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Let's turn in our Bibles to Jeremiah
chapter 6 and verse 16. Jeremiah 6, 16. Today is the celebration of the
Protestant Reformation. And the Protestant Reformation
is about the gospel. the pure message of salvation
by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. And there
is a danger of that message being corrupted in every generation,
every age of the church. The gospel has to be defended
against the false gospels that are out there. Our annual Reformation celebration
is about remembering the pure gospel that was preached by Christ
and the apostles and was delivered unto us, the faith that was once
for all, as Jude says, once for all delivered to us. Now a passage, let's read this
portion together from Jeremiah chapter 6. Thus says the Lord,
stand by the roads and look and ask for the ancient paths where
the good way is and walk in it and find rest for your souls
but they said we will not walk in it there's only one way of
salvation only one way of eternal life the way of the gospel Now
suppose I made a wager with Tyler Dogrell, there he is, that I
would take my 2019 Honda Pilot and race his Mustang to see who
would get there, get to Jacksonville, Alabama first. But as you're
cheering us on and we leave the parking lot, Tyler goes down
to the intersection here and he turns right, he turns south
on 431. And I have to tell you that no
matter how fast his car would go, no matter how skillful a
driver he is, I will still beat him to Jacksonville, Alabama
because you can't get to Jacksonville going south. You see, what I'm
saying is that the right road leads to the right place. Only
the right road leads to the right place. Now, look carefully at
this passage. Notice the five imperatives.
You know what an imperative is? It's a verb that has the mood
of a command. Something that is given as a
command. And so notice the five imperatives here. I put them
in bold. Stand, look, ask, walk, find. And find, though it is an imperative,
is intended as a result, a result. Let me read it again for you.
Thus says the Lord, stand by the roads and look and ask for
the ancient paths where the good way is and walk in it and find
rest for your souls. The only way to find rest for
your soul is to seek the ancient path, the good way. the direction
that comes from God, and that direction is the Word of Life,
the Word of God, which is the Word of Life. So Solomon says,
my son, be attentive to my words, let them not escape from your
sight, keep them within your heart, for they are life to those
who find them. Jeremiah instructs the people
to take time here, to look, to observe, to get their bearings,
to ask the Lord for wisdom in order to see the ancient paths. The Hebrew here is literally
from eternity, the paths that are from eternity, that stretch
back before time. Ask the Lord, where is the good
way? And the way is good, not that
it is easy, but it leads to what is good. It leads to rest for
your souls. But to complicate things more,
there are many who would misdirect us, as there were in the days
of Jeremiah the prophet. There are many with false landmarks,
and many with false teachings, and they will misdirect you. They will turn you out of the
way of the Lord. And so Jeremiah gives this warning.
I see it's not showing up on our slide, but it's in Jeremiah
18.15. but my people have forgotten
me. They have made offerings to false
gods. They made them, these false gods,
made them stumble in their ways in the ancient roads and to walk
into side roads, not the highway. So let's consider it one more
time. Let me read it one more time.
Jeremiah 18, 15. But my people have forgotten
me. They make offerings to false
gods. They make them stumble in their
ways in the ancient roads and to walk into side roads, not
the highway. There is a highway that is the
right way that leads to rest for our souls. It is the ancient
path. But the idols of this world are
deceitful. They make us stumble. They deceive
us. They lead us astray. And whether
it is materialism, naturalism, hedonism, evolution, or even
that most popular idol of individualism, right? That self-idol that we
worship. And it leads to so many paths
of self-love, self-satisfaction, self-actualization, self-centeredness,
self-exaltation, right? These are the self-sins that
come from worshiping that idol that stands in every heart and
is a grave danger to us, the worship of self. Don't let the world deceive you.
