Each October, here in the church, we recognize
Reformation Month.
That is because on the 31st of October,
1517, Martin Luther kneeled his now famous 95
Theses to the church door in Wittenberg in
protest against the seal of papal indulgences.
You may pay and sin without having to
pay for your sin.
That was the message, and Luther objected.
Some churches recognize Reformation Day.
It's a pity that to most, the 31st
of October is Halloween.
All Hallows Eve, something goes back to medieval
Europe, as an observance.
I remember as a little child, we put
on false faces and ducked for apples and
all the rest of that.
And got apple pie, and if you got
the right piece, you get money wrapped up
in it or something.
I can understand kids always wanting to raffle
whatever the occasion.
But it is a pity that in the
Protestant church, there seems to be little appreciation
for the real significance of the 31st of
October.
Certainly one of the most pivotal days in
the history, not only of the Church of
Christ, but of the entire Western world.
The world as we know it today, whether
liberal politicians like to acknowledge it or not,
the world as we know it today, is
the mostly direct, and if not direct, certainly
the indirect product of the Protestant Reformation.
As I say, some churches, therefore, few in
number, recognize Reformation Day.
When I came to Greenville, I decided, and
I felt it was necessary to do so,
I decided that each month of October, I
would set aside the Sabbath evenings to deal
with the great themes of the Protestant Reformation,
the story of God's mighty movings, and over
the years we have traced the Reformation in
England, in Scotland, in Germany, in Switzerland, even
in Bohemia, as it was once called, later
years the area of Czechoslovakia.
We have dealt with the issues, the themes,
the events, the people, the biographies, all in
an attempt to do what the Bible tells
us to do, that is to rehearse the
mighty acts of the Lord.
This year we will again recognize Reformation Month,
and I will state right at the very
beginning, while I'm not intending to deal with
the Reformation in place A or B, or
whatever, in these weeks, it is my intention
to lay hold, once again, of some of
the key thoughts, themes, issues, stands, and illustrate
them as necessary from the history of the
Reformation, so that we as a church may
recapture, if we have lost it, or at
least re-strengthen and refresh our vision of
and commitment to the great work that God
did for the Christian church and for the
world in and through the Protestant Reformation.
And it is my prayer that God will
touch many, especially young men, touch hearts.
We live in an age of inflated heads
and empty hearts, an age when people get
so much trivial knowledge about God, His Christ,
His church, His work, but the head does
not affect the heart.
There is a crisis today in the work
of God for men, and that is not
to demean the role of the women, for
they have a role to fill and there
is a need for young women giving themselves
to serve Christ.
But no church movement is ever going to
be greater than the men God raises to
support it.
There is a crisis of need for men
sold out to God, counting all but loss
to serve Christ.
Men of the book, men of prayer, men
of heart, men of vision, men of courage,
men of commitment, who will face any foe,
pay any price to do the will of
God.
Anointed men, preaching men, spirit-filled men, we
have had our fill of church administrators filling
pulpits.
We have had our fill of PR men
filling pulpits.
What America needs, what the church of Christ
needs, what the free Presbyterian church needs, is
a return of the prophet to the pulpit.
One of the most fundamental descriptions of preaching
in the New Testament is prophesying.
Not necessarily foretelling the future.
The role of the prophet is to speak
with divine authority, with divine anointing, with divine
courage, to make known the will and way
of God to the people, whether they will
hear or whether they will forbear.
That is the prayer and the burden that
I bring to the pulpit in these Reformation
services in 2003.
I'm always glad to have help in Reformation
Month.
Once again, if my memory is right, the
final Wednesday evening of the month, Dr. Pinozian
will be our special guest, and I ask
you to keep that Wednesday free.
Make sure you are here.
Some of you may never have heard Dr.
Pinozian's now-renowned first-person presentations of some
of the great Reformers.
He started doing them in this pulpit, and
nobody who was ever here the first time
he ever came as Martin Luther will ever
forget it.
It was one of those high-water marks.
Every time he comes, we are blessed, and
I'm looking forward to his return.
There's a lot of work involved in that,
so he's only doing one this year, but
we're looking forward to that, and I trust
you'll be with us.
As again, what we seek to do is
rehearse the mighty acts of the Lord.
I don't think I've started to preach yet.
I haven't even got to the Bible reading.
We have another saying in Northern Ireland.
It speaks for itself.
The night's a pup.
Just work that one out.
The night's a pup.
A long way to go before it becomes
a dog.
The people at home tonight not thinking anything
of desecrating the Sabbath day by watching four
hours of football.
Well, actually, about one hour of football, four
hours of timeouts, and to let all those
overweight linemen recapture their breath, but we're not
getting into that.
That's why I tell you rugby's the greatest
game in the world, but I'm not even
preaching in that tonight.
