Reformation Day!

So, this morning, it's kind of like a second Christmas for me, because the

Lord's Day and Reformation Day align. That doesn't happen very often. It'll probably be another, what, six years or something before it happens again.

And so I want to talk about the Protestant Reformation today for three reasons.

The first is, today is what I just told you, it is October 31st, and so I can't pass up that opportunity.

Secondly, I love history, and I want you to love history too.

Thirdly, I think the Protestant Reformation is important to our history, and even the need for reformation today.

So I want to start out with Romans 1. So I want you to turn to Romans 1. While you're turning there, I do want to scale it back just a moment.

Sometimes we do this with a lot of things. So, like, sometimes things happen in history, and no one even notices that it's significant.

And then it's years later that you go back and you say, okay, this is the day. Okay, maybe you think about it this way.

Maybe the first time you met your future spouse, okay, maybe when you first met your future spouse that particular day wasn't all that significant, right?

Like, you didn't even realize until years later that that day was so significant, right?

And so maybe we should say that really about the Protestant Reformation. It's not that Martin Luther woke up on October 31st, 1517 and said, today,

I'm going to start a reformation. He wasn't trying to start a reformation, actually, he was frustrated about some things, and we're going to talk about that, and wanted to debate those things, and then that did spark a reformation.

We'll talk about that in just a minute. So let me start with Romans 1 .16, and this is really the heart of the

Protestant Reformation. Romans 1 .16, Paul says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the

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

The Protestant Reformation is ultimately about the recovery of the gospel.

And I want to say this, too, because this is debated some, but this is my historical position on it, that Baptists can trace their roots to what came out of the

Reformation. Sometimes you hear Baptists say, well, look, we're not Protestant, we never came out of the Roman Catholic Church, and in one sense that's true, but in another sense, we did come out of the churches that came out of the

Roman Catholic Church, so I think that it's important for us to know this and know our history.

So let's dive into a couple of things. The first I want to talk about is this. By the way, I've taught on this probably several times since I've been here.

This is, I think, my sixth Reformation day at Second Baptist, so I know

I've taught on this before, so I've tried to give us some fresh things, some new things. And so what

I want to talk about first is what's happening before the Reformation. So what are some things that are going on?

Remember, this is in Europe, so put yourself in 1517 in Europe.

What are some things that are happening around this time? The first is there are uneducated and immoral church leaders, okay?

The first thing that I want you to think about is there are uneducated and immoral church leaders.

What do I mean by uneducated? You say, well, wasn't, like, Peter and John unlearned men, doesn't the

Bible say that? Yes, it does. But uneducated in the sense that during mass, okay, you spoke in Latin, and some of these ministers didn't even know

Latin. So they're just saying stuff in Latin, who knows if they're even saying it right.

They don't even know what it is that they're saying. And then immoral in the sense, maybe a little bit

PG -13, I think we'll be fine. Immoral in the sense that some priests had multiple mistresses, fathered children outside of marriage, because you remember at this time, and we're going to talk about this tonight, actually, but you remember at this time that clergy couldn't be married, right?

But you had these immoral lifestyles. In fact, it'd be inappropriate for me to talk about all the ways that these supposed men of God, these ministers, were practicing immorality.

So one of the things happening around this time period, you have uneducated, immoral church leaders. Secondly, this kind of goes with it, but you have corruption and greed.

Corruption and greed in the church. So you have Simoni. That's a different, I don't know if you're familiar with that term, but it's the purchasing of a church office, right?

Or selling a church office. So let's say you got a family member, or let's say you got Braden, and let's say there's another church that's looking for a pastor,

I'm like, hey, let me give you $1 ,000, and you take this man as pastor. That's not how you do it.

They didn't care about qualifications, right? So it doesn't matter if you have a qualified man, you just buy that office for your cousin, your nephew, your child, whatever.

And then there's huge power structures. There were times before 1517, you have multiple popes, and what are they doing?

They're excommunicating each other, so you got all that going on. There was a constant struggle of who had the power.

Do the kings have the power or the pope have the power? So in the 1070s, King Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII, they have this power struggle.