Jeremiah 21a, behold I set before you the way of life, God says,
and the way of death. And the way of life is the way
of the gospel. The way that leads us to rest
for our souls is the way of the cross. It is the way of our Savior's
death and resurrection. Jesus said, I am the way, the
truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except
by me. This is the way of justification
by faith, the way of redemption by substitution. You remember
Leviticus chapter 1 and the first five chapters of Leviticus all
describe the sacrifices, the protocols for the priest, and
how the sacrifices were to be offered. And there in chapter
1, as well as other places there, you have a person who brings
a bull or a lamb for a sacrifice. And they have to lay their hands
on the head of that lamb. And they have to confess their
sins over this substitutionary sacrifice. Do you see the gospel
in it? They lay their hands on the head of that lamb. They place
their sins, as it were, symbolically upon this innocent lamb. And then they have to kill. Yes,
not the priest, but the worshiper has to kill the lamb. And it
was our sins, you see, that nailed Jesus to the cross, that took
the life of the Lamb of God. It was my sin, and they have
to kill that Lamb. And the priest would catch the
blood, and he would sprinkle the blood on the altar, and he
would burn the body of that Lamb on the altar as a whole burnt
offering unto God, pleasing to God. This is the way of salvation. It has always been the way of
salvation. These ancient Israelites believed
the gospel represented in the sacrificial system because the
Lamb represents Christ. He is, as John the Baptist said,
the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. And he is that innocent lamb
represented by that innocent lamb who was the substitute for
the sinner. Now to walk in the ancient path,
the highway from before time, means to believe in the Lamb
of God who was slain before the foundation of the world. To walk
in the good way is to trust in the Savior, the Messiah, the
seed of the woman, the promised seed of Abraham, the son of David,
the righteous branch that Jeremiah, Zachariah speak of. And what
is his name? The Old Testament tells us, the
Lord our righteousness. What is the name of that branch
of the Lord that brings salvation? The Lord our righteousness. We cannot trust any other way. There are no other roads. You
cannot trust in the keeping of commandments to save you. Do
not trust in the church to save you. Do not trust in baptism
or the gifts of the Holy Spirit. No preacher can save you. Your
parents cannot save you. It is only Jesus Christ, the
Son of Mary, the Son of God. That's right. He is man and He
is also God. He is the Son of Mary and He
is the Son of God. And your faith must be in Christ
alone because He is the only all-sufficient Savior. This is
the ancient way that David speaks of in Psalm 16. He says, you
make known to me the path of life. And Solomon in Proverbs
12 28, in the path of righteousness is life and in its pathway there
is no death. And so I'm giving you just a
brief exposition of this verse here in Jeremiah. to lead up
to the conversation, the preaching of the doctrines of the Reformation
and the Gospel way. I want to tell you just a little
bit about that. The Protestant Reformation is
a story that we need to hear again and again. Dark ages come
from dark hearts that lack the illumination of the Gospel. Nations,
communities, entire people groups live in darkness because they
do not know the gospel. They are in darkness because
there's no message being proclaimed to them. They are trapped in
darkness without the gospel. Acts chapter 8 tells the story
of the Samaritans and how the gospel penetrated the darkness
of that people group. In the days of the early church,
the Samaritans were under the spell of a magician named Simon,
Simon the sorcerer. and he did all these demonic
miracles so that people thought he was something great and they
honored him and he had power over their lives until Philip
the evangelist left Jerusalem and came to Samaria and preached
the gospel of Jesus Christ and the power of the kingdom of God
that we are not under the reign of Satan but that Christ sets
us free and brings us into his kingdom. So he preached the kingdom
of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that good news saved
many of them. They believed and they were baptized. The gospel sets us free from
the wicked lies of our generation just as it set the Samaritans
free. And religious darkness is the
worst kind. It puts people in bondage. And
it can be moralism, Pharisaism, it can be any kind of legalism,
but it puts people in bondage. And all people, listen, all people
are either enslaved to the worship of idols, or they are Christians
and worship the true God, Jesus Christ the Lord. There is no
group in between that. We are either idle worshipers
or we are worshipers of the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There's no middle ground. Only
the grace of the gospel can set people free from the idols of
our culture, from superstition and the false ideas that blind
