View Full Transcript
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. It's Pastor Wolfmother. This is the Sunday drive to church for reformation. Sunday, October 27th, the year of our Lord 2024. We'll dress the church red today and remember this great moment in the epochs of world history that we call the Reformation. This time when the treasures of the Gospel were dusted off and recovered for us to be able to see and rejoice in this comfort and wisdom of God. Absolutely beautiful and wonderful. And the service, I'm just looking at what we've got planned today. Just gorgeous. Revelation 14, Romans 3, John 8, Psalm 46. We'll talk about all of it. A mighty fortress. Just fantastic. Well, let's pray. Almighty and gracious Lord, pour out your Holy Spirit on your faithful people. Keep us steadfast in your grace and truth. Protect and deliver us in times of temptation. Defend us against all enemies and grant to your church your saving peace through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
[00:01:13] I'm looking at the bulletin cover, by the way, and I praise the Lord for Jonathan's wisdom, who has on the bulletin cover not a picture of Martin Luther, but a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ, crucified for us. And that's what the Reformation is about. Not. And this is just an important thing for us to remember. The Reformation is not about Martin Luther. The Reformation is about our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the one who died for us, who is the one who saves us, who is the one who loves us, who is the one who deals kindly with us and brings us through this difficult, dark world and troubled life, through our own tempted and weak and sinful flesh, and brings us to himself in heaven.
[00:02:09] God be praised for that.
[00:02:11] It's Jesus who established his church so that that good news would be preached in the earth, so that all people, all creatures, could hear this call to repentance and joy and peace in our Lord Jesus Christ. And the Reformation is one of those eras where that good news was lost and the Lord, through men like Luther and the other Wittenberg theologians, recovered that glorious comfort and peace and joy. And so we remember it. It's always the Sunday that's closest, that is before October 31st. And the reason is, it's an interesting connection. November 1st is All Saints Day in the old church calendar. And how that developed was, I think, that the church calendar was getting so full of all these different saints that they kind of ran out of room. And so they needed a day for all The Other Saints, really, instead of All Saints Day, it should probably be called all the Other Saints Days. Remembering, by the way, that when we say the word saint and when our friends who are Roman Catholics say the word saint, we mean something different. To be a saint is to be a holy one. We understand that all the baptized are saints. That's why I try to start almost all my sermons, dear Saints, just to remind you that you're baptized and so you're holy. Your sins are forgiven, you're perfect, you belong to the kingdom of God in heaven. It also helps me remind.
[00:03:45] It helps remind me who I'm preaching to.
[00:03:48] I think, you know, a lot of pastors have in their minds when they start to preach, dear sinners. And I think I can do that too. Even when I think of myself, I think of myself chiefly in terms of my own sin and my own failures. And I think we can be tempted to do that for ourselves, for other people, when we look around, dear sinners.
[00:04:12] And sometimes maybe we should think that.
[00:04:15] But more than thinking of our own failures and our own inadequacies, better to think of what God has done, dear saints, and even to think of myself as a saint. Not because, can you imagine, like I've somehow achieved some sort of level of perfection so that God would be pleased with me. Oh, God forbid. Perish the thought. No, saints, because God has forgiven us. He's put away our sins.
[00:04:42] In fact, he's put them on His Son and Jesus has carried them to the grave, and they were buried there and were not resurrected with him. Your sins are still there in the grave so that the Lord looks upon us not according to our own failures and sins and whatever, but according to Christ.
[00:05:02] The Roman Catholic Church looks at. Well, because they have this idea that. I mean, their whole system of salvation is that God infuses this grace, which is a divine strength, so that we can accomplish meritorious good works with the possibility that we can do enough good works that we don't even need any more of them and they can be applied to other people.
[00:05:26] That's the idea of a saint.
[00:05:30] If you want to see the difference between Rome and Wittenberg, it's probably the difference between a bank and a court.
[00:05:40] Rome sees us as little spiritual economic operators, and we have some money in the bank because we do a little bit of good works, but it's not full. We haven't reached the maximum amount that we could deposit in there. And every time we sin, it's like we make a little withdrawal. And every time we do a good Work, we make a little deposit. If you have a negative balance, if you die in debts, you sin more than you do good, then it's to hell and condemnation. If you die and you have some money in the bank, but it's not full, then it's to Purgatory to make up the difference.
[00:06:13] If you manage to do enough good holy works so that in this life your bank account is full, then you are a saint. And those works that you do apply, they even get applied to other people, deposited into the treasury of merit. They're the works of supererogation, extra good works that you don't even need for yourself. That's the Roman Catholic idea. And the way that the Lord indicates a person has received this state of perfection is by performing two miracles in their life and two miracles with their bones or relics in death. And if that's verified, then the Catholic Church declares you to be a saint, you are canonized.