I think it's a really interesting story, so I wanted to share it. So Henry, King Henry, tries to excommunicate the pope, and so in response, the pope excommunicates the king.

Well, the pope's actions stick. So in the winter of 1077, King Henry has to climb the

Alps to the pope's winter palace. The pope makes him stay outside for three days, and then he lets him in.

This is the frigid winter, January of 1077. And then King Henry had to fall at the pope's feet, basically, and beg for forgiveness.

And I think the pope forgave him, and then the king went back, and then he defied the pope again or whatever. So there's corruption and greed, all this.

Thirdly, and this is going to get us to 1517, you have indulgences.

So in the 1510s, Pope Leo X, he wants to rebuild

St. Peter's Basilica. That's the papal enclave in the city of Rome. So he wants to rebuild this.

You think of it as a big church building. He wants to rebuild this. This is during the time of the Renaissance, and all this kind of stuff is going on, and so he wants to rebuild this into a more beautiful church building, if you will.

But he doesn't have money. But he doesn't want to give up his lavish lifestyle. He's partying, and the mistresses, and all that kind of stuff.

He doesn't want to give that up, but he has to have money. So how can he make money? By selling indulgences.

Now let me read to you a little bit from one historian, Glenn Sunshine. He says this, According to Catholic theology, every sin you commit results in both eternal and temporal penalties.

Eternal penalties affect your relationship with God. They are spiritual and deal with your status in eternity.

That is, whether you go to heaven or hell. But since a sin against God is also a crime against your neighbor, sins must also be punished in this life, hence the temporal penalties which are paid in time.

When you confess your sins to a priest, and he absolves you, that absolution takes away the eternal penalty due to your sins, but leaves the temporal untouched.

He then assigns you a penance, that is, a good work that you can perform that pays the temporal penalty.

This may be saying prayers, going on a pilgrimage, and so forth. These penalties could be pretty hefty.

For example, each knight who fought at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 in a campaign that had been blessed by the

Pope was required to do 10 years of penance for every person he killed in battle. And this didn't even touch other battles the knight fought in or any extracurricular activities he might have indulged in.

If you die with your temporal debt unpaid, the remainder has to be paid in time in the afterlife.

So you go to purgatory, a doctrine developed in the 12th century to deal with the problems associated with unpaid temporal penalties.

After your temporal penalty is completely paid in purgatory, then you go to heaven.

So how do you avoid languishing in purgatory for who knows how long? There are a couple of possibilities.

You could endow a monastery or a church and get priests to say mass or monks to pray for you.

If you pay the expenses, the credit for the time and the masses goes to your account. This may seem odd, but think of it like this.

If you get a speeding ticket, the town doesn't really care if you pay it or someone else does. It just wants the money.

The same logic applies here. As long as your temporal debt is paid by someone, it counts.

Going on a pilgrimage is another good option. Not only do you get credit for the time you spend on the road, but the shrine you're visiting itself conveys a certain number of years of penance depending on its importance.

This is where indulgences came in. These benefits would be paid to you out of the treasury of merits, the collection of good works performed by Christ and the saints above and beyond what was necessary for their own salvation.

Alright, so that's a lot to take in, especially if you're not familiar with it. Let me try to sum it up and explain it a little bit.

But basically, during this time, Roman Catholics were teaching that essentially, this came to be developed by the time

Pope Leo is there, essentially because of all this stuff that Christ did.

Okay, did Christ just do enough for himself? No. He did enough, so many good deeds that they're stored in this treasury of merit.

But not only Christ, but also Paul and Peter and all these people, they did so many good works that they didn't have to have them, and so all these extra good works are put into what is called a treasury of merit.

And then, whenever the Pope wants to, he can dispense this treasury of merit and forgive your sins.

Alright? Well, that sounds great. How do you get that? All you have to do, for the low, low cost of $19 .99,

you can call in and you can get an indulgence, and the Pope will grant forgiveness for your sins.

But it's even beyond that. Pope Leo authorizes the selling of indulgences so that you can pay, literally pay money for the forgiveness of your sins, or even the sins of your relatives.