us to the truth of God. Satan does the work of blinding
people to the truth of the gospel, lest they should behold the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And only the preaching of the
gospel and the power of the Spirit can open blind eyes. The Middle
Ages, the times of Martin Luther and the Reformers, were marked
by religious superstition and fear. The church wielded fear,
fear of death, fear of hell, fear of purgatory, fear of demons
and goblins. They were a means of tyranny
over the lives, not just of peasant folk, but kings and princes were
afraid of the church withdrawing its blessing. Many people could not read. Many
people had no access to the Bible. Now Martin Luther, he lived during
this time of superstition and fear. And in fact, he became
a monk because of fear of death that gripped him during a thunderstorm. A lightning bolt struck near
him and knocked him to the ground. The thought of what awaited him
in purgatory terrorized him. He made a vow to Saint Anne,
the patron saint of those caught in thunderstorms. She was also
the patron saint of miners. His dad was a miner. And he promised
in the fear of that moment, I will become a monk. So it was fear
that drove him deeper into the arms of Roman Catholicism. He
had been taught that becoming a monk guaranteed his salvation. His life of monastic devotion
in the Augustinian order was very disciplined. They had chapel
services before dawn, chapel services again at 6 a.m., chapel
services again at 9 a.m., once more at noon. And there were
rules, lots of rules that you had to keep. And he was lapping
it up because he was thinking that he was earning salvation
by all these things that he was doing. Yet his conscience remained
stricken. So they had rules for when and
how to bow. Rules for how to walk, how to
talk, where to look, and when. Rules for holding one's eating
utensils. And besides this, they were to
come daily for the confession of sin. But Martin's conscience
was so tender and so stricken with guilt that sometimes he
spent six hours in the confessional. He wore the priest out that heard
his confessions. And they would say, why don't
you go out and kill someone? Because then you'd have something
really to confess instead of these trivial things. But he
was burdened that he was singing songs in the chapel service and
was singing them insincerely. So he's confessing those sins. He was burdened that he had some
thoughts about this brother over here that were kind of angry.
He was confessing, he was trying to confess every sin in order
that he could receive forgiveness and absolution. But what good
was it? He could not receive it. He had
no peace of conscience. The only thing they offered was
the general admonition to do good and try harder. And brothers
and sisters, that message is preached in hundreds of churches,
Protestant churches, hundreds of churches in this county. There are more than 400 churches
in this county. And I can tell you that on this
morning, many people will come to church and instead of the
good news of forgiveness in Christ, they will hear the legalistic
gospel of be good and try harder. Be good and try harder. You see,
Roman Catholicism treats God's grace as a boost that gets you
started. You just can't quite reach the
first rung of that ladder that will take you to heaven. And
so grace in Roman Catholicism is a little help, help you up
there to that first rung. continue that and you can fall. Yes, you can fall all the way
back down and start all over. That's what the whole thing is
about. sacrament of penance is about. Their view of salvation, as Ron
told us this morning, is synergistic. It is God plus human effort. It's always possible that you
can lose what you think you may have gained. They believe in
faith, but not faith alone. They believe in Christ, but not
Christ alone. They believe in grace, but not
grace alone. And of course, because it is
not alone, it means that I can make God my debtor by doing these
things. He owes me salvation. That is
a false gospel. In the true gospel, the glory
goes to God alone. You can see the solas over there.
And the last one, glory to God alone. Sola Deo Gloria. That
glory goes to God alone. So when I am saved by the true
Gospel, I know that I had nothing to do with it. I'm just a beggar
whose trembling hand received the gift of salvation. In 1507, Luther was ordained
as a priest. This meant that he was now going
to be appointed to pastoral ministry. He was given a position in Saxony
and he was made a professor at the University of Wittenberg.
And though he had read the Bible seriously the last few years,
I don't think he saw a Bible before age 20. But though he
had read the Bible since that time, it was now that he began,
about age 22, to study the Bible in earnest. And in 1511, his
religious superior sent him on business for the Augustinian
order to Rome. Michael Reeves, a great historian,
has written many good books. He wrote that book that I mentioned,
The Unquenchable Flame, which is out here on the table. He
describes this pilgrimage as the opportunity of a lifetime.