So we're not going to worry about the
time, at least I'm not.
People down in the nursery may.
My wife tells me every preacher should have
to work in the nursery.
I tell you, one diaper change would be
enough for me.
I may stop them crying, but that's about
it.
Galatians chapter 4.
Galatians chapter 4, verse
19.
Reading to chapter 5, verse 1.
My little children, of whom I travail in
birth again, until Christ be formed in you,
I desire to be present with you now,
and to change my voice, for I stand
in doubt of you.
Tell me, ye that desire to be under
the law, do you not hear the law?
For it is written that Abraham had two
sons.
The one by a bondmaid, the other by
a free woman.
But he who was of the bondmaid was
born after the flesh, but he of the
free woman was by promise.
Which things are an allegory, for these are
the two covenants.
If I may interject there, I'm not going
to be expounding the allegory tonight.
I freely admit, on reading this, this is
one of those passages in Paul, of which
Peter spoke when he said Paul wrote some
things that were hard to be understood.
This is one of those difficult passages.
However, I'm not trying to shirk it, nor
am I trying to sell tapes, but I
have dealt with this passage in detail, and
if you wish to have the exposition, you
may just listen by tape.
But for tonight, I cannot return to that
exposition.
Simply, Paul says, Hagar and Sarah and their
sons are an allegory, for these are the
two covenants, the one from Mount Sinai, which
gendereth to bondage, which is Hagar.
For this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia,
and answereth to Jerusalem, which now is, and
is in bondage with her children.
But Jerusalem, which is above, is free, which
is the mother of us all.
For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren, that
bearest not.
Break forth and cry, thou that travailest not.
For the desolate hath many more children than
she which hath a husband.
Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the
children of promise.
But as then he that was born after
the flesh persecuted him that was born after
the Spirit, even so it is now.
Nevertheless, what saith the Scripture?
Cast out the bondwoman and her son.
For the son of the bondwoman shall not
be heir with the son of the free
woman.
So then, brethren, we are not children of
the bondwoman, but of the free.
Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ
hath made us free, and be not entangled
again with the yoke of bondage.
That last verse that we have read will
form our text this evening.
Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ
hath made us free, and be not entangled
again in the yoke of bondage.
The epistle to the Galatians has always been
a favorite epistle among Protestants.
The great themes of this epistle are the
truths which launched the Protestant Reformation and inspired
individual Christians, churches, and at times even nations
to great and heroic deeds.
In Galatians, Paul reels off one after another
the major themes of the Gospel.
The sovereignty of the will of God in
the redemption of sinners.
The soul and all sufficient merits of Jesus
Christ in procuring that redemption.
The free justification of sinners through faith in
Christ without any input of merit from any
works of their own.
And then one of the truly outstanding marks
of this epistle, the theme of the liberty
in Christ of the Christian man.
Now our text tonight obviously deals with this
subject of liberty.
Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ
hath made us free.
Time does not permit me to give any
prolonged exposition of the text, but do remark
that Christ makes His people free.
Whom the Son sets free is free indeed.
There is a liberty that belongs by right
to the people of God.
He hath not given us the spirit of
bondage.
He has not bound us in the prison
house of fear, of uncertainty, of human speculation,
or of the tyranny of human ideas.
He has set us free.
Speaking as a committed, what the world calls
Calvinist, what I believe is simply believing the
Bible, allowing God to say whatever He wants
to say, and believing it, whether I can
explain it or not, so that when He
speaks in the highest terms of a predestinating
decree, I do not question why has God
the right.
I rejoice that He does it.
When, on the other hand, He speaks of
a love that reaches to this vast world
of ours and commands us to preach Christ
to every man commanding his repentance, I do
not try to trim it according to my
belief in predestination.
I accept what God says.
By the way, it is no paradox.
It is simple truth.
But as what the world calls a Calvinist,
I have to confess that it grieves me
to the core that the cry of Christian
liberty has degenerated into the so-called right
of Christians to drink beer, smoke cigarettes, or
whatever.
That is Christian liberty.
Most of the people who promote it are
liars.
Now, that is going to go out over
Sermon Audio, and I'll get a few emails.
Are you daring to call these people liars?
Yes, I am.
Most of them, not because they don't believe
what they're saying, but because they are so
addicted to their booze and their weed, and
yet they have the temerity to term it
liberty.
Most of these people do what they're doing.
Just ask them to stop it, and you'll
find it would be for them very, very
difficult.
It's not liberty.
If you tell me your bondage, your addiction
is Christian liberty, I take the freedom, note
the word, to tell you I believe it's
a lie.
In my book, The Fruit of the Spirit,
I deal a little with this, not a
lot, in my usual very, very restraint and
most uncontroversial manner.
And I talk about these people who say
there is no command not to take alcohol.
