{"id":18888,"date":"2017-07-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-30T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sugar-land-bible-church.local\/sermon\/protestant-reformation-008\/"},"modified":"2017-07-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-07-30T05:00:00","slug":"protestant-reformation-008","status":"publish","type":"sermon","link":"https:\/\/slbc.org\/es\/sermon\/protestant-reformation-008\/","title":{"rendered":"Protestant Reformation 008"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","book":[85],"series_event":[480],"sermon_service_type":[473],"speaker":[6],"class_list":["post-18888","sermon","type-sermon","status-publish","hentry","book-matthew","series_event-protestant-reformation","sermon_service_type-sunday-school","speaker-dr-andy-woods","no-post-thumbnail"],"acf":{"sermon_title":"Protestant Reformation 008","sermon_date":"20170730","sermon_month":"7","sermon_year":"2017","sermon_notes":4818,"sermon_slides":4819,"sermon_mp3":4823,"sermon_id":"730171026345","series_or_event":480,"service_type":[473],"speaker":6,"books_of_the_bible":85,"chapter_and_verse":"8:14","sermon_transcript":"Andy Woods\n\nThe Protestant Reformation 008\n\n7-30-17\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Matthew 8:14\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lesson 30\n\nI\u2019m going to open us with a Word prayer.\u00a0 Father, we\u2019re grateful for today, grateful for this morning and grateful for another day to study Your truth and to be used by You today.\u00a0 I do ask, Father, that You\u2019ll continue to work here at Sugar Land Bible Church as You grow us more and more into the image of our Lord Jesus Christ in our daily life.\u00a0 So through our teaching today, worship service, fellowship, Sunday School, kids teaching, everything that\u2019s going on I pray that You would fulfill Your purpose in our lives today by conforming us even more in our daily life to the image of Your Son, and we\u2019ll be careful to give You all the praise and the glory.\u00a0\u00a0 We ask these things in Jesus\u2019 name, and God\u2019s people said Amen.\n\nLet\u2019s take our Bibles if we could and open them to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 8 and verse 14.\u00a0 We\u2019re continuing to move through in these summer months the information about the Protestant Reformation because in October you\u2019re going to hear a lot about it in the Christian world because October 31st<\/sup>, as you know, will mark the 500th<\/sup> year anniversary of the event that most people say triggered what we know today as The Protestant Reformation, Luther nailing his 95 Thesis to the cathedral door in Wittenberg, Germany.\u00a0 So I wanted to do some teaching given the significance of the anniversary on the Protestant Reformation, why the Protestant Reformation is such a big deal.\n\nHere is the outline that we\u2019re following.\u00a0 We started with the early church and what the early church or the apostles handed off to the first\u00a0 Christians in terms of doctrine.\u00a0 And as we\u2019ve talked about many, many times the northern circle in red represents the school of Antioch.\u00a0 And this was during the first two centuries of the church; the church took the Bible, including Bible prophecy, literally.\u00a0 But what happened, moving into Roman numeral II, the Alexandrian eclipse which really probably beginning in the third century what was happening in Alexandria, Egypt, really became the dominant school of thought.\u00a0 And these folks in Alexandria, Egypt began to allegorize spiritualize, non-literalize Bible prophecy and ultimately the rest of the Bible.\n\nAnd you can see Alexandria, Egypt, that circle in the south.\u00a0 So you have these two rival schools of Christian thought early on in church history and the sad reality is, and unless you understand this sad reality you can\u2019t understand why the Protestant Reformation was needed.\u00a0 The sad reality is Alexandria wins the day in terms of influence.\u00a0 The school of Antioch is eclipsed.\u00a0 So they used the allegorizing method of interpretation, which we\u2019ve gone over and explained it in depth and we\u2019ve explained what allegorizing is, why we don\u2019t believe allegorizing is a proper approach to the Bible.\u00a0 And we\u2019ve explained why that method became popular.\n\nSo that transitions us into Roman numeral III which is a time period called the Dark Ages which lasts over a millennium, where the Bible is removed from the people.\u00a0 The people, first of all, even if they had a Bible were told they couldn\u2019t understand it and beyond that, because of illiteracy and other things the Bible is basically a closed book to the Christian world.\u00a0\u00a0 So this may be the Christian church, the sheep, very vulnerable to manipulation, through the sale of indulges and things of that nature.\u00a0 And we talked all about that.\n\nSo that time period goes on for over a millennia, it starts probably in the 3rd<\/sup>, 4th<\/sup> century and lasts all the way up to the beginning of the 16th<\/sup> century and so what enters the picture is the Protestant Reformers who are basically, as I understand them, God is raising them up and using them to rescue the church from the Dark Ages and to get us back to what Antioch originally believed.\n\nSo we have talked about the preparation of the Protestant Reformers, we talked a little bit about who Martin Luther was, how God had sovereignly worked in his life and we\u2019ve talked about some morning stars of the Protestant Reformation; there were others like John Huss, Wycliffe and others who were sort of, prior to Luther\u2019s time period, trying to do what Luther did.\u00a0 And then there was the advent of the printing press, which was a big deal because that allowed the Reformers to send their ideas all over Europe.\n\nSo the Protestant Reformation kicks off and you see an emphasis immediately in the writings of the Reformers on literal interpretation.\u00a0 I\u2019ve given you a ton of quotes.\u00a0 They use the word \u201cliteral\u201d over and over again and they\u2019re using that as a tool to reclaim what was lost.\u00a0 They sound a lot like the school of Antioch the way they keep using the word \u201cliteral.