This is what he says. For a monk who increasingly knew
himself to be spiritually bankrupt, it was like winning the lottery.
In Rome, the pilgrim was closer to the apostles and saints than
anywhere else. The place was so crammed with
their relics, each one conferring various spiritual benefits, and
it was a veritable gold mine for the soul. When he caught
his first sight of the Holy City, he prostrated himself on the
ground. Then on arrival, he dashed from
holy sight to holy sight, clocking up merit at each. His one regret
those happy days was that his parents were still alive. Had
they not been, he could have freed them from purgatory with
all the merit that he was earning there in Rome. But it was there,
in that throbbing heart of Christendom, that the tiniest seeds of doubts
were sown in Luther's mind. Rome had become a spiritual marketplace
and salvation was for sale. For instance, people paid money
to have masses said for their loved ones and in order to get
them out of purgatory because you have to finish Christ's merit
only gets you to the place of salvation. And then it's up to
you. And any sins you commit after
baptism, you will have to pay for. They're a debt you'll have
to pay for in purgatory. It's a Christian hell, as it
were. And so they would sell the saying
of masses for people who had died, usually parents or grandparents. In order to get them out of suffering,
they would say masses for them. And so they have all these lines
of people who want to get their parents out of hell. And they
are so busy, they're doing two masses at a time in certain churches. And because they're so busy,
giving out salvation because they're being paid to give it
out. And they are so busy that they're saying the masses so
fast that people cannot understand what they're saying. Even though
it was Latin and probably a lot of people didn't know what they
were saying. And so this was what Luther was confronted with.
In fact, that's where the expression hocus pocus comes from, right? Hoc est meum corpus, in the Roman
mass. This is my body, that's the Latin. But you say it fast enough, hoc
est meum corpus, and you get hocus pocus, which is the words
that they thought, they said when they transformed the bread
into the actual body of Christ. There's nothing darker than the
darkness of religious legalism. Luther, now a preacher and a
professor, was making spiritual progress. He had a copy of the
Word of God in Greek, something that those before him might not
have had. His earnest study of Augustine
taught him that salvation is by God's sovereign grace alone
and not by human merit. He came to understand Paul's
phrase, the righteousness of God, in Romans 117, that it meant
the free gift of righteousness, not the righteousness of God
that punishes the sinner, but God's free gift of righteousness
in Christ bestowed on the sinner by which he is forgiven of his
sins and declared righteous before God. He learned that faith is
not merely agreeing with church teachings, but it is trusting
and resting in the person and work of Jesus Christ. In 1515,
Luther encountered a real controversy. The selling of indulgences. And these were sold in order
to get your loved ones out of purgatory. These were bought
because you wanted to get your loved ones out of purgatory.