And I simply quote the Scripture which says
that you're not even to look upon the
wine when it's red, when it moves itself
in the cup, which anybody takes to be
a description of alcoholic wine.
And by the way, do not believe that
wine is necessarily alcoholic.
The Bible uses the word to describe the
cluster while it's still in the vine, when
it's just off the vine, when it's unfermented,
and all the way through to fermented wine.
So the word wine, whether in Hebrew, Greek,
Latin, or any of the classical languages, has
a very wide meaning, not the restricted meaning
we give it today.
I simply said, if that's not a prohibition,
I wouldn't know a prohibition if I saw
one.
I was getting a very good review, actually,
of the book in the leading evangelical newspaper
in England.
The reviewer was quite taken with the book,
actually, till he came to that part.
And he said, the writer tends to be
dogmatic.
The publisher copied that out and showed it
to me and underlined, Stanley Barnes bought me
a book and he says, we all know
that you tend to be dogmatic.
He wrote that, and I said, you know,
I take that as an insult.
I do not tend to be dogmatic.
I am dogmatic.
And when the Bible says don't look at
it, look, I'm just a simple Irish man.
If the Bible says don't look at it,
it doesn't mean go and guzzle the stuff.
And yet, yet, for the vast majority of
those who are always talking about Christian liberty,
the only liberty they're talking about is the
liberty to drink alcohol or smoke tobacco.
When I asked some of them some years
ago, what will you do when they legalize
pot?
They had no answer.
The only reason for not smoking cannabis is
it's against the law.
Well, let me tell you, it's not going
to be against the law for very long.
Already in Europe, in many places, it's perfectly
legal.
If they haven't already done it, they're just
about to do it in England.
So you can go out and smoke pot
just as legally as you can go out
and smoke tobacco.
And if the law of the land is
the only reason for not doing it, we're
now going to have a race of preachers
getting up to establish Christian liberty to smoke
pot.
God helped the cause of Christ when the
Reformed churches have got to this.
Because you know, Christian liberty, whatever you think
of the how you should exegete the Scriptures
that deal with alcohol, and I quite realize
that there are other forms of exegesis that
challenge what I say.
I think they're wrong.
But whatever you think of that, when Christ
makes His people free, the freedom that He
gives them is twofold fundamentally.
Number one, it is the freedom from having
to establish a righteousness by their own works
that would merit acceptance with God.
It is freedom from the covenant of works.
And secondly, it is freedom from human impositions
upon their conscience.
It is freedom from the traditions of men.
Luther, when he stood before the diet of
worms, said, my conscience is captive to the
Word of God.
A conscience captive to the Word of God.
So that the decrees of popes and of
councils, the statements of priests or of pastors,
the conclusions of confessions of faith are all
brought down to the touchstone of the Scriptures
of truth.
And it is not what the confession of
faith says that binds the heart.
It is what the Word of God teaches
that binds the conscience.
Nothing else.
I believe our confession of faith to be
a true reflection and exposition of the teaching
of the Word of God.
But I believe that not because of the
authority of the confession, but because of the
authority of the Bible to which I have
subjected it in my new examination.
Christ makes His people free.
We sometimes sing the song free from the
law.
Oh happy condition!
That is not free from obeying the law
of God.
It is free from the law as a
covenant of works.
Free from the law as the means of
earning our way to heaven.
Free from its curse.
Free from its condemnation.
That's what it is.
Christ makes His people free.
Now this liberty, as the text makes clear,
is under constant attack.
Prior to the Protestant Reformation, the Church of
Rome had done such a successful job in
opposing the Christian liberty that Paul is speaking
about here, that for about a thousand years,
few people even dreamed that such a liberty
existed.
During the Reformation, the Church of Rome made
the most strenuous efforts and employed every weapon
in her arsenal to crush the preaching of
the Gospel and the promulgation of this doctrine
of the liberty of the Christian man.
That attack has never lessened.
Free justification.
By free, I mean what Paul meant in
Romans chapter 3, verse 24, being justified freely.
That is gratuitously.
That's a big word.
We will use that word again when I
get finally to return to the series of
messages in Romans.
We'll be at Romans 3.22 next time,
God willing.
And that word gratuitous is a very important
word in the doctrine of justification.
Being justified freely, gratuitously, that is without any
cause in us by anything that we have
done, by His grace, through the redemption that
is in Christ Jesus.
The Bible tells us a threefold cord is
not easily broken.
Here are the three parts of the cord.
Justified freely.
The Greek has been translated in John 15
.26 without a cause.
Justified freely.
Justified by grace.
Justified through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus.
This doctrine of free justification is the very
heart of the Gospel.
Without this, there is no Gospel.
There is no talk of pardon.
There is no hope of grace.
