you will die unclean.
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And because you will die unclean, you will go to this place of holding, wherein you will be purged of your sins, which could be thousands of years of purging, before you will be allowed to enter into the place of God's presence.
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And so what is indulgence? An indulgence was something that you could purchase that had the Pope's seal.
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And this indulgence could be used as a transactionary payment to pay off some of your sin debt.
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And so pay off some of your time in purgatory.
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There was a man by the name of Johann Tutsal.
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Johann Tutsal, during the time of Martin Luther, made the money for St.
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Peter's Basilica by going out and inciting people to purchase indulgences for the purpose of buying their loved ones out of purgatory.
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People often say, boy, St.
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Peter's Basilica, what a beautiful place.
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I believe that it is a wretched place because it is built on the false claims of a false system and it was robbery of the people of God.
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But here's what he would do.
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He would say, when a coin in the coffer clings, a soul from purgatory springs.
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And it rhymes in German as well as it does in English.
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And what he was saying is, when you drop the coin for your indulgence, you can buy an indulgence that would pay for all sin.
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And that was what really was the selling point for the indulgences at St.
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Peter's, was that this was a plenary indulgence.
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It didn't take care of just your past sins, it was all sins, past, present, and future.
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You purchase this indulgence, you're good forever.
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So who wouldn't line up for that, right? Who wouldn't line up to have all their sins forgiven? And so they did.
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And they lined up and they gave the money.
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And that's the indulgences.
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That was not, that is not biblical.
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In fact, that's unbiblical teaching.
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But as I ended last week, I talked about the doctrine of transubstantiation.
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In 1215, 1200 years into the establishment of the church, you have a doctrine called transubstantiation.
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Transubstantiation, beloved, means that the bread literally becomes the body of Christ and that the cup literally becomes His blood.
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Now that is not all.
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Because some of you may come to me later and say, now wait a minute.
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St.
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Thomas Aquinas believed in the literal presence of Jesus as body and blood.
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And he was well before 1215.
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Or St.
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Augustine believed in the real presence of Jesus in the body and the blood.
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How can you say that transubstantiation as a doctrine was not established until 1215? Because transubstantiation is not just that Jesus is literally present, body and blood, in the cup.
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Transubstantiation is this.
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That when Jesus is in that bread and in that cup, there is a propitiatory sacrifice that is being made.
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What is propitiation? Propitiation means to appease wrath.
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God is wrathful because of sin.
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We know this.
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The Bible teaches this.
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God is angry because of sin.
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When Jesus died on the cross, the Bible says He made propitiation for sins.
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That means all the wrath of God was poured out upon Jesus Christ.
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The Roman Catholic system taught that what is happening on the table is that the sacrifice of Christ is being re-presented.
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Meaning the sacrifice is being re-made.
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Every time the priest comes to the table.
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By the way, do you ever understand why they call them priests? We don't call our leaders priests.
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We call them elders or presbyters or pastors.
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Why don't we call them priests? Because in the Bible in the New Covenant, we have one priest.
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Who is he? Jesus Christ is our single priest.
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He is our high priest.
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There is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.
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Jesus Christ is the priest who leads us.
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This is why we pray in Jesus' name.
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Because we are praying through the high priest the mediator which is Jesus.
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And the Bible talks about the priesthood of the believer.
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That all of us have access to God through Jesus.
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You don't have to come to me to pray to God.
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You don't have to come to me and sit in a box and confess your transgressions.
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Now the Bible does call us to confess our sins one to another because it is something that we should do.
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And if I sin against you, I should confess to you.
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And if you sin against me, you should confess against me.
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And if I sin against the church, I should publicly confess that transgression and seek forgiveness.
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But the idea of coming to a cubicle and sitting between a thin layer of cloth so as to obscure my face and whispering my sins to a man not biblical.
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There is one God and there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.
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And I want to read to you something today.
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And I promise I had a long, long sermon.
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I'm not going to preach the whole thing.
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I'm going to give you a respite today.
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But I want to get through this at least.
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This is from the book, The Faith of Millions.
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The Faith of Millions was written by Father O'Brien.
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Father John O'Brien, a Roman Catholic teacher.
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And this is what is believed has happened when the priest performs the Mass.
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And remember what the Mass is.
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The Mass is the table.
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When you go into a Roman Catholic church, in general, you'll see it set up like this.
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You'll see the pulpit in front of the table.
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The pulpit is down there.
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The table is behind.
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Why? Because the priest stands between you and the Mass.
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The priest is the avenue that you have to go through to get to the table.
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So rather than me standing, you know how I'm standing behind it? He would stand in front of it so as to demonstrate this is, I'm blocking this off.
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And I get to determine how it is given.
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Because he becomes, I'll just read to you what O'Brien writes.
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And I'm quoting this directly.
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When the priest pronounces the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into heaven, brings Christ down from his throne, and places him upon our altar to be offered up again as the victim for the sins of man.
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It is a greater power than that of monarch or emperor.
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It is a greater power than that of saint or angel.
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Greater than that of seraphim or cherubim.