\u201d\u00a0 And in the process they denounce allegorization in some of the strongest language possible.\u00a0 I\u2019ve given you some quotes from Luther, Calvin, others that denounce allegorization.\n\nAnd one of their main contributions, as we look at this list of contributions is they begin to reject church history as a guide or church tradition as a guide.\u00a0 So they begin to say things like an idea isn\u2019t valid just because the Pope says it\u2019s true, or prior Popes have said it\u2019s true.\u00a0 You have to find that idea in the pages of God\u2019s Word for that idea to be accurate.\u00a0 So the Protestant Reformers shift the authority base; that\u2019s their huge contribution.\u00a0 The authority base becomes the Bible and the Bible alone.\u00a0 And in the process they reject the idea that only the Catholic priests are priests because for a thousand years the people were told that we\u2019re the priests, we\u2019ll help you understand the Bible and our Word is final.\n\nAnd the Protestant Reformers in this Back to the Bible Movement actually are beginning to look at the Scripture and they\u2019re looking at passages like Revelation 1:6 which teach that we are all priests in the age of the church.\u00a0 [Revelation 1:6, \u201cand He has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father-- to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen\u201d]\u00a0 So if we are all priests in the age of the church all of us have the ability to read the Bible; all of us have the ability to understand the Bible so they\u2019re taking authority away from the ecclesiastical hierarchy and restoring it to the people.\u00a0 So this is really a blue collar movement; I mean, the common people loved Luther and even when he was going to debate the Catholics in a famous debate he was stopping at different villages and almost given a hero\u2019s welcome to the point where it bothered the Catholic Church that this guy was becoming so popular.\n\nSo if you believe in the priesthood of all believers guess what you have to have;\u00a0 you have to have a Bible in the language of the common man so it can be understood.\u00a0 Prior to this point in time the Bible was not available in the common language.\u00a0 Jerome, back in the 4th century tried to and he succeeded in taking the Hebrew and Greek Scripture and translating it into Latin for the common man. But by the time of Luther Latin is basically a dead language.\u00a0 And the Roman Catholic Church was still carrying on its masses in Latin so people weren\u2019t understanding what was being said.\n\nSo if you believe in the priesthood of all believers it\u2019s sort of like dominoes knocking down, one domino fell and that logically leads to other dominoes in a row being knocked down.\u00a0 If you believe in the priesthood of all believers\u00a0 you have to believe in an understandable Bible.\u00a0 So Luther begins to translate the Scripture into the German language, not from the Latin but from the original Hebrew and Greek, because he did not trust the Roman Catholic version of the Scripture, which up to this point in time was available only in Latin.\u00a0 So he translated the Greek New Testament into German in 11 weeks.\u00a0 My wife and I had a disagreement on that; she says it\u2019s 11 weeks, I say it\u2019s 11 months so I went and looked it up and she was right, I was wrong.\u00a0 He did it actually in 11 weeks, not 11 months.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if that really matters in the big scheme of things.\u00a0 He did it fast, how\u2019s that?\n\nThe Old Testament took him longer because of traumas and things going on in his life that he translated the Old Testament from Hebrew into German in 11 years.\u00a0 And guess what else you have to do?\u00a0 If the priesthood of all believers is true and people need the Bible in their own language, guess what they have to learn how to do\u2014they have to learn how to read.\u00a0 So when you go to Wittenberg what you see are a lot of pictures everywhere.\u00a0 The Bible is sort of spelled out in picture form like the Ten Commandments\u2026 I should have brought in a picture of that, I took a picture of it, it\u2019s spelled out using symbols and pictures that people could understand.\u00a0 But the Protestant Reformers weren\u2019t satisfied with that, they wanted people to actually be able to read so they have to raise literacy standards.\n\nAnd one of the points I made last time is the United States of America I don\u2019t think would exist without the Protestant Reformers.\u00a0 Most people, when they give you presentations on the Protestant Reformers never bring this up but I tried to show you some quotes from historians, indicating that this is true.\u00a0 The Protestant Reformers emphasized total depravity of man.\u00a0 Man needs a Savior because he is totally corrupted by sin.\u00a0 That is a huge belief of the Protestant Reformers.\u00a0 And so those that founded this country were the spiritual descendants of the Reformers.\u00a0 So what they did is they devised a system of government that divided political power up because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts what?\u00a0 Absolutely.\n\nSo they didn\u2019t want one person to get control of the entire government and so they divided political power up amongst three separate branches of government and they divided government between the national government and the state governments and it\u2019s one of the most inefficient governing systems ever created by man.\u00a0 And it makes no sense if you believe in the goodness of man.\u00a0 If you believe in the goodness of man then the people running the government are basically good at heart so there\u2019s no need to put restrictions on them.\u00a0 But if you believe in the depravity of man and that sin has contaminated every single human being then the government has to be big enough to keep in check the sinful impulses of the population but it also has to be weak enough to oblige it to control itself.