There is no ground of acceptance.
There is no doctrine of reconciliation.
At least scriptural doctrine.
There is nothing left of the Gospel unless
we hold to this doctrine of a free
justification received by faith alone.
This doctrine today is an almost unknown truth.
If you want to prove that, listen up.
You tell me the number of churches in
Greenville.
And I am not saying this because Greenville
is the worst of places.
I believe in all America there is not
a better place.
This is still the buckle on the Bible
belt.
Many churches in Greenville, out of all the
hundreds and hundreds that we have, teach their
people the doctrine of a free justification.
How many?
I guarantee the number in comparison to the
total is minuscule.
And then if you go to the preachers
who actually mention justification or who quote a
text on justification and listen very carefully and
ask yourself, does that preacher begin to understand
the import of the phrase that Paul uses
again and again, the righteousness of God.
Does he understand it?
In fact, most preachers who mention it haven't
a clue in the world as to what
it imports.
They mix it up with the eternal attribute
of God's being, that He is a righteous
God.
And in some way or other, God transfers
His eternal attribute of righteousness to us.
It's crazy.
It's unscriptural.
It's not the gospel.
The righteousness of God in justification of which
Paul speaks, that righteousness which is impure to
us is the righteousness of Christ's obedience.
Study Romans 5.17-19 and you'll see
that.
It is the righteousness of Christ's obedience.
It is the merit of Christ's fulfillment of
the law as a covenant of works for
Him in order that He should establish for
us a covenant of grace.
This doctrine is almost unknown.
And once more millions are being brought under
bondage to human traditions or as happens in
many evangelical churches to people who have sincerely
and I might say successfully sought Christ for
saving grace.
They're being manipulated by human authority apart from
Scripture.
I don't want to get off on a
rabbit trail.
You know me, if you come here, I
never like to do that because I make
rabbit trails into super highways and stay on
them for a long time.
I have had people come visit this church
and go out thinking I'm an apostate because
I don't have 15 minutes of singing just
as I am and put your hand up
for this and put your hand up for
that.
If you haven't got your hand up to
be saved, you end up, if you've ever
had a mother, a father, a grandmother, a
grandfather, if you've ever had a head or
a toe, put your hand up.
You know these preachers that must get their
hand up for something.
So they go out saying he doesn't make
an appeal.
I never finish a service without an appeal
because the Word of God demands a response.
And I ask for that response.
But here's the thing.
Here's the strange thing.
These, and this is what I talk about
being manipulated by the traditions of man.
There are people who will go out picking
holes because I don't have the kind of
appeal that was never known in the Christian
church throughout the first 90% of its
existence.
Never known in it.
But they can sit in churches where in
30 years they have never once heard the
exposition of the doctrine of a free justification
by the imputation of the merits of Jesus
Christ received by faith alone.
They have never once heard it.
And it never bothers their conscience.
That's only one example of manipulation.
I could give you many.
And you'll find our evangelical and fundamental ideas.
To be honest, I've sat in Reformed churches
where the same thing has been done.
Where there's a manipulation of the people to
do what the preacher wants them to do
by heaping guilt upon them, hiding from the
people the freedom of the justified man.
What is it?
It is again the attack upon the liberty
of the gospel.
And of course there is an even bigger
attack because today various ecumenical, if you're not
aware of the word, ecumenical comes from a
Greek word that means the inhabited earth.
It speaks of something bringing the world together.
Ecumenical activities that proceed on the basis of
the denial or the dilution of Paul's gospel
of justification.
The ecumenical activities of the Protestant churches have
since, well, a long way before 1948, they
were in train, but since 1948 they have
been headed up by the World Council of
Churches and its National Councils of Churches.
The World Council has had to reassess its
role.
I'm not going to preach on that tonight.
It's still a major enemy of the purity
of the gospel.
But there are others, ecumenical activities.
There's a charismatic aspect to ecumenism.
One of the fathers of the modern charismatic
movement said that to be truly charismatic you
must be ecumenical.
To be truly ecumenical you should be charismatic.
Many charismatics have used their common experience, a
spurious one by the way, professed experience of
the Holy Spirit, especially their speaking in tongues
which are not even remote cousins of the
gift of tongues in the New Testament, which
were the gift of foreign languages.
They used this common experience to bring Roman
Catholics and Protestants, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists,
Pentecostalists, all together on the basis of a
shared delusive experience, but on the basis of
the rejection, denial or delusion of the gospel
that Paul preached.
The battle is underway.
The tragedy is very few people realize where
the battle lines are truly drawn.
When you look at Galatians 5 verse 1
you must say that the liberty that Christ
gave us must be maintained without compromise.
He says stand fast in this liberty, be
not entangled again in the yoke of bondage.