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Indeed, it is greater even than the power of the Virgin Mary.
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While the Virgin Mary was the human agency by which Christ became incarnate a single time, the priest brings Christ down from heaven and renders him present on our altar as the eternal victim for the sins of man, not once but a thousand times.
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The priest speaks, and lo, Christ, the eternal omnipotent God, bows his head in humble obedience to the priest's command.
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Of what sublime dignity is the office of the Christian priest, who is thus privileged to act as ambassador and vice-regent of Christ on earth.
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He continues the assertion ministry of Christ.
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He teaches the faithful with the authority of Christ.
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He pardons the penitent sinner with the power of Christ.
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He offers up again the same sacrifice of adoration and atonement which Christ offered on Calvary.
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No wonder that the name which spiritual writers are especially fond of, applied to the priest, is that of Alter Christus, for the priest is and should be another Christ.
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Beloved such is blasphemy to say that the priest has the power to reach up into heaven and bring Christ down, and Christ in obedience bows his head to a man and comes down and is eternally sacrificed by that man over and over and over.
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This is not what the Bible teaches about the sacrifice of Christ.
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The Bible teaches something very simple about the sacrifice of Christ.
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It teaches that it was made once for all.
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In fact, the book of Hebrews, and I commend the entire book of Hebrews to your reading, because the book of Hebrews talks to us about the priesthood of Christ, and it tells us this about the priesthood of Christ.
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It tells us that the reason why Christ's priesthood was so special, and so powerful, is because it did not need to be repeated, and that it is a special priesthood, not like the Aaronic priesthood, because the Aaronic priesthood of the ancient Israelites, when the priest would die, another priest would take his place, and when this priest would die, another priest would take his place, and when this priest would die, and on and on and on.
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But the writer of Hebrews tells us that we have an eternal high priest.
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We have a high priest who lives forever according to the order of Melchizedek.
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He's not even in the line of Aaron.
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He's in the line of the holy established order of Melchizedek.
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The one established by God in Genesis, Christ takes on that order and continues it forever.
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Christ is the forever priest having made one forever sacrifice that need not be repeated.
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Beloved, I know I talked about this last week, but I can't not talk about this again.
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You know what Martin Luther said? He said, I preach justification by faith every week, because every week my people forget it.
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He said, I must preach justification by faith, and that's the heart of the Reformation.
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That table was the heart of the Reformation, because in this table had become a misunderstanding of what Jesus had done.
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My purpose this morning was to talk about men like John Wycliffe and John Hus and the dissidents, the Waldensians and the Paulicians, and I will talk about them next week, because they're so important and so valuable in our history.
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But today I want to simply draw us to a close by looking back at our opening passage, because this passage tells us something about the Word of God, and you have to understand that the heart of the Reformation beat with the Word of God.
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You see, what the problem was in Rome was all of these false teachings that had made their way into the church during the Middle Ages, they didn't come from Scripture.
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They came from misunderstandings and misapplications and misrepresentations and all kinds of wrong teachings and they came from the evil hearts of men and false doctrines that men had taught.
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And you know what Jesus taught? He taught that the doctrines that came not from the Word of God, but from the hearts of men were evil and that we are to renounce them.
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And that's what the Reformers did.
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They looked back to the Word of God.
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That's what Reformation is.
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Reformation means that you go back to the original and you base your form on that which was original.
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You have to reform.
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You go back to the beginning and start over.
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You know Martin Luther never thought in a million years he was going to start a new sect of the church.
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That wasn't his desire.
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Martin Luther wanted the Catholic Church to reform.
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He didn't want the Catholic Church to expel him.
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He didn't want to divide and become Lutheran or Presbyterian.
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He wanted the church itself to look at what she was doing and recognize the Word of God and say, see the Word of God says here it will not return void.
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But you're not using the Word of God.
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You're using the false teachings of men.
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Let us go back to the Word of God because it will not return void.
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It cannot come up empty.
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If we will trust in the Word of God, we cannot fail.
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But if we trust in the doctrines of men, we will nothing but fail.
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And so that's the heart of Reformation.
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It's going back to the Scripture.
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Going back to the Word.
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And beloved, if somebody asks me, do you have perfect theology? No, I don't.
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We talked about this in Sunday School this morning.
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I don't have perfect theology and neither do you.
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But my theology is to be reformed by Scripture.
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It is to be influenced by Scripture.
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It is to be taught by the Word of God.
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It is to be corrected by the Word of God.
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If I am unwilling to be corrected by the Word of God, then I have established a different authority than what God has given.
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God has given His people, not a pope.
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He's given His people, not a priesthood.
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He's given His people the Word of God.
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And it is this by which all other things are to be measured.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for the truth.
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And I pray, Lord, that this truth has gone out this morning in a way that is encouraging and will draw Your people closer to You.
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I pray that we would understand that the cross was not a sacrifice that meant to be repeated, but rather was meant to be remembered.
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And Lord, as we move now to communion, I pray that we would remember the cross in all its glory as the once-for-all sacrifice for our sins.
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In Jesus' name we pray.
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Amen.