\n\nAnd if a psychologist or a humanist or someone who believed in the perfectibility of human nature had put together the United States government we wouldn\u2019t have the separation of powers concept we have today and consequently we would be in some form of government that would probably look more like a dictatorship than anything else.\u00a0 And so if you enjoy the freedoms you have in this country, and I know you do, or if you appreciate them and I know you do, you can thank John Calvin and Luther because they put a Christmas present under your tree called the total depravity of man, which America\u2019s Founding Fathers were steeped in and that becomes the basis for the American system of governance.\u00a0 So that is a huge contribution of the Protestant Reformation.\n\nAnd another one of their contributions which we started talking about last time was they gave to us the five Solas<\/em>.\u00a0 Sola <\/em>is a Latin word that means alone and by itself.\u00a0 So if the Protestant Reformers had simply left out the word Sola<\/em> in their theological points they would have gotten along hunky-dory with the Roman Catholic Church because they would have been looked at as just one of many options, but because they insisted on the word Sola<\/em> or alone that put them at war with the Roman Catholic hierarchy.\u00a0 So what are the Solas<\/em>.\u00a0 I think two of them we covered last time and three more we\u2019ll cover very quickly now.\n\nNumber 1 is Sola Scriptura<\/em> where they insisted that Scripture by itself is your source of authority.\u00a0 It\u2019s no longer Scripture plus the papacy plus the Monks plus the priests plus tradition; it\u2019s Scripture alone.\u00a0 And that\u2019s huge, that reverses over a thousand years of bad thinking on that subject in the church.\n\nNumber 2, they insisted on Solus Christus<\/em> which means Christ Alone.\u00a0 So in Christ alone is salvation available.\u00a0 And I think those we covered last time and now we\u2019re kind of picking up where we left off last time.\n\nThey insisted on Sola Fide; Sola Fide<\/em> means what?\u00a0 Anybody know?\u00a0 Faith Alone.\u00a0 Now this idea of the Solas<\/em>, where are they getting these things from?\u00a0 They\u2019re not just pulling them out of their hat because they\u2019re going back to a back to the Bible movement and they\u2019re insisting on, number 1, Sola Scriptura<\/em>, these are all concepts that they\u2019re seeing in the Bible which was different than what the church at that time was teaching.\u00a0 So Sola Fide<\/em> is the idea that you are saved through the power of Christ on the basis of one condition which is faith alone in Christ alone.\u00a0 And of course as you go through the Bible you\u2019ll see this over and over again.\u00a0 In fact, the Bible teaches this about 160 times that I can document and the number is probably closer to 200 times.\u00a0 It\u2019s just a subject that\u2019s so big it\u2019s hard to ignore.\u00a0 It\u2019s how Abraham was justified, Genesis 15:6, \u201cThen he\u201d Abram \u201cbelieved in the LORD,\u201d one condition was met, \u201cand He\u201d that\u2019s the Lord, \u201creckoned it to him as righteousness.\u201d\n\nSo Abraham was justified before God, not because he showed contrition, not because he repented of his personal sins, not because he walked an aisle, not because he gave money to something or some kind of cause.\u00a0 He was justified before God the moment he placed his personal trust in God.\u00a0 You all know John 3:16, there\u2019s only one verb for the lost sinner to fulfill to be made right with God.\u00a0 We dealt with this aggressively in our soteriology study.\u00a0 \u201cFor God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever\u201d shows proper contrition and repents of his personal sins and joins Sugar Land Bible Church\u2026 oh, it doesn\u2019t say that.\u00a0 \u201cFor God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever\u201d what? \u201cbelieves\u201d and not just believes but \u201cbelieves in Him\u201d that\u2019s the work of Christ on his behalf, \u201cshall not perish, but have eternal life.\u201d\n\nActs 16:30-31, this is Paul on his second missionary journey, where he was asked life\u2019s most important question, \u201cSirs,\u201d the Philippian jailor said \u201cwhat must I do to be saved?\u201d\u00a0 And Paul and Silas give the answers, [31] \u201cThey said, \u2018Believe\u2019\u201d one verb, \u201cin the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved\u2026.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0So \u201cBelieve, Sola Fide<\/em>, \u201cin the Lord Jesus Christ,\u201d Solus Christus<\/em>. \u00a0Ephesians 3:8-9, you probably know, \u201cFor by grace you have been saved through faith,\u201d it doesn\u2019t say anything besides faith.\u00a0 Hebrews 11:6 you are familiar with, \u201cAnd without faith it is\u201d difficult to please Him.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t say that, \u201cwithout faith it is\u201d challenging to please Him.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t say that.\u00a0 What it says is \u201cwithout faith it is impossible to please Him.\u201d\u00a0 The word \u201cimpossible\u201d here, I think, if I remember right adunatos<\/em>, it\u2019s the same word used in Hebrews 6:18, same book, same author, where it says it\u2019s impossible for God to lie.\u201d\u00a0 [Hebrews 6:18, \u201cso that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us.\u201d]\n\nThe philosophers are always asking, are there some things God can\u2019t do?\u00a0 And my answer is yes, God cannot lie.\u00a0 Well, can God make a rock so big that He can\u2019t lift it?\u00a0 My answer to that is no, He can\u2019t do that because God is always sovereign over His creation.\u00a0 If God can make a rock so big that He can\u2019t lift it then He\u2019s no longer what?\u00a0 No longer God.\u00a0 So there are some things that are impossible for God to do, like lie, like make a rock so big he can\u2019t lift it and so forth.\u00a0 So the same word that\u2019s used there, Hebrews 6:18, \u201cit is impossible for God to lie,\u201d the same word used here in Hebrews 11:6, \u201cWithout faith it is impossible to please Him.\u201d\u00a0 The teaching on Sola Fide<\/em> does not come into existence because Martin Luther said it\u2019s true; Luther is just retrieving it; he\u2019s retrieving what had been lost by using what method of interpretation?