Now this text therefore has a message that
we as Christians need to pay particular attention
to.
As I said, Paul's themes in Galatians became
some of the most compelling issues that drove
the Protestant Reformation.
But if there was a Reformation, and there
was, there was also and has continued to
be a Counter-Reformation.
The Counter-Reformation is the name given to
Rome's attempt to nullify, to reverse and ultimately
to remove all the gains and indeed all
the signs of the Protestant Reformation.
And the Counter-Reformation has never really stopped.
It is in full swing today.
Today it's being prosecuted not only by the
Vatican, but by a number of compromising Protestants
who are heavily engaged in ecumenical dialogue or
collaboration with the Church of Rome.
And somebody like Chuck Colson will put their
argument very cogently.
The argument is that in the face of
rampant secularism, we cannot afford to maintain our
historic differences with Rome and our rejection of
Rome as a Christian Church.
We can't afford to do that.
If you want to know just how vitriolic
the opposition to the historic Protestant stand can
be, cast your mind back a little to
the last presidential election.
When the president of Bob Jones University had
the temerity, and I thank God for this,
to say that the Church of Rome was
not a Christian Church and have the university
website accurately deal with it as an unbiblical
cult.
And I admire him for taking that stand.
Thank God for the courage in at least
one recognizable leader in fundamentalism to have enough
gumption to tell the truth on this matter.
But man, once he did so, the furies
were let loose.
John McCain, that mighty senator of ill repute,
that demagogue of the worst order, stooping to
the business of lies and hypocrisy, did all
he could to turn the resources of the
U.S. Congress, of the media, of the
Church of Rome, against this one institution.
Why?
It had nothing to do with Bob Jones'
dating policy.
Liar McCain knew about that dating policy for
years.
It only became an issue when Dr. Bob
had the temerity to say Rome is not
a Christian Church.
People like Colson will tell you we can't
afford to take that stand.
Look at the number of Roman Catholics there
are in the world.
We need them to fill out our ranks
in the battle against secularism.
We can't afford to cut off Rome.
I want to tell you the truth is
we can't afford not to.
According to the Word of God, Rome is
the perpetual enemy of truth and liberty.
I freely admit that there are instances throughout
history of individual Roman Catholics, of heroic vision
and action for which we would have to
thank God.
But Rome as a system has never been
the friend of liberty, whether you're talking about
evangelical liberty, social liberty, political liberty, or national
liberty.
Rome has never, never been the seedbed of
liberty.
And in the Bible's prophesied climax of the
end of the age and the events surrounding
it, Rome appears as the harlot queen of
the man of sin, the greatest destroyer of
life and liberty in the history of the
world.
The Reformers saw all that.
The Reformers believed all that.
The Reformers acted on the truth of these
propositions.
What I'm saying is that we need to
recapture the spirit of the Reformers and maintain
the work that they commenced.
I say commenced, because they never thought for
a moment that they had finished the work
of the Reformation.
They spoke of the church as reformed, yet
always reforming.
In other words, not living in the past.
Some of the reformed have the tendency always
to want to go back to the 16th
century.
But we're not to live in the past.
We are always to be responding to the
current situation in the light of the immutable
truths of the gospel so as to ensure
our continuing conformity to the Word and will
of God.
That's the call of our text.
Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ
hath made us free.
I want you to think with me of
maintaining the truth, the cause, and the benefits
of the Protestant Reformation.
Now, I have to be honest that there
are people here who have not been at
Reformation Month services.
You've not heard me or Dr. Pinozzi or
any of our other speakers deal with the
history of the Reformation in England or in
Scotland or in Germany or anywhere else.
You may have heard some strange things about
the Reformation.
I get things sent to me, and no
doubt after this I'll get a few more
things sent to me by self-appointed historians
who have as much sense in reading history
as I have in reading Double Dutch.
And so you may have heard some strange
things about the Reformation.
What was it?
As we'll see, it was a multifaceted movement
or series of events.
But fundamentally, the Reformation was a mighty work
of God.
When you read history, and by the way,
I hope you will, I know that there
are some pin-headed people and forgive my
being blunt, but I don't have time to
talk around the bush.
Some pin-headed people who believe that it's
not the job of a church to deal
with history.
You want to read your Bible again?
It commands it.
So, read a little history.
Don't think you're an expert just because you've
read a few chapters of one book.
I've been reading history for many years, and
I am far from being a historian.
In fact, when I look at these professional
historians, I see three or four of them
over here, when I look at these professional
historians, I'm sure they go home at times
trembling, like, well, I don't know, be like
jelly or with anger, or with ee-ah.
You know, I know when Dr. Barrett, being
a linguist, hears somebody get up to say
the Hebrew says and the Greek says and
they get it all mixed up, he just,
ooh, he, he just feels turned up inside.