[00:06:55] So when we hear our friends in Rome talking about saints, just know that they're talking about something very, very different than we are. They're not talking about the holiness of the forgiveness of sins. They're talking about the holiness of grace inspired works.
[00:07:11] We want to rejoice in our baptism and in the work of Christ. Okay, now back to the All Saints Day. So the Catholic Church had all these saints and each saint would get its own day. But at some point there's more than 365 saints. So they needed a day where they would just have a time to celebrate all the rest of the saints. So they picked November 1st, All Saints, and then by the way, November 2nd became All Souls Day connected to Purgatory. So the saints are those who die and go to heaven, the souls are those who die and go to Purgatory to make up for the difference. So you got all Saints Day, November 1st, Souls Day, November 2nd. The Eve before All Saints Day. All Hallows Eve OR Halloween is October 31st. Now here's the connection to the Reformation.
[00:07:57] During the time of going back to 1517, the Pope and all the cardinals were raising money to build St. Peter and St. Paul's Cathedral in Rome. Michelangelo overseeing the construction of this impressive building, the largest cathedral in the world. It is pretty magnificent, but they needed a lot of cash for it. So they were going around and giving a special indulgence where if you paid for the indulgence, which was a time out of Purgatory for those who were there suffering, and they started to offer these plenary indulgences or full indulgences, which meant all the time that you are left in purgatory is done. And you can jump out of purgatory and get into heaven. Because remember, purgatory is that time where you're suffering to make up your own imperfections so that your merit can be full but someone else can pay. That's the suffering. And that suffering is then applied to your account. Again, the whole thing is like a bank.
[00:08:59] And so Tetzel, John Tetzel, was going around selling these indulgences in this area of Wittenberg with this obnoxious A coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs. How would you not want to pay a little bit of money for this indulgence? For your relatives are busy suffering in purgatory, and you can alleviate their suffering. It's amazing. Spiritual euthanasia, I suppose, bring an end to the suffering. Although you're not killing him, you're sending him to heaven in this constraints. Well, the indulgence preaching was happening all around, but it wasn't happening in Wittenberg. And here's a curious thing.
[00:09:38] Frederick the Wise, who was the Duke of Saxony there and an Elector Prince, his nephew was Charles V and he was in charge of Wittenberg. He has a castle in Wittenberg, and the new University of Wittenberg he had helped to found all the things are going and blowing. Well, he did not let the indulgence sellers come into Wittenberg, not because he was Lutheran, this hadn't happened yet, but because it competed with his own medieval piety of relics. Now, here's an interesting thing.
[00:10:12] Frederick the Wise had the second largest relic collection in all of the world, second only to the Vatican. So the relics were trinkets, pieces of things connected to saints, where miracles were performed.
[00:10:34] So the bone of St. Sebastian or part of the skull of St. Titus, or a drop of blood from St. Christopher or whatever.
[00:10:46] These were all relics, and not just pieces of people, but pieces of things. A splinter from the cross, a piece of hay from the manger.
[00:10:57] These are the relics that you can visit. I was at a doxology conference a couple years ago at this chapel, where was this? And they have a little piece of the cross that's there in this plaque on the side of this basilica.
[00:11:13] The relics are everywhere. And when you go to Europe and you see all these things, you know, bones and skulls and things everywhere, the reason why St. Peter's of St. Peter's is because that's where he's buried, and St. Paul's Cathedral is because that's where he's Buried. These are the relics that are there built on top of these saints that have died. Luther one time said, if you gathered up all the splinters from the cross that are scattered around the world, you could probably build Noah's Ark.
[00:11:39] But they had all these relics. And if you went and did the right pious spiritual acts connected to the various relics, you would get merit, good works accounted to you, time out of Purgatory. You just kind of bump up on the scale.
[00:11:59] The relic collection that Frederick the Wise had included things like hay from the manger, milk from Mary, and all these other things.
[00:12:12] And there was a catalog that they published in 1518 or 1516 that had a list of all the relics that you could see in his collection.
[00:12:22] And if you did the right acts of piety before all of these relics, you would get something like 1.9 or 1.7 million years out of Purgatory.
[00:12:34] And Frederick the Wise would put these relics all on display in the church connected to the castle on November 1st every year.