\u00a0 The literal grammatical historical method of interpretation.\u00a0 And by rejecting the allegorical impulse given to the church, thanks to Alexandria, Egypt.\u00a0 So that\u2019s what we call Sola Fide<\/em>.\n\nThe fourth Sola<\/em> is Sola Gratia<\/em> which means you\u2019re saved by grace alone.\u00a0 The Greek word for grace is charis<\/em>, and grace, what does that mean?\u00a0 It means unmerited favor.\u00a0 It means favor coming to a lost sinner from God that they do not deserve and they did not work for.\u00a0 And it\u2019s a righteousness that\u2019s transferred to your account at the point of faith.\u00a0 Luther actually called this the great exchange; in a nanosecond you\u2019re unrighteousness is exchanged for Christ\u2019s righteousness and God looks at\u00a0 you as if you are just as righteous as Jesus.\u00a0 Did you all know that, by the way, that when God the Father looks at\u00a0 you today, if you\u2019re in Christ you\u2019re just as righteous as Jesus?\u00a0 Did you all know that?\u00a0 Positionally.\u00a0 You say well, I don\u2019t really deserve that, you should have seen what kind of week I had, I sinned here, I sinned there, I failed here, I failed there.\u00a0 Well, that\u2019s why it\u2019s called what?\u00a0 Grace.\u00a0 And if you can find a better deal out there let me know.\u00a0 This, to me, is the best deal in the universe.\n\nSo the Reformers start to emphasize Sola gratia<\/em> and you recognize this from Ephesians 2:8-9, \u201cFor by grace you have been saved through faith,\u201d you see how these Solas<\/em> are linked.\u00a0 When you study Romans 4:4-5 what you\u2019ll discover is faith is the only thing a lost sinner can do before a holy God to gain His favor which is not a work.\u00a0 Faith is not a work!\u00a0 Read Romans 4:4-5 sometime and you\u2019ll see it very clearly.\u00a0 [Romans 4:4-5, \u201cNow to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. [5] But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness,\u201d]\u00a0\u00a0 So if faith is not a work and I gain all of these treasures from God by way of faith then obviously I acquired these things by what?\u00a0 By grace, unmerited favor.\u00a0 So God has set this whole thing up in such a way that when you receive it you have to receive it based on His principles, which would be grace, unmerited favor, accessible by faith alone.\u00a0 And that\u2019s what you call Sola gratia<\/em>.\n\nAnd then the fifth Sola <\/em>that they give us is Sola Deo Gloria<\/em>, and a lot of times when people, like famous musicians, like I think it was Bach, when he finished his music he would put SDG down at the bottom of the page.\u00a0 And I used to look at that, I didn\u2019t know what the heck that meant but what it means is Sola Deo Gloria<\/em>, it\u2019s an Latin expression which means \u201cto the glory of God\u201d what? \u201calone.\u201d\u00a0 So if salvation is a grace operation from beginning to end and the only thing you did to gain access to it is something nonmeritorious called faith, then who gets the glory in the whole package?\u00a0 God does!\n\nAnd see, this is the danger of mixing works, even subtly, with the gospel and man is always trying to get a work or two in.\u00a0 Did you notice that?\u00a0 Because that\u2019s our nature.\u00a0 And that\u2019s why one of the biggest struggles, even here at Sugar Land Bible Church, is trying to keep the gospel the gospel because you have a lot of parachurch type ministries that want to come into this church and they want to use their method of the gospel.\u00a0 And when you look at their method of the gospel it\u2019s got five or six steps to it.\u00a0 Well, frankly folks the moment you add a single step other than faith\u2026 the moment you say receiving the gospel is four things, or three things, or some use the ABC method, you have to Admit, you have to Believe, you have to Confess.\u00a0 You\u2019re adding things to the Word of God that simply are not there.\n\nWhat God does is He educates a person as they come under the influence of the Spirit through conviction.\u00a0 That\u2019s where they become aware that they are a sinner, that\u2019s education.\u00a0 The only thing God at that point asks a lost sinner to do is to B, Believe!\u00a0 He does not ask a person to be justified to go out and confess it to their neighbors.\u00a0 Now you say well, that\u2019s what we do here in America.\u00a0 Yeah, we do that here in America but you tell me how well that\u2019s going to work in an Islamic country where a person receives Christ, maybe because of a missionary or because of the internet or a tract or some way and the moment they make that public is the moment their wife will be raped, their kids will be killed, and they simply don\u2019t want to confess it because of the personal losses that they\u2019re going to experience.\u00a0 Are you telling me that that person is not saved because they didn\u2019t confess Christ.\u00a0 That is a ridiculous proposition.\n\nOr think about the person that doesn\u2019t have any vocal cords; who are they going to confess to.\u00a0 Are they going to use sign language, or write on a chalk board?\u00a0 And this whole thing that we\u2019re doing with ABC, Admit, Believe, Confess, is we\u2019re adding things that God never required.\u00a0\u00a0 And the Protestant Reformers understood this very clearly.\u00a0 It aligns directly with your Bible; it says this 160 times, probably closer to 200 and they understood that you\u2019re saved by faith period!\u00a0 In Christ, period!\u00a0 Now if that\u2019s true and it\u2019s not based on walking an aisle and it\u2019s not based on human courage or whatever the case may be, then my hand can\u2019t go up in terms of sharing part of the glory.\u00a0 See that?\u00a0 You see how Sola Fide<\/em> is connected to Sola Deo Gloria<\/em>?\n\nThe moment a human being can add anything to justification by faith alone, the moment it becomes faith plus something is the moment the human being gets a lion\u2019s share of the glory. \u00a0But God has set up in a way so that there are no bragging rights.\u00a0 Do you see that?