Basically, there's so much merit that these guys did that there's this great treasury that they can pay out.

Now, Sunshine goes on to say this. This is not as long of a quote, but another important quote. John Tetzel, so that's a name we should know around this time.

John Tetzel was a master of the hard sell and was generally the sort of person who would give a used car salesman a bad name.

That's his words, not mine. He literally would tell his listeners that his indulgences were so good that even,

I'm not going to read that quote, even if you had done something really bad, this would get you off the hook.

He told people repentance wasn't necessary for the indulgences to work and that they were a virtual ticket to heaven regardless of what you had done or would do.

And when he couldn't get any more sales from that, he ratcheted things up a bit more. If you're not worried about yourself, what about your dearly departed mother, languishing perhaps for thousands of years in purgatory?

Were you to spend but a few coins on an indulgence, she would be released to go directly into heaven. After going on about this for a while,

Tetzel would end with a little jingle. Let me clear my throat. As soon as the coin in the coin box rings, another soul from purgatory springs.

So here's what you have to remember. Let me set this back in time. In 2021, we are not very accustomed to death.

So in the 1500s, in the 16th century, death was all around people. Most people, you know, you had a lot of kids.

You and your spouse had a lot of kids. Several of those kids, a couple of those kids, they would die at a young age.

Health was different. You knew, you know, your parents. A lot of us have parents that are living still in their 60s, 70s, 80s, maybe even 90s.

My wife has a great, great grandmother, wait, wait, great grandmother who is going to be like 106 or just turned 106.

So that's pretty strange compared to the 1500s, okay?

When you're like in your 30s, you're an old man. So death was something that people were accustomed to. They're around all the time.

And here's what's going on. John Tetzel comes around and he's saying, look, you got your son, you got your mother, you got your uncle, and they are suffering in purgatory.

And who knows how long they'll be? They may be in purgatory for a thousand years. But if you'll just give the church some money, then this person will be released into heaven.

Now that's manipulative, isn't it? Now does that sound like Romans 116? From not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the

Jew first and also to the Greek? Of course not. So this is where Luther steps in.

And this is why we're talking about this today. On October 31st, 1517, Luther nailed 95 theses on the door of the cathedral in, we say,

Wittenberg, Wittenberg, Germany. Luther was born in 1483, November 10th, 1483, so he was almost 34.

His dad, some of you know this, review for some, knew for some, his dad wanted him to be a lawyer, but in 1505, he had finished his master's, he came to visit his family, he was caught on the way in a severe thunderstorm.

So he was a good Roman Catholic at that point. He cries out to one of the saints. Why would he cry out to a saint?

You can't go directly to God, right? You've got to go to a saint, and then hopefully that saint will help you with God.

So he cries out to Saint Anne, Saint Anne was the patron saint of minors. His dad,

Hans, was a minor, like M -I -N -E -R, minor. So Luther cries out to Saint Anne, because that's what you do, and he says, if you'll help me,

Saint Anne, I'll become a monk. So he's caught in this thunderstorm, lightning's going off, he's afraid he's going to be struck by lightning.

He's a young man, he's like 20, almost 22, I guess. He says, Saint Anne, if you help me, I'll become a monk.

Well, here's the deal. Luther survives, and he keeps his word. And to his dad's disappointment, he doesn't become a lawyer, he becomes a monk, and he tries his hardest to earn favor with God.

He says something along the lines of, if anybody could be saved by their monkery, it would have been me, right? He goes to confession, like the people that he confessed to, you know, they're like, here comes

Martin, no, right? Because he would confess, you know, how much sin, can you think in your mind, can a monk do?

Right? Well, Luther would go and confess, sometimes for six hours, six hours in confession.

You think about the person that has to receive that, and they're like, bro, I was going to go to lunch, and here I have to listen to you for six hours.

That's because Luther really began to understand his sinfulness, understand his prayers, his good works, all that.