[00:12:45] So the relics were kind of stored away and, and mostly kept private. But November 1st, they would pull out the tables and put out all the relics, and all the people could come and do their pious acts in front of all these relics, which meant that on November 1st and the days before and after November 1st, all of these people from all over would come on pilgrimage to Wittenberg and stay in Wittenberg and go into the castle church to do their acts of devotion. And this is why Frederick the Wise didn't let the indulgences come there, because that would have competed with his relic displays. It would have been a competing thing, so he didn't forbid it. This is also why it's the day before this huge crowd gathers at the Castle church in Wittenberg. Then Martin Luther, then a professor of Bible at the newly formed University of Wittenberg. Maybe it's 20 years old or something. He walks down the street from the Augustinian monastery, down past St. Mary's Church, past this divided river or this kind of divided stream that marks the two main streets of the Old Town in Wittenberg, all the way down to the castle church, and posts on the door there, 95 theses about indulgences. So that's why Luther did it on that day, and that's why we have Reformation Day on the Sunday before October 31st. Now, interestingly enough, and I'd encourage you all to take a couple of minutes to read the 95 theses sometime next couple of weeks. We normally think of Luther railing against the Catholic Church because they did not preach the grace of God and mercy of God and kindness of God, which he would later, but not yet. Because the point of the 95 theses is not that the Catholic Church is not preaching the gospel, but rather the Catholic Church is not preaching the law.
[00:14:54] They don't care about the wrath of God.
[00:14:58] Because if you can rescue someone from hell or from millions of years of the affliction of purgatory by buying an indulgence, what does that say about God's holiness? And what does it say about the Cross?
[00:15:17] In other words, the problem with the Catholic, the medieval Catholic way of being saved was not that it was too difficult, which is how we normally think about it, but that they had made it too easy.
[00:15:30] You just buy a piece of paper and off you go. They had no thoughts of the law of God, of the difficulty of being saved. This is how Luther rails. And what probably caught their attention in the 95 theses, the attention of the whole world, is when Luther gets to the end of it and he says, look, if the Pope has the authority to get everybody out of purgatory, why doesn't he do it out of love instead of charging money for it? Zing.
[00:16:00] And that's going to be a hard one for him to recover from. All right, so that's why we have Reformation Day on the Sunday before October 31st, and why we have All Souls Day the Sunday after. So next week, sorry, not All Souls, All Saints Day. So next Sunday we'll have All Saints Day. Now, it's also why Halloween is on October 31st. Halloween is just a kind of shortened, Anglicized version of All Hallows Eve. It's the night before All Saints Day. And all this kind of weird, macabre thinking about people who died is there on the night before All Saints Day. We should just remember that the Lord brings us through death to life eternal. And that's what we celebrate. So that All Hallows Eve is, for us, a celebration of the Lord's gift of eternal life.
[00:16:47] October 31, November 1, we think of that. Those who have been called before us into the glory of God, into his what the old theologians called his nearer presence, which is, I think, language we need to probably get back. When we die, the Lord calls us to his nearer presence. We rejoice in that. All right, how much time do I have to talk about the text now? You guys are probably already to church. 17 minutes. Oy, yo, yo. Okay, a couple of quick things. First, notice that the Old Testament lesson today doesn't come from the old Testament Revelation 14.
[00:17:22] I saw another angel flying directly overhead with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on the earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. The old Lutherans thought that this was a prophecy of Luther, the angel flying through the heaven. I think that they are right in application, although I don't want to be so specific. In other words, the Lord is giving to John this revelation that every generation there are angels flying through heaven proclaiming the gospel. The Lord sees that he's never left without a witness, that the gospel is always going forth in the world. And that's the chief thing about the Reformation, is the preaching of the Gospel. The Epistle lesson is Romans 3, 1928, which really gets to the heart of law and gospel. There's all these theological terms in this text.
[00:18:20] Justification, redemption, propitiation, righteousness, that God might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. We hold that one is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. And it's that apart that becomes the key point of the debate of the Reformation. Rome and the east and every other church would teach justification by faith and faith and love, faith and obedience, faith and following Christ, faith and submission, faith and meritorious good works, whatever.
[00:19:00] And it was the faith apart that had to be articulated and defended in the Reformation. Faith alone. We sometimes say faith distinguished from our works, justification distinguished from our sanctification. Because if our salvation is mostly God's work and partially our work, if it's Jesus and me, the thing that matters is whatever comes after the and Jesus and my works, Jesus and my decision, Jesus and my surrender, Jesus and my participation, Jesus. And the thing that matters is whatever comes after. And if there's anything that's connected to Jesus and grace and faith and Scripture and whatever, it's all the glory that belongs to Jesus is taken away and all the comfort that belongs to us is taken away.
