The Incomparable Influence of Martin Luther

Romans 1:16-17 and the Power of the Gospel

Amen. Let's continue to stand and open our Bibles to the first chapter of Romans, verses 16 and 17. I think I have preached this verse more than any other, so I know many of you have heard me talk about it before.

Some of you have heard me preach it. But I also, when I preach on the street, when I go out with Mike and we do open air preaching, this is also the passage that I tend to go to, especially when speaking to, when we're outside the Jehovah Witness Convention.

It's just a powerful section of scripture and it's going to be our opening for today. 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. Father in heaven, I thank you for your word and I pray that now, as I seek to give an explanation of it and to talk about the history of our faith, I pray that you would keep me from error.

I pray that you would open up the hearts of your people to understand better what you are saying in your word. And I pray that those among us who have not yet bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, that this would be a moment for them whereby you would, in your matchless grace, give them the gift of repentance and faith.

I pray as we study today, Lord, that it would all be to your glory. And Lord, that you would bless it to our understanding. Keep me from error, God, in Jesus' name. A few weeks ago we began our series which is intending to mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

The Road to the Protestant Reformation

So we will be taking this series at least until October 31st because that is the 500th anniversary of the day that Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg. And we've covered, over the last few weeks, the time which led up to the Reformation.

We've looked at the Middle Ages and the false theology that had risen during that time and the reason for the need for Reformation. We've discussed the rise in papal corruption, the rise in false teaching.

And we've also discussed that even in the midst of all that, it wasn't as if there weren't those who were crying out against it. There were the dissidents, the Waldensians and the Paulicians. There were men like John Wycliffe and Jan Hus who stood against those things and were proclaiming the truth of the gospel even in the midst of great error.

Martin Luther's Early Life and Monastic Crisis

But today we're going to be moving to the time period most associated with the anniversary of the Reformation and that is the life of the incomparable Martin Luther. And that is the title of our message today, The Incomparable Influence of Martin Luther.

The very reason why we celebrate Reformation Day on October 31st is because that is the day of the publishing of the 95 Theses. There is a painting of Luther wherein you will see Wycliffe is striking a spark, Jan Hus is kindling the coal and Martin Luther is blowing it into a great flame.

And so that is sort of the picture is the idea of what was started with Wycliffe and what was continued with Hus was forced into a burning firestorm with the work of Martin Luther. And I have to admit this morning, I'm a little bit excited.

I may not look it, but today is an exciting day for me because even though I'm not a Lutheran, I find the man Luther to be fascinating and he is one of my heroes. Luther is a hero of mine not because he was a great theologian, and he was a powerful theologian, a theologian to be sure, but his theology has some issues and were he alive today, I don't know that he would like me very much.

I may have been excommunicated from his church for some of the things that I believe. So I know that there are some things about Luther that we would certainly disagree on. And I certainly don't call Luther a hero because he was infallible.

He made many mistakes and you may hear of those mistakes if you spend any time studying the life of Luther, you'll hear some things that he said that you may find personally offensive and didn't like very much and that's true too.

But Luther is a hero to me and I believe a hero to all of us because he stood against the tyranny of Rome and he fought for the truth of scripture against some of the most fierce opponents in all of history.

But what's interesting about Luther is that he didn't start his life with a desire to be a religious reformer. In fact, in his early life, he didn't want to be in the ministry at all. He didn't plan to be in the ministry.

He was born in 1483 to Hans and Margarete Luther and that's actually how it would be pronounced in German. It wasn't Luther as we pronounce but the Luther family in Eiselben, Saxony which is now Germany and Hans was a businessman.

He was actually a miner and he desired his son to be part of the growing middle class. This was during a time when the medieval time was starting to wane and they were starting to grow a more prosperous middle class in the world and so he wanted his son to be part of that.

He wanted his son to be a person of import in society and a person who would have a job that would make money that would take care of him and his wife as they got into their later years. And so he sent his son Martin to the University of Erfurt, the premier university in Germany and there he attained a master's degree and he was on his way to becoming a lawyer.

Martin Luther was trained in the subject of law and was going to become a lawyer. But in July of that year after having graduated with his master's degree, Luther was on his way home and he was caught in a violent storm.

And some of you have probably seen films about the life of Luther, maybe you've read history of the life of Luther but one of the most interesting parts of his life is what forced him into the ministry was as he was going home on horseback, he got caught in a lightning storm and as the lightning was popping all around him and he was fearing for his life, he cried out, Saint Anne, who by the way was the patron saint of his father's business, the mining business, Saint Anne, save me and I shall become a monk.