And in fact, at one time, during this phase of his life, he said he hated

God, because Romans 117 to him, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

What he understood that verse to mean during this time was that in the gospel, he had to be righteous, and if he could be righteous, he'd have peace with God.

Well, there's a little bit of truth there, actually, and we'll talk about that more in a minute, but he was thinking of his own righteousness, and what happened?

He understood he could not be righteous. And so, all this stuff that Luther's wrestling with, he's maybe almost through it by the time 1517 rolls around, because he had become a professor and all that, by the time

John Tetzel comes to town in 1517. So Luther posts his 95 thesis as a way to discuss these matters.

She's not trying to start a reformation, but he's saying, look, if you rationally think about the indulgences here, this doesn't make sense.

And so, I'll read to you some of these theses, we're not going to read all of them, but I'll read to you some of the things that he says in these theses about indulgences.

So thesis 21 says, those preachers of indulgences are an error who say that by the

Pope's indulgences, a man is freed from every penalty and saved. So in other words, a preacher that's saying, hey, just pay for this indulgence and you're saved, you're free.

He says, no, they're an error. Thesis 32, he says, they will be condemned eternally together with their teachers who believe themselves sure of their salvation because they have letters of pardon.

All right? Well, how do you know you're saved? Because I gave this man some money, and look,

I've got this letter of pardon, I've got this get out of jail free card, right? I'm not going to go to hell because I've paid this money and I have this pardon.

Thesis 45 says, Christians are to be taught that he who sees a man in need and passes him by and gives his money for pardons purchases not the indulgences of the

Pope, but the indignation of God. In other words, he says, you're going on the way, here's a man who's begging, you say,

I don't got money to give you, I've got to go pay for my sins with this money. He says, you're not buying indulgences of the

Pope, you're buying the indignation of God. Luther has a way to say those things. Let me read these five together.

Thesis 62 to 66, he kind of builds an argument here, so listen to this.

He says, the true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and the grace of God.

But this treasure is naturally most odious, for it makes the first to be last.

On the other hand, the treasure of indulgences is naturally most acceptable, for it makes the last to be first.

Therefore, the treasures of the gospel are nets with which they formerly were wont to fish for men of riches.

The treasures of the indulgences are nets with which they now fish for the riches of men.

So in other words, he says the gospel is offensive, because it says the last shall be first. He says, but indulgences go right along with the carnality of man, because they have to do with riches.

Thesis 79, to say that the cross, emblazoned with the papal arms, which is set up by the preachers of indulgences, is of equal worth with the cross of Christ, is blasphemy.

So as they would preach indulgences, they would set up this big emblem with the cross with the papal arms on it, and they would say, this is as worthy as the cross of Christ.

And Luther says, that's blasphemy. Thesis 82, why does not the pope, now this is,

I love this, this is one of my favorite ones that he says, he says, why does not the pope empty purgatory for the sake of holy love and of the dire need of the souls that are there?

If he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a church, the former reasons would be more just, most just, the latter most trivial.

You know what he's saying here? He's saying, if the pope can free people from purgatory, why doesn't he just do it?

Right? Like, why do I have to pay money to free people from purgatory?

If the pope can just free people from purgatory, then just free them from purgatory.

So that's the issue of October 31st, 1517.

That's why Luther nails these 95 theses. Now there's a, there's a pretty, this is pretty bold, right?

Like there's so much, this is just an overview, but there's so many things that we don't understand today that would have been different than like, no such thing as separation of church and state, you know, no such thing like, like church and your identity, it was all, it was all bound together.

Like for you to say something against the church would be like to say something against your country, your family, everything, right?

All of these things are intertwined. So this is a really big deal. So let me pause for just a moment and I need to take a breath and see if you have any questions or comments.

And then what I want to spend the rest of our time doing is talk about what was the reformation really about?

All right. So let me pause just for a second. Any questions, comments, um, and that was a really big overview,

I understand. Any questions, comments that you want to say up to this point? All right.

So for the remainder of our time, I want to talk about what was the reformation really about?

And this is, this is a, um, an alliteration that I've, I've shared before, but I think it fits.