[00:20:01] We'll probably get a little bit more of that in the sermon. John 8, starting at verse 31.
[00:20:08] Is Jesus in the middle of this pretty rough argument with the Pharisees? I mean, they are not holding back their punches. Jesus says, you're of your father, the devil.
[00:20:21] And they say, we know who our father is, we don't know who your father is. Yeesh. I mean, Jesus is back and forth and he wants to show the Pharisees that they are not free.
[00:20:36] They think that they're free.
[00:20:38] They think that they are living their best life now.
[00:20:42] But he says, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is A slave to sin.
[00:20:54] The slave does not remain in the house forever. The Son remains forever. If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
[00:21:02] So you see, Jesus here is here to set us free. But the problem is that the Pharisees don't even realize that they are enslaved.
[00:21:12] There's the three slaveries. I'm thinking about this. I don't know if I. Did I tell you guys, I started a couple of weeks ago. I've been wanting to do this for about a year and a half now to write a little book. It's maybe a long essay or a little book about the three slaveries and the three freedoms.
[00:21:31] And it's on the prodigal son. We've talked about this before. And so the first slavery is the belly slavery. He thinks. The son thinks he's going to be free by just leaving the Father's house. And so the first freedom is the half freedom of coming to himself and realizing he's a sinner. And then there's the second slavery, which is despair. I'm not worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired servants. And then comes in the second full freedom of faith. The Father just grabs him. Son, you're lost and found. Puts a ring on him. That's the freedom of repentance. But then there's a third slavery, which is a slavery of pride, which is a really tricky one. And that's the Pharisee slavery of the. Of the brother who's out in the field. All these years, I've done everything you've asked. I've slaved away for you. I've been your faithful. I've been your faithful slave. And yet. And yet you never gave me. You never even gave me a. A goat to have a party with my friends.
[00:22:26] And this is a slavery that can't see itself.
[00:22:31] It's the slavery that Jesus is trying to set the Pharisees free from. If they could only see their own sinfulness. If the sun sets you free, you're free indeed. And they refuse to. We're not slaves. We don't need to be set free. And so they miss the freedom that the Lord gives. That's how the prodigal son, the parable ends. By the way, the older brother standing out in the field, is he going to come into the party or not?
[00:22:52] The third slavery is pride. The third freedom is. Oh, boy. Is joy in other people's salvation. Are you going to rejoice that the Lord is not only merciful to you, but he's merciful to the person next to you, he's merciful to the people around you, he's merciful even to your, to your enemies.
[00:23:15] And that's the angelic joy. Because remember, the angels can't have joy in the death of Jesus for themselves because Jesus didn't die for them.
[00:23:24] But the angels have joy that Jesus died for us. They have joy over one sinner who repents. And so we're called into that joy of the Lord, not only saving us, but saving the people around us.
[00:23:40] All right, if you're still driving, if you. Welcome to church, by the way, 24 minutes now. If you're at church, God be praised, you should just, you can stop now and go inside because you don't want to miss any of the pre service music or anything.
[00:23:54] But if you're still driving along because you live out in who knows where, Timbuktu, we'll talk a little bit about Psalm 46 and a mighty fortress. Because Luther would say, philip, Master Philip, that's Melanchthon, let's go sing Psalm 46. And they'd go sing A mighty Fortress. And I remember one day, it's kind of funny, I was telling someone that Luther wrote A mighty fortress on Psalm 46 and they, they brought up a mighty fortress. And Psalm 46, they said, how are these two things together? How do these go together? And I said, oh, it's easy, look here.
[00:24:29] And then I realized I had not thought that through and I did not know. And when you read Psalm 46, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble. Therefore we shall not fear though the earth be shaken, though the mountains are thrown into the depths of the sea and the waters rage and form.
[00:24:47] The Lord of the God of Jacob is our refuge. The Lord of hosts is with us. I mean, you are like, I do not actually know how this goes together, but when we get the picture of Psalm 40, the beautiful picture of Psalm 46, then we see how Luther saw it because the picture is of a walled city. Can you imagine? In the ancient world, they had these cities with walls all the way around it because the armies are coming, so you had to be protected. So they had these refuges, these towers or castles, and the city would. The castle would extend its wall around the city and embrace it so it could be safe. And the world is falling apart.
[00:25:27] You're in this city and outside the city. The mountains are collapsing, the typhoons are happening, the sea is overflowing. All the nations have gathered around the city in order to Overthrow it and to destroy the city. But you're safe. And you know, one of the worst things that would happen in the ancient world is the city would be besieged.