\u00a0 Because I don\u2019t know everything there is to know about God but I\u2019ll tell you one thing I do know about God is that He\u2019s not in the business of sharing His glory with others.\u00a0 That\u2019s spelled out as clearly as it can be spelled out in Isaiah 42:8, \u201cI am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, Nor My praise to graven images.\u201d\n\nAnd that\u2019s why there\u2019s always this struggle with keeping the gospel clear because prideful man comes in and wants to add a few things so he can get part of the credit.\u00a0 But the moment that happens is you\u2019re contradicting not only Sola Fide<\/em>, you\u2019re contradicting Sola Deo Gloria<\/em>.\u00a0 Did you see how Ephesians 2:8-9 ends?\u00a0 \u201cFor by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is<\/em> the gift of God; [9] not as a result of works,\u201d what\u2019s that last clause, \u201cso that no one may boast.\u201d\u00a0 So if salvation is a grace operation from beginning to end it gives human beings no boasting rights and that\u2019s the way God set it up.\n\nThis is why the Book of Galatians, chapter 5 and verse 11 calls the gospel a what?\u00a0 An offense, a stumbling block.\u00a0 [Galatians 5:11, \u201cBut I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? Then the stumbling block of the cross has been abolished.\u201d]\u00a0 Why is it a stumbling block?\u00a0 Because my pride kicks in and says well let me contribute; you bought lunch let me at least leave the tip.\u00a0 Let me do something; let me give some money, let me join the church, let me raise my hand, let me walk an\u00a0 aisle, let me do something.\u00a0 And the moment that enters the picture is the moment a human is given a right to boast as contributing to part of the package.\u00a0 But God has set the whole thing up so that boasting is eliminated because Isaiah 42:8 says it\u2019s contrary to God\u2019s nature to share His glory with another.\u00a0\u00a0 [Isaiah 42:8, \u201cI am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, Nor My praise to graven images.\u201d]\n\nRomans 3:27-28, after Paul explains Sola Fide<\/em>.\u00a0 \u201cWhere then is boasting? It is\u201d what?\u00a0 \u201cIt is excluded. [By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. [28] For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.\u201d]\u00a0\u00a0 So nobody is going to be in heaven parading around as proud as a peacock because God has set up salvation in such a way that it eliminates that possibility.\n\nSo these are all things that have come into the life of the church, thank you Protestant Reformers.\u00a0 Sola Scripture, Sola Christus, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Sola Deo Gloria.\u00a0 Now why did they start thinking this way?\u00a0 Because they switched the authority base.\u00a0 They went back to the Word of God and the Word of God alone and isn\u2019t it interesting that what happens when you do that your theology starts getting straightened up, a theology that had been messed up in the church for over a millennia.\n\nAnd in the process, continuing on with the contribution of the Protestant Reformers, they begin to reject the celibacy of the priesthood because prior to this point in time and even in Roman Catholic tradition today if you really want to serve God you can\u2019t be married; you\u2019ve got to serve God as a single person.\u00a0 And the church was calling Peter their first Pope.\u00a0 Now we\u2019ve already explained, haven\u2019t we, why this here is not saying Peter was the first Pope.\u00a0 Matthew 16:18, \u201cI say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it,\u201d or prevail against it.\u00a0\u00a0 And you read that in English and it looks like the Lord built the church on Peter.\u00a0 But remember what the Protestant Reformation is; it is a back to the Bible movement, therefore understanding the Bible in its original languages becomes a big, big deal to people like Luther, Melanchthon, and others switching the authority base ecclesiastically in the church.\n\nAnd when you study this in the original language it never says Peter was the first Pope.\u00a0 What it says is \u201cI say to you that you are Peter,\u201d and the word \u201cPeter\u201d is Petrous, masculine, little stone, and Jesus goes on and says \u201cupon this rock\u201d and the moment He says \u201cupon this rock\u201d He uses a totally different word, Petra, feminine, large stone.\u00a0 So what it\u2019s saying is \u201cI say to you that you are Peter\u201d little stone, \u201c and upon this rock,\u201d different rock now, \u201cI will build this church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.\u00a0 The rock that Jesus is referring to here, the big rock, I believe is Peter\u2019s confession of Christ, because Jesus in this exchange had asked a question\u2014who do men say that I am?\u00a0 Peter gave the right answer, properly identifying Christ and Jesus says upon this confession of truth, upon the veracity of what Peter just says I\u2019m building My church on that phrase.\u00a0 He never ever said he\u2019s going to build the church on Peter.\u00a0 And if He built the church on Peter He didn\u2019t pick a very good guy to do it because he denied the Lord three times, as you know.\u00a0 And in the very next breath he makes another statement and Jesus says \u201cGet behind Me,\u201d what? \u201cGet behind Me Satan.\u201d\u00a0 So Peter is a man that became a great man of God but he has feet of clay just like the rest of us.\u00a0 So Jesus is not building the church on the papacy of Peter; He\u2019s building the church on the veracity of what Peter said in that instance.\u00a0 Do\u00a0 you see the difference.\n\nAnd you wouldn\u2019t know that unless you quit listening to all these priests, unless you quit listening to all these Popes, unless you get into the Word of God, unless you become literate to understand the Word of God, unless you get a copy of the Bible, not just in Latin but in German or English and you actually begin to study the Bible in the original languages.\u00a0 What I\u2019m trying to get at is the Reformers are coming to the conclusions that they\u2019re coming to because they\u2019re reversing what the school of Alexandria had been teaching all of these centuries.