And they may well feel the same when
I deal with history.
I'm still right, mind you, and they're wrong,
but we'll not get into that.
The 16th century was a time of seething
motion and commotion.
It was a rowdy century.
It was a century in which Europe began
to stir from a 1,000 year long
sleep of darkness and death.
In many ways, it marked the transition from
the medieval world to the modern world as
nations began to take shape and to struggle
toward the liberties that we now take for
granted.
Now, there were many engines of change in
those days.
You will read of the Renaissance.
I want you to notice how I pronounce
that for your benefit.
We were taught to pronounce it properly.
The Renaissance.
But whatever it was, you've heard of that.
Bringing with it a new interest in ancient
culture and writing and civilization.
You've heard about the invention of printing, movable
type printing.
And all that was certainly a mighty, mighty
engine of change.
But the mightiest engine of change in the
16th century was the Protestant Reformation.
And the men who led it were the
most important men in the world whose work
was the most enduring.
It was as a movement, it challenged the
old order based on the false claims of
the papacy that the Pope was the successor
of Peter, the vicar of Christ, the God
-appointed head of the church, that he was
also king of all earthly kings with the
right given by God and confirmed by the
Emperor Constantine in the 4th century to exercise
sovereign power over the nations.
The donation of Constantine actually turned out to
be a forgery along with the Isidorean decretals.
If you want more about those, you'll have
to read my dictionary or something else.
But on the forgery, the Pope was the
king of earthly kings, the right to set
up one, to pose another, and indeed to
rule as an earthly ruler.
The Reformation opposed the Roman church as the
true expression of the New Testament church, as
the bride of Christ, as Rome thought herself,
the guardian of divine truth outside of which
there was no salvation.
That was the movement of the Reformation.
It was a movement for God and for
His truth.
As I have indicated in the preamble, popular
view with a lot of truth in it
is that it started October 31, 1517 when
Luther nailed his theses to the church door
in Wittenberg.
Luther hadn't a notion in the world of
overthrowing the Pope when he did that.
Luther really believed the Pope doesn't know what's
going on here in his name.
If only we can get some scholarly debate,
the Holy Father will see this and he's
going to move and things will change.
Luther was a devoted Roman Catholic.
But it did start a mighty change.
The story, the stirring story of his stand
against indulgences, his increasing study of Scripture, his
increasing eminence as a theologian and expositor of
the Word of God led up to his
heroic stand in 1521 when he went as
a lonely monk to the Diet of Worms
on trial.
Although he had been given safe conduct, he
knew it was not worth the paper on
which it was written.
It's often said, and I think Dr. Pinozian
is right here, that when Luther stood up,
he did not boom out like a mighty
thunder.
Here I stand, I can do no other.
So help me God.
I think it's probably true that with great
simplicity, with deep humility, with a great deal
of physical fear, Luther quietly said, Here I
stand, I can do no other.
So help me God.
But you know, I never think of those
words said in a whisper.
And however Martin Luther said them, they were
not a whisper.
And I'll tell you why.
I think of a man with pounding heart
and trembling hand, putting a match to a
mighty pile of dynamite.
However timid and trembling the hand, the resultant
explosion rocked the world.
That's what Luther did.
And however he originally said it, this is
one of the most momentous statements ever made
by mortal man.
This is one of the most thunderous outbursts
of truth and oratory ever to move the
minds of men.
And ever since, men have been stirred with
the sight of the lonely Pagustinian monk facing
the legates of the Pope, the princes of
the realm, the powers of church and state
arrayed for his destruction and thunderously challenging them
with the Word of God, saying, I'm bound
to this book.
Here I take my stand.
I can do nothing else.
God help me.
That was the thunder that marked the beginning
and mighty progress of the Reformation.
Luther's writings spread like fire across Europe.
They invaded the great universities of Europe.
They laid hold of the minds of some
of the brightest and best young men in
Europe.
Soon, the whole continent was ablaze with the
controversy of Luther and the doctrine of Paul.
But though that may be said to be
the beginning, this is a work that ran
deep in history.
Behind Luther stood an army of Protestants before
their time.
Savonarola was a reformer more of moral values
and social action.
There were others going deeper into history.
Robert Grostest, Brad Wardeen, Gottschalk, people who took
a stand on individual issues.
There were others of greater importance, men like
John Huss and Jerome of Prague, behind whom
stood the great English man of God and
man of letters, John Wycliffe.
These were proto-Protestants.
You had groups like the Albegenses, the Catharoi,
as they're called.
History dismisses them as all sorts of half
-lunatic heretics.
Remember, almost everything we know about them is
the description given by Roman Catholic cardinals who
have never in history been known for telling
the truth.
These were people who wanted purity of life.