Well, as history would tell us, he did survive, I doubt with the help of Saint Anne, but he did survive his encounter, his brush with death and as a result, he held his vow. And he entered into the Augustinian order, which was the monks, on July the 17th, not just a few days after his encounter.

And this was something of which his parents were not excited because again, they had done everything they could in their power to ensure that their child would become someone of note and someone of at least middle class financial prosperity.

But now he was going to live the life of a monk, drinking water and eating rice and having very little and living a vow of poverty. And then later in the life of Luther, he would go to perform his first mass.

And Luther was quite a superstitious fellow. Luther's view of the table was very deeply entrenched, his view of the bread literally being the body and the cup literally being the blood of Christ. And the first time Luther ever performed a mass where he would stand and he would hold up the cup and he would offer the words of institution, he spilled the cup.

And his father was deathly ashamed of having, you know, first his son goes into the ministry, which is not what he wanted. And then to see his son flub his first attempt at bat, as it were, because in the priestly ministry, the performing of the mass was the high watermark of what the priest was supposed to do.

And here he spills the blood of Christ to the shame of his family. Well, many things over the next few years in the life of Martin Luther would begin to make him question everything that he was being taught in the monastery.

And the most pointed issue that Luther had, and this is really the focus of today's sermon, is that the most pointed issue that he had was his fear of God. Martin Luther was afraid of God. And he was afraid of God because he knew that God was righteous.

And he was afraid of God because not only did he know that God was righteous, but he knew that he was not. And Luther was concerned that even though he had become a monk, even though he had taken a vow to give up all earthly pleasure, to live in the cloister, to be apart from society, to not take a wife even for the enjoyment of companionship, but to be vowed to celibacy, to be vowed to poverty, to be vowed to the commitment of the scriptures alone, and the study of the Word of God, and the living out of a monastic life devoid of all earthly pleasures, he knew that even in that, he was unclean in the eyes of a holy God.

And Luther even says at certain points, he could not find God's love because all he could see was God's wrath. There were times when he would, and I've told this story before in other sermons, there were times when he would spend hours in the confessional.

And I come to wonder, what in the world would you have to confess? You're living in a monastery. There's nothing to do. As R .C. Sproul said, what did he say? I was coveting Brother John's bread. Or what?

What could he possibly have? But he would spend hours in the confessional trying to find peace for a troubled soul. And it got to the point where his superiors requested that he not return until he had something of note to confess.

Please do not return to us with these trivialities. Yet Luther knew there is no such thing as a trivial sin. And he knew that all of his sins were serious. And in his mind, one unconfessed sin could be between him and eternity.

Rome, Indulgences, and the Sale of Salvation

So his teachers sent him to Rome. And Martin Luther went to Rome, the holy city, to find his peace with God. But instead, he found even more turmoil for his soul. He sees a pope riding in armor on the back of a horse as he wore a knight prepared for battle.

And he wonders how this could be the vicar of Christ on earth. He goes to the steps of Pilate, where each step you take, you say the prayer, Our Father, and you kiss the step, and you go up the next step, and you're on your knees, and you go up these steps, as it were, an act of penance for the forgiveness of your sins.

He visits relics. Bones, supposedly from the apostles. Timbers, supposedly from the cross. And he finds no peace. Instead, he is surrounded by decadence and prostitutes, and all kinds of other things which had infiltrated the city of Rome, and had made it a city much not unlike our own Las Vegas.

He found there not peace, but even more frustration. So Luther moved from Saxony, where he was, to Wittenberg, to become a professor of theology in Wittenberg's new university. And it was there that he would truly begin to study the scriptures.

It's interesting that up until this point in his life, though he had been a minister and a monk, he had not really been a student of the Word, not to the extent that he would now be. And between 1513 and 1517, he would develop and clarify his own body of thought regarding the theology of the Bible, in particular the doctrine of salvation, and he would begin to understand that not only had the church erred, but the church had made a deadly error.

Because in the midst of all of this, a serious injustice was being forced upon the people. Because as Luther was developing his own body of theology, there was, in the church, a sale going on. What do you mean, a sale?

Well, there was a basilica that needed to be restored and built. And the basilica was St. Peter's in Rome. But to build this basilica, they needed money. And so the church leadership established a way to earn the money from the peasants.

They knew the people wanted to go to heaven. And they knew that the people believed that the church had the right to grant them entrance into heaven. They believed that the pope held the keys of St. Peter that were given to him by Jesus Christ himself.

He had the keys to heaven. In fact, how many of you have heard stories, when somebody dies, who do they see at the gate? St. Peter, right? And that's based on a theology of St. Peter holding the keys to heaven.