[00:25:48] It would be surrounded by the armies and you just. They'd wait it out. You'd just die of starvation or thirst or because you couldn't get resources in or out. And some of the most horrible accounts of history are these stories of cities that are being besieged. But this is not a problem because there's a river in the midst of the city so that we can farm and there's food and there's water and we're provided for. And not only that, God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved. So we're in this city and God is with us in the city. He's taking care of us in the city. The world is falling apart, but we're a refuge from the storm.
[00:26:27] I was thinking about that, just thinking about our congregation, St. Paul Lutheran Church, and how it's a refuge from the storm. A ref. Come in out of the storm. Get in here into the Lord's sanctuary. It is a place of sanctuary, a generational sanctuary of the Lord's wisdom and comfort. That is a faithful Lutheran congregation. Come in out of the chaos, out of the darkness, out of the storm. Come in here and rest. This is a place of theological hospitality.
[00:26:57] We are in the mighty fortress of the Lord, and that's great. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. But then something happens as we're going about our joyful business of living in this city where the Lord is with us. One day there's someone who's on the city wall and they're looking out at all the chaos that's around all the armies that are besieging the city and all of the enemies that are arrayed against us. And they say, come, look at this. And you run up to the wall and you see that the Lord who lives with us in the city has actually gone out of the city gates. And he is going around all of these enemies that have gathered around to destroy us. And one after another, he is utterly destroying them.
[00:27:43] This is the second stanza of Psalm 46, starting at verse 8. Come, behold the works of the Lord. Can you imagine? It is like, come up here and watch this.
[00:27:53] He made desolations in the earth. He makes wars to cease in the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow, he cuts the spear in two. He burns the chariot with fire, so that the Lord single handedly is destroying all the enemies that are gathered around the church, gathered around your family, gathered around your conscience. He single handedly is out there setting the chariots on fire, breaking the bows and the spears. He's destroying everybody.
[00:28:23] And while he's fighting, while he's doing this work, he turns back and looks at you and he sees you there on the city wall watching this destruction. And he sees that, oh, I'm going to come and help her. Oh, I got to go and try to be his backup or whatever. And he says, stay put, be still and know that I am God.
[00:28:47] I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. In other words, don't move, don't do anything, don't try to rescue yourself, deliver yourself, save yourself. Stay there, just watch. Because not only am I the only one who can do this, I am the only one who ought to do this. The Lord says, I am the only one who will be praised for doing this, so that you cannot take away my glory of saving you.
[00:29:21] You know this verse? Psalm 46, verse 10, Be still and know that I'm God is normally like the tagline on a poster of like a mountain. It's like the mountain paintings with the mountain lake and a trout is jumping out of the water and a butterfly is landing on its nose and it's this like peaceful, idyllic nature setting. No, no, no, that is not the context. The context is j Jesus single handedly destroying all the hordes of hell and the world and your own sinful flesh and all of the enemies of God, single handedly doing it in his death and resurrection and telling us to not move, to just watch, to rejoice in the work that he's doing.
[00:30:04] And if we understand it that way, then A mighty fortress. The hymn starts to make sense. A mighty fortress is our God, and that he holds the field forever. And though devils all the world should feel all eager to devour us, we tremble not, we fear not evil. They shall not overpower us. Because why Jesus fights for us. And he by his death and resurrection holds the field forever. Your salvation is the devil's destruction. Your forgiveness is the Lord's suffering and death on the cross. And Jesus not only is the only one who can do it, but who will do it, who ought to do it, and who will be praised for doing it.
[00:30:46] And this is something we maybe don't talk about enough. But the whole problem of having a salvation by works is that you, whoever it is who is working, steals away the glory that Jesus wants when he says I am the one who saves you.
[00:31:04] So that our whole doctrine and theology and fighting over this is preserving the glory that belongs to Jesus when he takes up the work and the title Savior, Lord Redeemer. Jesus is Lord and Savior and Friend of sinners. Which means we are not saving ourselves. He is doing it all himself. God be praised.
[00:31:35] God be praised for that. All right, we better stop at some point. So let's stop here. But hopefully you stopped a lot sooner than this or you're listening to the rest of this on your way home. We do a Sunday drive home Sunday podcast all day podcast Bible class on Hebrews 11 which continues to be so glorious and maybe even Hebrews 12 the first few verses which are some of my most favorite of all of the Holy Scriptures.
[00:32:04] That's coming up as well. I'm going to send out the Sunday See you Sunday email with I hope a lot of Reformation resource links to it. So take a look at that as well. See you soon. God's peace be with.