\n\nSo let\u2019s pretend that Peter is the first Pope; we\u2019ve got a little problem here, don\u2019t we?\u00a0 Because Matthew 8:14, the verse I had you open to says this: \u201cWhen Jesus came into Peter\u2019s home He saw His mother-in-law lying sick\u201d now you can\u2019t have a mother-in-law unless you\u2019re married.\u00a0\u00a0 So here we\u2019ve got the first Pope being married; this is a big problem isn\u2019t it.\u00a0 And then they began to look at 1 Corinthians 9:5 where Paul is talking about his rights as an apostle, and he makes this statement, \u201cDo we not have a right to take along a believing wife, even as the rest of the apostles and the brothers of the Lord and\u201d what\u2019s that last word? \u201cCephas?\u201d\u00a0 Now Cephas is Peter\u2019s Aramaic name, Petros <\/em>is his Greek name, Simon <\/em>is his Hebrew name.\u00a0 So in Israel in the first century I believe people probably spoke four languages.\u00a0 When you study the different versions of the words that were written on Christ\u2019s cross you\u2019ll see some Gospel writers saying it was in Greek, it read this way, in Hebrew it read this way, in Aramaic it read this way, in Latin it read this way.\u00a0 So what you have in first century Israel is the speaking of four different languages which would be Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew and because of the influence of Rome Latin.\n\nSo when he says Cephas he\u2019s making a reference to Peter in the Aramaic name.\u00a0 And that\u2019s why Jesus, when Peter starts acting like his old self will call him by his old name, \u201cSimon, Simon, Satan has requested permission to\u201d what \u201csift you as wheat.\u201d\u00a0 Why does he switch to his old name?\u00a0 Because he\u2019s acting like his old self, because he\u2019s in the midst of\u2026 you know, he\u2019s asleep when he\u2019s supposed to be awake, his courage is lacking, so names in the Bible are a big deal.\n\nBut all of that to say Paul, in 1 Corinthians 9:5 says Peter had a believing wife.\u00a0 [1 Corinthians 9:5, \u201cDo we not have a right to take along a believing wife, even as the rest of the apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?\u201d]\u00a0 So Peter had a believing wife, Paul says, don\u2019t the rest of us have a right to take a believing wife.\u00a0 So if Peter had a believing wife and a believing mother-in-law Peter, the first Pope, must have been married.\u00a0 Number 1, Peter was not the first Pope but let\u2019s just pretend he was the first Pope.\u00a0 We have a big problem here because Peter is actually married and what the Roman Catholic Church is teaching is the celibacy of the priesthood.\u00a0 This is why the Catholic Church is trying to hide the Bible from the people all of this time because they know that the things they are teaching go directly against the Word of God and the Reformers are going back to the Word of God, reversing the authority base and they\u2019re retrieving ideas that have been lost in the church, perhaps for over a millennia.\n\nSo the Reformers start to say you know what?\u00a0 It\u2019s possible to serve God and be married.\u00a0 And Luther himself, who at one time was a Catholic Monk, got married, because of verses like this.\u00a0 He married a woman, I think her name was Katherine, if I\u2019m not mistaken. So look at all of these things the Reformers are bringing back into the church: literal interpretation, denunciation of allegorization, denunciation of church tradition as a guide, priesthood of all believers which would include\u2026 if you believe that you believe Bible translations and raising literacy standards, they gave us (without even knowing it because of their emphasis on depravity) the American system of government because if absolute power corrupts we need to divide political power up.\u00a0 They gave us the five Solas.\u00a0 They gave us the rejection of celibacy of the priesthood.\u00a0 And in many cases they paid the ultimate sacrifice to give us these things which would include martyrdom itself.\n\nOne of the contemporaries of Luther, in fact when I was there in Germany we were fortunate to get a guide who understood we were an evangelical group and so this guide understood evangelical Christians and the kind of questions we had, so we had a terrific guide when we were there in Wittenberg, Germany, but one of the things the guide brought up is Tyndale, from England, who was a contemporary of Luther, came to Germany basically to learn what Luther was doing and Tyndale modeled a lot of his ideas after what Luther was doing in Germany.\u00a0 Tyndale just took them to England.\u00a0 So Tyndale actually creates a Bible version called The Tyndale Bible<\/em>, which is a translation from Greek and Hebrew not into German but into what?\u00a0 Into English.\u00a0 And he got himself into a lot of trouble with the political powers of England for doing that.\n\nSo this is just a little citation I found from his Wikipedia page which may not be the best source to quote, but I thought it kind of summarized William Tyndale really well.\u00a0 There\u2019s his years, A.D.1494-1536.\u00a0 You can see he would be a contemporary of Luther because in 1517 Luther nailed the 95 Thesis to the cathedral door in Wittenberg, Germany.\n\nSo it says of Tyndale, \u201cIn 1535 Tyndale was arrested and jailed in his castle Vilvoorde \u00a0outside of Brussels for over a year.\u00a0 In 1536 he was convicted of heresy and executed by strangulation after which his body was burnt at the stake, his dying prayer was that the King of England\u2019s eyes would be opened.\u00a0 This seemed to find its fulfillment just two years later with Henry\u2019s authorization of The Great Bible<\/em> for the Church of England which was largely based on Tyndale\u2019s own work. \u00a0Hence, the Tyndale Bible as it is commonly known continued to play a key role in the spreading of the Reformation ideas\u201d thank you printing press also, \u201cspreading Reformation ideas across the English speaking world and eventually to the British Empire.