They were sold in order to finance St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Purgatory is a false doctrine
of the Roman Catholic Church, a place of suffering for sins
committed after baptism. Indulgences were first introduced,
I think about 800, AD 800, and they were introduced as a
mercy. So if you were an old person
and Someone said, and you went to the priest to confess your
sins, and he said, well, for your penance, you have to crawl
on your knees up the church steps and say the Lord's Prayer on
every step. But you're 80. and your knees
are not good, you couldn't even get down and get back up again
once. Just impossible. And so they
came up with a system of indulgences that if you could not perform
the penance that was required, you could pay money and receive
a paper saying that your penance was fulfilled and so you were
forgiven of those sins. But within A few hundred years,
the church then began to teach, began to declare that you could
purchase salvation and Tetzel in his preaching of indulgences
said you could receive forgiveness for sins you hadn't committed
yet. And so the indulgence situation became a means of not only purchasing
salvation, but a money-making scheme for the Roman Church. Listen to Ned Needham. He says,
in 1515, Pope Leo X authorized the sale of a special set of
indulgences in Germany. Their purpose was to bring in
cash to finance the building of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome,
and the papal agent selling the indulgences was a Dominican friar
named Johann Tetzel. Tetzel's indulgence preaching
was an overpowering act of emotional manipulation. The Dominican promised
his hearers that as soon as they bought one of his indulgences
on behalf of a dead relative, God would instantly set the poor
relative's poor soul free from purgatory. He used a little rhyme. As soon as the coin in the money
box rings, the soul from purgatory springs. And Tetzel, of course,
he even said in his efforts to manipulate people, that you could
buy an indulgence to be forgiven if you had raped Mary, the mother
of God, is what he said. And so you can just imagine,
one man approached Tetzel, and he said, can I purchase an indulgence
for a sin I have not yet committed? And he said, yes, you may. And
the man bought a huge indulgence. He paid a tremendous sum for
it. And later that day, as Tetzel
was traveling through the woods, he robbed him and took all the
money from the indulgences. But no problem, he had already
been forgiven for it. because he had purchased it,
he had the paper to prove it. Luther's pastoral concern for
his flock, he did not want his people exposed to this and they
were going across the river and buying indulgences and this is
what led him to nail his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg
on October 31, 1517. He was announcing 95 things that
he wanted to talk about regarding the sale of indulgences. And
he was going to meet any advocate of selling indulgences the next
day. That was the idea. The next day he would be there
to debate anyone. He had not yet broken with the
Catholic Church. He still supported the Pope.
You can read lots of positive things he says about the Pope
in the 95 Theses. But his knowledge of the Gospel
of Grace was advancing and he was starting to proclaim. He
was believing and he was proclaiming the Gospel of Grace. And he did
not want his people to be manipulated by religious merchants selling
salvation. The 95 Theses were written in
Latin. Their criticisms were penetrating. People read them. The students
read them. Professors read them. They could
read Latin. But they took them then and translated
them into German and took them to the printing press. Would
the Reformation have even happened without the printing press? They
printed hundreds, thousands of copies of these spread out over
Germany and beyond. And it was their reading of these
things that gave people pause about whether they were being
misled. The controversy is how does a
person receive forgiveness in Christ? How does one receive
the forgiveness of sins? How can I be right with God? It was a gospel question. And
Luther, more and more, was depending on the authority of the Bible
to answer the question. It was what God's Word had to
say, not popes and church councils that determined the truth. So it was that Luther angered
the pope. Curia there in Rome because he
found the authority of the scriptures contradicted and condemned the
authority of the church. And so on the authority of scripture
Luther taught that a sinner by merely trusting Christ could
have his or her sins entirely forgiven and stand in confidence
before God as accepted, not because of their righteousness, but because
of the righteousness of Christ. Luther had discovered this gospel
by reading the Word of God. And the light of salvation by
grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for God's glory
alone, was now shining in Wittenberg. No, it was beyond that. It was
shining throughout Germany. More, it was shining throughout
the Holy Roman Empire. The famous medieval artist Albrecht
Durer, he described Martin Luther, listen to this, he described
Martin Luther as that Christian man who has delivered me from
my anxieties. That Christian man who has delivered
me from great anxieties. See, only the gospel can speak
peace to the conscience. Only the gospel, because the
gospel says authoritatively, you are forgiven. So John writes
to the Christians in his first letter and he says, little children,
your sins are forgiven you for his namesake. That is the message
of the gospel. That was the message that was
emerging out of the preaching of Martin Luther and the reformers.
The gospel of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in
Christ alone, for God's glory alone. That is, listen, that
is the ancient path that must be diligently followed. It must
be courageously defended. It must be carefully preserved
in the true church. in every generation. We must remember the faith that
was once for all delivered to the saints. And one of the ways
that we are strengthened to remember these things is through communion. Because the Lord Jesus told us,
this do in remembrance of me. Praise Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost. Amen.
Our Sacred History
Series Reformation
Remembering sacred history protects us from believing that we are the center of the universe.
| Sermon ID | 1027241339297648 |
| Duration | 35:37 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Jeremiah 6:16 |
| Language | English |
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