One of the things that we say about the reformation is post tenebris lux, that's

Latin, it means after darkness, light. Don't think about the reformation as something new.

Think about the reformation as a recovery. As you go through the middle ages, things are really dark in the church.

The gospel has been all but lost. I mean, there are still genuine Christians, there are still people, uh,

John Wycliffe, uh, Johan Hus, there are still people that are preaching the gospel, but as a whole, the church has made the gospel into something completely different.

The Roman Catholic Church, that is. So after a time where the church was caught in sin, many had abandoned the gospel, now

God's going to bring revival and hope. So what is this all really about? Number one, so three words with the letter

A. The first is authority. Reformation is about authority. Who has the ultimate authority in the life and practice of the church?

Who has the ultimate authority in the life and practice of the church? The Roman Catholic Church said, and still says, it's the

Pope and church councils and tradition and the

Bible, right? Did you guys know, you may not have known this, did you know that according to Roman Catholic theology, the

Pope can speak inerrantly and infallibly. Now he has to, it has to be a special time that he's done it.

I don't remember how it all works, but it's basically ex cathedra from the chair. The Pope, uh,

I don't think this has happened in a long time, but when all this has happened and he speaks ex cathedra from the chair,

Roman Catholics teach that he is speaking words that are on par with the

Bible, inerrant, infallible. So the Pope, church councils, church tradition, and the

Bible, all of these things have equal footing. Okay. But the reformers said, no, it's not.

That's not right. It's not right. It is not the Pope. The Pope is a man made tradition.

It's not church councils. Luther said church councils have been wrong before. Sometimes church councils have contradicted each other and it's not tradition because tradition has been corrupted.

So what is it then? What is the authority? What is it? You, you answer me. The scriptures, the highest authority is the scriptures alone.

And I'll just read second Timothy. You know this passage, but second Timothy three 16, it bears our attention again.

Second Timothy three 16, all scripture is breathed out by God. The reformers believe it was the word of God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

I'm going to pull this up real quick because I quoted it this morning. But William Tyndale, which he's a little bit later reformer, not much late.

He dies in 1536. So that's what, 19 years after 1517. But William Tyndale, he's an

English reformer and he is, he's trying to get, this is one of the things the reformers did, one of the things

Luther did. They wanted to get the Bible in common language. Now this is weird to us because we're like, well, isn't that obvious?

But it wasn't obvious. Like the church's translation of the Bible was the Latin Vulgate. So only people who could read

Latin could read the Bible. And so the reformers, what did they want to do? Let's get the Bible into the hands of the people.

So Luther translated the New Testament into German and William Tyndale is in England.

And what's he trying to translate the Bible into? English. Praise God for that. So one time he's sitting around this table and they're talking about these things and there's this,

I think it's a Cardinal. There's this Roman Catholic Cardinal that says, we would be better without God's words than the

Pope's. You understand what he's saying? He's saying it's better for us to have the Pope in his words than it is the

Bible. And so this is what Tyndale said. I love it. I defy the

Pope and all his laws. And if God spares my life, I will cause the boy that drives the plow in England to know more of the scriptures than the

Pope himself. Now what is Tyndale saying there? What he's saying is, I'm going to get the

Bible into the common people's hands and they're going to read it and by reading it, they're going to know more about the

Bible than the Pope. And so this is all about authority. Now this doesn't mean, we want to be careful as Baptists, it doesn't mean that tradition and church councils aren't beneficial.

So be careful not to throw out everything. Just say, well, we'll just throw all this out.

No, no, there's benefit in these things. But scripture has the absolute final say.

In fact, the word of God sparked the Reformation. Luther said, all I've done is put forth, preach and write the word of God.

And apart from it, I've done nothing. So Reformers recovered the truth that scripture alone is completely authoritative and it's wholly sufficient.

Right? What you need to believe about God, the Bible tells you, and there's nothing that you need to believe about God that's not in the

Bible. I'll say that again. There's nothing that you need to believe about God or the

Christian life or salvation or the gospel or the church that's not in the

Bible. It is sufficient. So ideas like purgatory, church hierarchy, praying to the saints, they have their origin outside of the scriptures and they're unbiblical.