\u201d\n\nSo you can see that many of these Reformers suffered greatly for what they gave us; many of them even going back to the morning stars of the Reformation, people like John Huss, William Tyndale, and others, they paid the ultimate price of martyrdom by giving us these things that we\u2019ve gone over in this list here, that many of us just take for granted.\u00a0 God, in other words, advanced truth in His church through great human sacrifice.\u00a0 And so that\u2019s why when we look back at the Protestant Reformation our mindset ought to be to rejoice in these men and what God did.\n\nNow having said all that many of you liked the study up to this point but some of you are probably going to get crossways with me, if you\u2019re not already, the next time we\u2019re together because I\u2019m going to start giving you (as Paul Harvey would say) \u201cthe other side of the story.\u201d\u00a0 There were things in the Reformation that we ought to thank God for and we ought to praise, but there were some things that came into the mind of the Reformers that they never corrected.\u00a0 There were some major theological\u2026 in other words, it\u2019s historically na\u00efve to think that the Protestant Reformers fixed a thousand years of bad teaching.\u00a0 They fixed it in some areas, obviously these are key areas when you go through the Solas, but there are some other things that were left uncorrected and because they started churches, Protestant churches, many of those churches today are still operating by a deficient belief system in some areas.\n\nYou can go into many Reformed churches today that are Protestant in some areas but they continue to be Roman Catholic in other areas, because one of the points I\u2019m going to try to make is that the weakness of Reformed Theology is they took the progress that was made by the Reformers and they pretended as if there was no further progress to be made.\u00a0 They took the progress of the Reformers and they froze it into creeds and confessions; one of the most prominent in Reformed thought is the Westminster Confession and when you get into Reformed circles what you start to discover is the Westminster Confession becomes the authority.\u00a0 Now Luther never believed that; he believed in Sola Scriptura<\/em>.\u00a0 Well, many of these Reformed churches are sort of, in my opinion, going against the very principles that the Reformers stood for; Scripture alone, because the Reformed tradition takes the progress the Reformers made, freezes it, and so what you have in Reformed thought is a hybrid of Protestantism in some areas but Roman Catholicism in some other areas.\u00a0 And you can\u2019t question what they\u2019ve done because now the authority becomes not the Bible but it becomes the Westminster Confession.\n\nYou see what\u2019s happening here.\u00a0 So this is the side of the Protestant Reformers I\u2019m going to bring up and most people when they celebrate this event in October will not tell you this side of the story and that\u2019s why I entitled this series of lesson The Protestant Reformation, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly<\/em>.\u00a0 So God had to raise up other people to undo the damage done by Alexandria, Egypt, that the Reformers never corrected.\u00a0 And I\u2019m not going to get into all of that today, I\u2019ll get into that the next time that we\u2019re together but I want to leave you with this simple point.\n\nDo you remember when the children of Israel came out of Egypt and they went to Mount Sinai and they were traveling from Sinai into the land of Israel and they were traveling through the Trans\u00adjordan?\u00a0 Do you remember the serpent started to bite people?\u00a0 And so everybody complained to Moses; Moses complained to God and God said here\u2019s what we\u2019re going to do to solve the problem. We\u2019re going to put this serpent on a pole and all you have to do is look at the serpent and you\u2019ll be healed or protected from a snake bite.\u00a0 Remember that story?\u00a0 Numbers 21:9, \u201cAnd Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.\u201d\n\nAnd you might remember Jesus, in His conversation with Nicodemus in John 3:14, in the New Testament, used that as an object lesson for salvation.\u00a0 Jesus said to Nicodemus, \u201cAs Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; [15] so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.\u201d\u00a0 So just as you can look to a serpent and be protected or healed from a snake bite, in the same way by way of analogy the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, is lifted up on the cross, paying for the sins of the world and if you simply look at Him metaphorically by way of faith, you can be saved, not from a snake bite but from the greatest poisonous disease that has infected the human race which is the disease of sin, which has affected all of us.\u00a0 So that serpent in the wilderness becomes a big deal, not just for the Jewish people but in the teachings of Jesus Christ.\n\nNow when you go over to 2 Kings 18:4, this is about 800 years later, and this is just before the Babylonian deportation.\u00a0 It talks about all of the idolatry in the land of Israel and it says this: \u201cHe removed the high places and broke down the sacred pillars and cut down the Asherah.\u201d\u00a0 Those are pagan idols in the land of Israel.\u00a0 Look at this, \u201cHe also broke in pieces the bronze serpent\u201d that we just read about in the book of Numbers, \u201cthat Moses had made, for until those days the sons of Israel burned incense to it; and it was called Nehushtan.\u201d\n\nSo what happened to this bronze serpent, something that God used?\u00a0 They turned it into an idol.\u00a0 And you see this happens almost in every tradition.\u00a0 Every time God uses somebody or something or someone eventually that movement will fossilize and they\u2019ll start to worship the very instrument that God used, perhaps to condemn idolatry.\u00a0 And that\u2019s exactly what happened to this bronze serpent.\u00a0 And my contention is, and this is why some people get upset with me when I bring these things up, but my contention is that is what has happened, to a large degree, to the Protestant Reformers.\u00a0 They have been elevated almost to a place of canonicity, almost elevated to a place where, you know, the Catholics would worship saints.