And because the pope was the vicar of Christ sitting in the seat of St. Peter, the pope had the ability to allow you into heaven or to bar you from heaven. And so the pope established the sale, which would amass a fortune.

The people want to get to heaven. We will allow them into heaven. But it will be at a price. It was not unlike today. There are prosperity preachers today who will sell you entrance into heaven.

They won't call it that.

They'll call it a prayer rag. Just send $9 .95. Or they'll send you a vial of oil that's been blessed. It's just $29 .95. Plus shipping.

Plus shipping.

The church employed men to go about selling these indulgences, and they would go out and they would sell them in the marketplaces with the seal of the pope. A letter from the pope which said to you, all of your sins are forgiven.

The most notable of these was Johann Tetzel. He was a powerful speaker, and he had a moving sales pitch. I don't know that the church has ever seen a salesman like Johann Tetzel. I want to read to you an excerpt from one of his sermons.

He was a friar, so he did preach. And this is an excerpt from his sermon on the subject of indulgences. Why are you then standing there? Run for the salvation of your souls. Be as careful and concerned for the salvation of your souls as you are for your temporal goods which you seek both day and night.

Seek the Lord while he may be found and while he is near. Work, as St. John says, while it is day, for the night comes when no man can work. Don't you hear the voices of your wailing dead parents and others who say, have mercy upon me, have mercy upon me, because we are in severe punishment and pain.

From this you could redeem us with a small alms. And yet you do not want to do so. Open your ears, as the father says to the son and the mother to the daughter. We have created you, fed you, cared for you, and left you our temporal goods.

Why then are you so cruel and harsh that you do not want to save us? Though it takes only a little. You let us lie in flames so that we only slowly come to the promised glory. You may have letters which let you have once in life and in the hour of death full remission of the punishment which belongs to sin.

What a sales pitch, huh? It's just a little money and your mother, who's in the flames of purgatory, could be set free. It's only an alms, a few alms, and you drop them into the coffer and as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.

Tetzel was selling the indulgence. And I have heard people say, well, that was then. The church no longer deals in indulgences. Beloved, that is not true. To this very day, the Roman Catholic Church deals in indulgences.

According to the Indulgentarium Doctrina, which is their Latin for the doctrine of the indulgence, it says, quote,. An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly deposed gains under certain defined conditions through the church's help when, as a minister of redemption, she dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions won by Christ and the saints.

That's a long sentence to simply say the church has the authority to apply to you the work of Christ through the indulgence. According to Catholic teaching, the sins which are dealt with in the indulgence have already been forgiven, but the punishment still stands.

And even though you're forgiven, you still have to get the punishment dealt with. According to Catholic Online, quote,. The first thing to note is that forgiveness of a sin is separate from the punishment of sin.

Through sacramental confession, we obtain forgiveness, but we aren't let off the hook as far as punishment goes. Question mark, or end quote. So the point is this. It's to simply say, yes, you can have forgiveness of sins, but you're still going to be punished.

And the only way to get rid of the punishment is through purgatory, but you can get your purgatory lifted through the indulgence. And again, one might think this is an old teaching, but it's not. It's still a new teaching.

According to Catholic Answers, one of the Catholic church's apologetic arms, it says, quote,. Indulgences are part of the church's infallible teaching. This means that no Catholic is at liberty to disbelieve them.

The Council of Trent stated that it condemns with anathema. Those who say that indulgences are useless or that the church does not have the power to grant them. You know what anathema is? It's the condemnation of God.

If you say that indulgences are useless or that the church does not have the right to grant the indulgence, you are under the curse of God, according to Roman Catholic teaching. And you say, well, that was 500 years ago.

No, this is today.

Just a few years ago, the Pope offered indulgences for those who would follow him on Twitter. He said, those who follow closely on Twitter will receive an indulgence. It's not quite when the coin in the coffer rings, but it's still a little shameless.

And see, that's what Luther was facing. Luther was preaching, as it were, against the ultimate injustice against God's people, the selling of salvation to God's people. And Luther was saying, no, this cannot be.

And because of his study of Scripture, Luther had come to the absolute conviction that salvation was not something that could be earned. It was not something that could be purchased. It was the gift of God alone.

And so he penned 95 statements against the teaching of indulgences. By the way, if you've never read the 95 theses, I'm going to say a few things about them. Number one, at the time of the writing of the 95 theses, Luther still believed in the papacy.