And I'm sure it's true that they missed
the boat doctrinally in many issues.
When I think of the darkness that they
were struggling out of, I thank God for
their desire for the Gospel to have an
effect in holy living.
Most of all, behind the Reformation stood the
Waldensians.
Perhaps the real trunk of the ancient church
of which the Church of Rome was but
an outgrowth and an aberration.
The Reformation wasn't an innovation, it was a
restoration of ancient orthodoxy.
It had immediate effects, powerful effects on the
social, economic, political, national and international stage in
the 16th century.
It brought upheavals to Europe as popes fought
to hold on to their wealth and their
privilege and power.
As some princes seized the opportunity in order
to dilute papal power and enrich themselves as
Henry VIII did at the cost of the
Roman church.
And as other princes rose up to defend
the pope's authority and privilege.
In other words, the Reformation was either the
cause or the catalyst for the convulsions that
rocked the world in the 16th century.
So it was a many-faceted movement but
most of all it was spiritual.
I want you to remember this, its authority
was Scripture.
Its message was free justification by faith in
the merits of Christ.
Its aims were the glory of God and
the good of the souls of men.
Its genius lay in its appeal to men
of every station.
And its results remained with us until this
very day.
The Gospel was preached and churches to preach
it were established all over Europe.
There was the formation of societies of free
men, subject only to the Word of God.
And millions from then till now have been
saved because of the restoration of the Gospel
in the 16th century.
It was not a tidy movement.
We tend to idealize the things that we
admire.
I must say I would love to be
able to idealize the Protestant Reformation.
It was not a tidy movement.
It was not a flawless movement.
With hindsight, see its easy to criticize people
way back in history.
You see this, you've seen it in the
Gulf War and now the Iraqi War.
You know all these armchair generals, they can
sit there and they can say what to
do, what not to do.
He made this mistake, he made the other
mistake.
Most of these pundits, you know, they know
nothing what they're talking about.
You can do that with history.
For me to criticize Luther and Calvin and
Zwingli and Knox and Latimer and Ridley it's
a flea barking at elephants.
With hindsight we can say there was too
much needless division and let us learn that
lesson today.
Luther was a mighty man but he was
a headstrong stubborn mule.
When he met Ulrich Zwingli and they disagreed
on the meaning of this is my body
and Luther came up with his own unique
incredible version of the meaning of the words
he would not even shake hands with the
man who had done in Switzerland for the
cause of Christ exactly what he had done
in Germany.
There was far too much needless division.
At times there was too ready a reliance
on princes and on the powers that be.
At times they were too slow the reformers
to see the full implications of their own
teachings and that's why at times there were
persecutions of dissenters.
When you go to Zurich to this day
you are delighted to remember you stand where
Zwingli stood.
I stood in the house he was born
in.
I stood in the church that he preached
in.
Then I looked at the river where he
drowned the Anabaptists.
All there were flaws but for all its
flaws the reformation was a powerful spiritual movement
marked by heroic deeds of courage and of
consecration.
My argument tonight is that the cause of
the reformation must be maintained by us today.
Because it's the cause of Christ and his
gospel and the cause of liberty.
As I pointed out the benefits of the
gospel are under assault.
Rome has found new energy and fresh apologists.
All their arguments are the same as they've
always been but they're getting a certain degree
of success.
Why?
Well, there's a general ignorance of reformed theology.
And second the leaven of Arminian theology which
is forgive the introduction of theological terms it's
what we call in theology semi-Pelagianism which
is the official doctrine of the Church of
Rome.
And Arminianism therefore has led to the opening
of doors by imbuing the minds of Protestant
people with a perversion of truth so close
to the Roman Catholic.
It doesn't seem much reason to stand against
Rome other than bigotry.
Standing against Rome out of bigotry is unworthy
of a Christian.
Standing against Rome out of devotion to Christ
and his gospel is entirely worthy of a
Christian.
In the face of all the opposition the
gospel is facing today, the need is obvious.
We need to see the importance of the
issues involved and give ourselves to maintain the
cause.
But as we close tonight I want you
to go home with this in your mind.
It's not my job or my intention to
teach you history.
Oh it has its value but only if
it has an effect today.
To maintain the cause of the Reformation we
must actively promote the truths and the principles
that undergirded it.
Now there's a big subject and I don't
get into it tonight.
What were the principles and truths of the
Reformation?
Would it surprise you if I told you
that Martin Luther congratulated Erasmus by telling him,
Erasmus you are the only man to put
your finger on what the real issue of
the Reformation is.
Here's the surprising thing it was not sola
scriptura the Bible only as our authority.
It was not justification by faith alone.
It was not the priesthood of all believers.
Now those are very important Reformation truths but
Erasmus put his finger on what he said
was the nub of the matter and Luther
said you are the only man to get
it right.