The Reformation was about authority. Who has the right to buy in the Christian conscience?

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

God has done for us in Christ and what he requires of it in scripture alone? The Reformers advocated very strongly that every believer should read the

Bible in his own language. They preached the Bible not in Latin, but in the language of the people. They encouraged people to memorize the scripture and to spend time in the

Bible and to read the Bible with their children, all because they believed the scripture's sufficiency and authority.

They didn't invent this, but they were following the teaching of the Bible. And as they put the word of God, this has encouraged me so much as a pastor, as they put the word of God in the hands of the people, what happened?

Reformation. Praise God for his inerrant, infallible, sufficient, effectual, authoritative word.

Now as a Baptist, I'm a little bit torn sometimes about Reformation because some of these men, and we'll talk about them later, talk about them tonight too,

I'm sure some a little bit. But actually tonight, I want to talk, because we talk a lot about men, tonight I want to talk about a lady,

Katerina Von Bora, who's Luther's wife. And that's a great story.

And so I want to talk more about that tonight. But okay, as a Baptist, well,

I was like, what was I talking about? Okay, as a Baptist, some of these guys wouldn't have liked me, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, because they, one thing they just could not fully move away from.

And I think Luther got close until there was this Peasants' Rebellion, and I think that kind of pushed him.

But Luther, I think Zwingli got close too, I don't think Calvin ever got close. Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin never let go of what?

Infant baptism. Now they kind of had different reasons for infant baptism, but they could never let go of infant baptism.

But let me put this forward. In the 1500s in Europe, infant baptism was like your citizenship, you understand?

If you're not part of the church, you're not part of your country, right? This is all intertwined together, and it's hard for us as Americans to really understand all this, although I would say that one of the reasons

America even exists has its roots in the Protestant Reformation and all that, so that's another story.

But the point is, you don't fully understand how all this is intertwined, and so I'm not giving them a pass, you know, they should have come to that conclusion, but they didn't,

I'm trying to give you that historical context. But what I am saying is this, when I see those guys in heaven, by the way, they're

Baptists now, right? Amen. When I see them in heaven, they'll forgive me for what

I did, because what I did was I took the principles that they taught us, and I took them to their conclusion, right?

If we're really going to believe this Bible and get rid of tradition, then we've got to let go of infant baptism.

That's not taught in the Scripture. So one of the things that we say is semper reformanda, it means always reforming, right?

And that's what we should be doing, we should always be reforming according to the Word of God. All right, secondly, assurance, so authority, number one, secondly, what is the

Reformation about? Assurance. That is, how can I really be sure I'm a Christian? Must I keep doing all these sacraments and penance and all that kind of stuff, do

I just hope I'm good enough in the end? How do I really know? Now I was, well,

I don't have time to share that illustration, but I've seen this before in people's lives with assurance.

And so this was a recovery of the one true gospel. Luther understood his own sinfulness, he understood that on his best days, even his best works were tainted with impure motives.

He realized that he could never do enough to merit God's salvation, and how could he ever be a

Christian? And that's when Romans 1, 16 and 17, God opened his eyes.

So all Scriptures breathed out by God, oh, sorry, that's 2 Timothy 3, 16, I'm not in the right spot.

Go back to Romans, see, I was supposed to tell me I was in 2 Timothy, still, 16, there's a lot of verses with 16 that we like, isn't there?

That's interesting, just came to my mind. Romans 1, 16. So, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God of salvation to everyone who believes, to the

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

You remember what I said earlier, Luther thought this meant that he had to be righteous, but instead he understood, he finally understood as he studied this passage, what it means is, what we need is faith, because by faith alone, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us.

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

It's not our efforts, it's not the sacraments or the ordinances, it's not in anything other than the finished work of Christ, if we hope to receive

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 not by doing stuff, but what, believing.

It's by putting our faith in Christ. This comforts us at night.