At the time of the writing of the 95 theses, Luther still believed in indulgences. The 95 theses don't deny the concept of indulgences. It denies the use of them to extort believers. So if you go and read them, understand, this is a historical moment in Luther's life where he's not really made the transition to a reformation yet.

He's moving in that direction, but this is a formative time in his life. And so he's experiencing now the position of looking at the church and all of its false teachings, and he's having to step back and evaluate.

But he knows there are some things that are absolutely wrong, and he writes 95 statements which he is willing to debate. That's what a thesis is. It's something you are willing to put forward and debate.

And here are 95 statements that I'm willing to put forward and stand on. And that's the whole reason, the whole idea of him nailing it to the wall. And there's even some debate as to whether or not that is historically accurate, whether it was nailed or whether he actually printed them and mailed them to all of the local churches, encouraging people to come.

It was the purpose of it was debate. Come and let us reason together on these issues. But I want to read just a few of what he wrote. I want to read just a few of the 95 theses. Of course, I don't have time to go through all 95.

And some of them, to us, would sound a little obscure anyway because he was dealing with a very historical snapshot in time that would be hard for us to understand. But listen to some of what he did write.

Number 27. They preach only human doctrines who say that as soon as the money clinks in the money chest, the soul flies out of purgatory. He immediately addresses right there, Johann Tetzel and his ilk.

Those people who are saying this are teaching human doctrines, not the doctrines of God.

Number 28.

It is certain that when money clinks in the money chest, greed and avarice can be increased. But when the church intercedes, the result is in the hands of God alone. Yeah, that money clinking in the chest is not saving a soul from purgatory, but it is increasing greed.

Number 32.

Those who believe that they can be certain of their salvation because they have indulgence letters will eternally be damned together with their teachers. That's heavy duty.

Number 35.

They who teach that contrition is not necessary on the part of those who intend to buy souls out of purgatory or to buy confessional privileges preach unchristian doctrines. See, that was the whole thing.

You don't have to repent. You don't even have to confess. Just buy the indulgence and you have forgiveness. And he said that is unchristian doctrine. Number 36. Any truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt even without indulgence letters.

That's a beautiful statement. Any Christian, with or without an indulgence, you have the right to forgiveness because it doesn't come through the indulgence. Number 37. Any true Christian, whether living or dead, participates in all the blessings of Christ in the church and this is granted him by God even without indulgence letters.

But the most cutting, and again I don't have time for all 95, but the most cutting, I think, and the one that probably got the attention of the Pope was number 86. Of the 95 theses, number 86, he says this, quote,.

Why does the Pope,.

Whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest man, build the Basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers? Why doesn't the Pope use his riches to build the Basilica?

I imagine that got the attention of the Pope probably more than the rest. And Luther's arguments, as you can imagine, were not greeted with great pleasure from the authorities of the church. In 1520, a papal bull, which was a letter from the Pope, a decree from the Pope, was published and it demanded that Luther recant his teachings.

And in the writing he called Luther a wild boar. He said, Lord, a wild boar has invaded thou vineyard. And an imperial gathering called a Diet was conferred in 120 days. And he would be taken before the Diet of Worms.

Worms was a place in Germany and Luther was commanded to go there. And on April 2nd, my birthday, not that that matters, but it's just interesting, on April 2nd, 1521, Luther was taken before the Diet of Worms and he was commanded by the leadership to recant everything that he had taught.

I want you to think about this. Luther is taken before the world of the church, as it were. And the church world, and I've talked about this in the previous weeks, the church world, the political and the spiritual were intertwined.

The emperor was considered God's ruler on earth and the Pope was considered God's heavenly man or spiritual leader on earth. But together, they made the rule of the world. And Luther is now not only going against Pope, but he's going against emperor as well.

So he's brought there and he's told to recant. Now you have to understand, Luther is living at a time where if you were condemned by Pope or emperor or both, you were condemned to a fire or a chopping block.

So when he was first brought before the council, Luther stood before them and he asked for 24 hours to think it over. Now some might say that's a cowardly approach. I want you to think about it for yourself for a moment.

You're facing the world and everyone is telling you you're wrong. All you have is the scripture and you know what the scripture says. But everyone in the world is telling you you're wrong and they're demanding that you recant.

And Luther said, I need time. Give me one day. On the next day, he's brought in and in his second appearance, he made a statement which is remembered to this day as one of the most noble stands for Christianity in the last thousand years.

He says, I've been asked to recant of my teachings, but they are of different kinds. Some of them are accepted Christian truth and to deny them would be to deny things that you all believe. Unless I am convinced by the testimony of scripture or by clear reason for I trust neither pope nor council since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves, I am bound by the scriptures for my conscience is captive to the word of God.