What was it?
It was Luther's and later Calvin's and every
other Reformers doctrine of the bondage of the
human will.
Erasmus wrote on free will.
Luther wrote one of his greatest works bombastic
in places but brilliant in its presentation the
truth of the depravity of man and the
utter sovereignty of God in his regeneration and
salvation.
We need to get back to a proper
view of God and man.
We need to maintain the solas of the
Reformation sola scriptura the Bible only as our
authority.
Grace alone by grace are you saved through
faith alone not mixed with works in Christ
alone to the glory of God alone the
five solas of the Reformation we need to
get back to maintaining them.
We need to get back to Christian liberty
living in liberty without license knowing that every
Christian is a priest with a right to
go directly to God and to bring anything
presented to him to the touchstone of scripture
to instruct his conscience and yet not living
in anarchy.
It's just not good enough what's happening in
Protestantism today that one opinion is as good
as another do you notice what's happening when
people come to the Bible they say well
now what this says to me is hold
a second I don't want to disrespect you
but with all the respect in the world
I don't really care what this says to
you nor should you care what this says
to me what we're dealing with there is
pure unadulterated unfettered human imagination I have people
come to me with a text of scripture
do you see what this says to me
well if the Bible says that to them
I must say it can mean anything to
anybody the Protestant Reformation got to this what
does the Bible mean by what it says
that's the part what does God intend us
to see here that's the thing that matters
we're not looking for anarchy we're looking for
liberty without license we need to have an
undying opposition to all people and anti-Christian
pretenses it's not for nothing that the reformers
unitedly fingered the Pope as anti-Christ was
that because they were bigots no, they took
this Bible they realized there are many anti
-Christ and this is certainly one of them
and he's the big one up until now
they saw the portrait of anti-Christ they
looked up and they saw the Pope and
they said man that's identical we've got to
have a total commitment for the spread of
the gospel through preachers sold out to him
that's what the reformers did now listen, it
cost some of them their lives it cost
others every comfort of life but God crowned
their labors and you're here tonight because of
what those men did and those women too
you're here tonight because of what they did
what we need is to commit ourselves to
something worth living for and that's the sustaining
and the maintaining of the cause of Jesus
Christ I said at the beginning there's a
crisis of need for young men this church
is not exempt but we do have a
vision, we do have a burden and I
tell you quite honestly the only reason the
Free Presbyterian Church is in existence today is
the maintenance and the spread of the cause
of God as it was expressed through the
Protestant Reformation that's going right back to the
Bible, we go back through Calvin and Luther
and the others right to Paul it's the
same truth I wonder if you ever caught
the vision for such a work what are
you going to do with your life you
young fellows what are you going to do
with your life if you go on the
way you're going is what you're doing really
worth living for will it mean anything when
you stand before God now I want to
speak to you as a Protestant the old
Puritan ethic that all legitimate labor is sanctified
and is worthy of a Christian do not
misunderstand me God does not intend everybody to
be a preacher and the labor of every
Christian if it is moral and legitimate is
worthy of a Christian whether you're brushing the
streets stocking the shelves of a grocery store
doing people's accounts hate to say this even
taking their taxes teaching, whatever worthy of a
Christian but I fear there are some on
whose heart God has placed a burden before
whose eyes God has placed a vision of
greater things but the way seems hard the
pay seems small the difficulties seem enormous more
and more young men are turning aside to
the safe way as it appears when the
cry goes up for men sold out to
God a cry to be a soldier in
the greatest army in the greatest battle of
all the ages a cry to be a
saint a cry that's
the need may God raise you stir your
heart that you may come with Paul newly
converted and ask what Christ would have you
to do let's bow our heads in prayer
tonight as I said I would at the
beginning I've taken liberties with time and I'm
going to take one more liberty before I
close with prayer I want you to take
that burning question in your heart in your
lips before the Lord Lord what would you
have me to do here's my life you've
purchased it with precious blood fill me with
your spirit and use me as you will
and if perchance you're here tonight without Christ
you know nothing about being justified set free
from guilt your guilt is still as big
as a mountain and as black as the
pit still far from God and you know
no pardon or peace what I've given you
is history that changed the world it's not
just history it's truth that can change you
if you're not saved I invite you to
Christ come and let me open the book
with you to point you to the Son
of God the only Savior of sinners Father
in Heaven bless thy word set souls free
in Christ tonight and those whom thou hast
set free keep them free from every entanglement
the old yoke of bondage God raise up
a race of preachers prophetic men who will
fearlessly take their stand for King Jesus prosper
the cause of the gospel we ask of
thee in Jesus name part us now with
thy blessing may the grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ our Savior the love of God
our Heavenly Father the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit our sanctifier and comforter be our portion
now and evermore Amen