At the end of the day, we lay down our head on our pillows at night, not thinking, did

I do enough to keep myself saved? I lay my head on the pillow tonight, at night, and I think,

Christ, Christ is my sure and steady anchor, it's Christ. So this was the cry of the

Reformation, Sola Fide, it's by faith alone. We have assurance of salvation because of Christ, not ourselves.

What about good works then? Good works flow out of saving faith. John Calvin said this, it is faith alone which justifies, and yet, that faith which justifies is not alone.

In other words, what he's saying is, if you truly, because this is, if you hear this today, sometimes this is even labeled against Baptists, like, well, you just believe in once saved, always saved, so you can live however you want or whatever.

Well, hold on just a second, what you're saying is, by faith alone, by Sola Fide, by faith alone we're justified, and because of that faith, alright, not to gain justification, but because of that faith, we desire to live out the realities of the

Christian life. And so, we'll talk more about the five Solas in the morning message.

Let me give you the last word. So three things the Reformation's about, authority, the scriptures, secondly, assurance, how can

I know that I'm saved, how can I know that I have right standing with God, Sola Fide, it's by faith alone.

Thirdly, the third word is assembly, and that is the church. Now, here's where Baptists come in, right?

Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin began reforming the church, and they didn't go far enough.

But the Bible is being read by people all over Europe, the Reformation spread to England, you begin to have men that realize, hey, if we're going to take the

Bible seriously, we've got a few things left to do here. We've got to see that the church is not part of the state, but it's an autonomous entity.

Okay, the Baptists were the first, like, this is really radical. All right, Baptists first would be like, this doesn't go together.

These are two separate realms. God has ordained the state, and God has ordained the church, and these things are not mixed.

In fact, you look in church history, every time you mix the church and state, what happens? Corruption. Corruption, corruption, corruption.

All right, members of the church aren't members of the state, but rather those who've been born again, and it's those who've been born again that are to receive the ordinance of baptism, and it is those men who came over from Europe who we can even trace a direct line to the

SBC, which began in 1845. So, all that's saying, we're kind of a little bit, well, we're right at time.

Let me give you some summary thoughts. This is why I say the Reformation still matters today, because the recovery of the biblical gospel and how man is reconciled to God is still pertinent to our day, and because of the principle of semper reformanda, always reforming, which means that the church is to ever be reforming according to the

Scripture. The Holy Spirit, through the Scriptures, is the driving force in all of this. In other words, listen, don't ever get to a point where you think, well, there's nothing in my life or practice or whatever that needs to be reformed.

That's wrong. As long as you're living, we always need to be looking at the Bible and letting the

Bible shape and fashion us into the people that God would have us to be, to always be checking our beliefs, our practices, our traditions against the

Bible. Look, at the end of the day, if it's our tradition that says one thing and the Bible says something else, what do we go with?

We must go with the Bible. Now, that's easy to say, but sometimes we have some really big traditions, right?

Off the top of my head, a lot of people would say, and actually, I think I'll address this next week, the way you get saved is you ask

Jesus into your heart. That's not in the Bible. Ask Jesus into your heart.

That's not in the Bible, right? So, whoa, what? So, we let the

Bible speak and not tradition. That's just an example. So, the authority and sufficiency of Scripture is under attack even today.

This is not a battle that has been won. I mean, the war is won in Christ, obviously. I mean, like, it's still under attack today.

Maybe you didn't realize this, but it is. Even sometimes in quote -unquote

Protestant denominations, right? But we must remember Psalm 113.

If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? The Bible is our foundation. It's where we stand.

We live and die on this book. So, the Reformation is never over. We can never slack off.

We can never get lazy. We must always be trusting God's Word and seeking to reform any areas of our lives or church that do not line up with what

God says. We've gone a little bit over. I'm going to pray. We're going to stop the recording, and then

I'm going to ask if you have any questions or comments, and we can certainly field those.

So, let me close with a word of prayer. Lord, we're grateful for your mercy. We're grateful for the

Reformation and the men that you used, the women that you used in that.

We pray, Lord, that we wouldn't just have a wrong view of church history, but we'd look back, and that would encourage us to spur on in the faith here, now, in the present and the future.