I cannot and I will not recant since to act against one's conscience is neither right nor safe.

Here I stand.

I can do no other.

God help me.

Amen.

The diet erupted and Luther was dismissed. The next day, the then 19-year-old emperor called Luther a notorious heretic and approved of his condemnation and placed a death sentence upon his head and said all of his writings were to be burned and his memory to be expunged from all of Europe.

But Luther had a friend. His name was Frederick the Wise and Frederick staged a kidnapping of Luther and stole him away to a place called Wartburg Castle and it was there at Wartburg that Luther would spend almost a year in hiding as his head was being sought.

But Luther did not sit in that castle doing nothing and that year that he was at Wartburg Castle he translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into the German language. The first time it had been translated into the language of the German people and it is today, even though it's gone through several revisions, it is still today the Bible that's used by the German people.

It is an amazing accomplishment that God used him for in that time. After a year Luther returned to Wittenberg to continue the reformations he had begun and time does not permit me to say all that he did but it was not to be that he would fall to the sword of the Emperor or to the sword of the Pope.

Luther would live out his life teaching the reformations that he had himself by the grace of God begun from the scriptures in his home where he lived with his wife herself, an ex-nun. She had left the position of being a nun and had become his wife and he would later write about the value of ministers having wives.

Luther, Justification by Faith, and the Call to Repentance

It is no exaggeration to say that Luther is one of the most influential figures in history particularly the Western world. His central teachings that the Bible is the central authority for the believer helped shape the core of Protestantism and the world is often conflicted about how to see him.

The Catholic Church sees him as a dangerous heretic. To this day he is called the heretic Martin Luther in Roman Catholicism. But the Protestants see him as a powerful tool and a powerful use of God to revive the Church and it is without doubt that God used him as a man to move the world.

But as I said earlier, that is not what Luther intended. Luther never intended to move the world. Luther intended to find peace for his own troubled soul. It just so happens that in finding peace for his soul, he brought that peace with God which comes through Jesus Christ to the Church which had long abandoned him.

And that is the key to Luther's life. And I call your attention back to Romans 1 because this passage he would mention was so influential in his life. Of course, not numbering it by number because these numbers were not put in place until well after Luther's death.

But in verses 16 and 17, Luther saw here where it says that the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. And he would say to people,.

He would say,.

Where in that do you find all of the teachings of Rome? You don't. Where do you find relics? Where do you find these prayers? Where do you find these false teachings? You don't. Justification is by faith and from faith to faith.

It is faith alone which justifies man before God. Beloved Luther was like so many people today. He was lost and he was an enemy of God and he had no peace. And he thought that his peace would come to him by finding some way to work into God's favor.

Maybe I can become a monk. Maybe I can become impoverished. Maybe I can remain celibate. Maybe I can beat my body with a whip. Maybe I can deprive myself of health. Maybe I can deprive myself of happiness.

And maybe in this deprivation, I will find some way to please God. But when he came face to face with this Scripture, he saw that the righteous do not live by self-flagellation. The righteous do not live by impoverishment.

The righteous do not live by working their way to heaven. But the righteous shall live by faith alone. And I ask the question, do you have peace with God today? That's what Luther so desperately desired and could not himself find it in his church because his church was showing him that the way to peace with God was through all of these works.

Are you, like Luther,.

Trying to find some peace with God through your works? Are you trying to work your way to heaven? I tell you, beloved, my friends, you cannot ever satisfy God by what you do. No matter how much you put in, no matter how much you contribute, no matter how much you do, you will be like Luther, scrounging and searching and frantically reaching for something that is unattainable if you are trying to find salvation in what you do.

It's not only unattainable, it's impossibly unattainable. But Luther found how salvation is attained not by works, but by faith in Christ. May that be our song forever. Father in Heaven, I thank You for Your Word.

And I thank You for men like Martin Luther who spent their lives committed to this Word. And though I know Luther was not perfect, and Luther is certainly not Christ, and I know I've done so much to point to Luther today, but Lord, I pray that the church would see that in doing so, I want us to point to Christ.

Because that is what Luther did. He pointed to the finished work of Jesus Christ.

We can do nothing.

Christ has done everything. We add nothing to His work on the cross. And we receive it by grace, through faith alone. God, if there are those here who see themselves as working their way into Your righteousness, as Luther saw himself, Lord, may it be that they repent and that they find in Christ not one to work toward, but one who is to be received by grace through faith alone.

And we pray it in His name and for His sake.

Amen.

Let's stand.