\u00a0\u00a0 You find that in Protestant circles and I think the Protestant Reformers, if you could resurrect them from the dead and look at what people have done with them, would probably be somewhat embarrassed by that.\u00a0 But you see, that is human nature.\u00a0 This is what the Jewish people were doing with this bronze serpent.\n\nSo there\u2019s a tendency amongst people to not want to see the bad in the Protestant Reformers because we think look at how God used these guys.\u00a0 How could you dare say anything negative about them?\u00a0 And yet I\u2019m going to be bringing out the fact that there\u2019s some very ugly, there\u2019s some very negative things.\u00a0 So I think the way to understand the Protestant Reformation is to adhere to the principles that they brought in, the Solas and others.\u00a0 But let\u2019s not put them on some sort of pedestal where they quite frankly really don\u2019t belong.\n\nAnd even in my own tradition, at Dallas Seminary, I\u2019ll share this with you, John Walvoord was heavily used by God to not only teach prophecy but to teach the doctrine of the pretribulational rapture and to bring the church back to an attention to prophetic things.\u00a0 And Walvoord died, he died when I was there, I wanted to take a class from him and the guy died on me so I was kind of bummed about that.\u00a0 But what my school did, I was sort of embarrassed by.\u00a0 They took his study chair and they began to say you can sit in the Walvoord study chair to kind of get the insight that Walvoord had.\u00a0 I mean, to me that\u2019s sort of embarrassing.\u00a0 I think Walvoord himself would have been sort of embarrassed by that.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think we need a Walvoord study chair any more than we need a bronze snake that\u2019s been around for 800 years.\n\nAnd is say that about my own tradition because when you look at almost every denomination they\u2019ll do this.\u00a0 There\u2019s some kind of relic of idolatry where people, I think are so appreciative of the good that such and such a person did that when that person is dead and gone there\u2019s a tendency to elevate them to a place they don\u2019t belong.\u00a0 And I say this gently but that\u2019s human nature and that\u2019s what you see in a lot of people regarding Reformation theology.\u00a0 You do not challenge Reformation theology in the eyes of some people.\u00a0 Just look on the warfare that goes on on the internet, not the best source either, but there is just vitriolic hatred for anybody that would raise any challenge based on the Bible of anything about the Protestant Reformation.\u00a0 You don\u2019t challenge that.\n\nAnd I think the principles that the Protestant Reformation gave us become the basis by which anything could be challenged.\u00a0 I can be challenged, you can be challenged because the whole point is Sola Scriptura<\/em>.\u00a0 You remember what God said to Joshua in Joshua 1:2?\u00a0 \u201cMoses My servant is\u201d what? \u201cdead;\u201d because for forty years Moses was the key guy. Well, what are you going to do when Moses dies?\u00a0 Everybody is hanging around, still worshipping Moses and God has to tell Joshua, the new leader, he\u2019s dead, he\u2019s not coming back from the dead, except in the end times, you\u2019re the leader now, now \u201carise, cross this Jordan\u201d and so forth.\u00a0 [Joshua 1:2, \u201cMoses, My servant is dead;\u00a0 now therefore arise, cross this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them, to the sons of Israel.\u201d]\n\nWhy did God have to say that?\u00a0 Because of the tendency to venerate a human leader.\u00a0 John Calvin is dead.\u00a0 Martin Luther is dead.\u00a0 John Walvoord is dead.\u00a0 Heroes of the past we can appreciate what they have given us but they\u2019re dead.\u00a0 They\u2019re not the issue.\u00a0 Okay.\u00a0 The issue is the principles they gave us, not wanting to venerate them.\u00a0 And what you see in the Protestant Reformers are people, they\u2019re human beings. Right?\u00a0 Kind of like Peter, where Jesus said, Matthew 16:17, \u201cBlessed are you, Simon Barjona,\u201d when he gave the correct identification of Christ, and then the poor guy opens his mouth a second time and Jesus says \u201cGet behind Me, Satan.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Peter is just a man.\u00a0 Did God use Peter? Absolutely.\u00a0 Read Acts 1-10; there\u2019s not a more pivotal guy in the life of the early church than the apostle Peter.\u00a0 But at the end of the day what is he? He\u2019s just a guy that put on his shoes, assuming they had shoes back then, I guess they had sandals or whatever, put on his shoes one foot at a time.\u00a0 He had the sin nature that we\u2019re all plagued with.\u00a0 And so we don\u2019t venerate Peter; we don\u2019t elevate Peter.\u00a0 Peter himself wouldn\u2019t want that.\n\nAnd that\u2019s what I\u2019m trying to argue here with these Protestant Reformers.\u00a0 As the study at this point changes direction and we\u2019re no longer looking at their positive contribution, which I think we\u2019ve covered pretty well, we\u2019re looking at their incomplete revolution.\u00a0 And consequently the incomplete state of Reformed Theology today and consequently going down to Roman numeral VII, why God had to raise up other people, using the same method that the Reformers gave us.\u00a0 See, the Reformers had a wonderful method, they just didn\u2019t apply it all the way.\u00a0 And I\u2019ll give you some reason as to why they didn\u2019t.\u00a0 So what you have with other people, probably beginning, well, many, many people I\u2019ll go over but what those other people did is they looked at Luther and Calvin\u2019s methodology, their hermeneutical methodology, which they used to restore doctrine to the church in some areas.\n\nAnd other people, outside of the Reformed tradition said you know what, that is a great methodology.\u00a0 We\u2019re going to take Luther and Calvin\u2019s methodology and we\u2019re not just going to apply it to the solas, we\u2019re going to apply it to the whole Bible.\n\nSo the Protestant Reformers knocked over a domino, I mean it was a BIG domino but it was not the only domino; there were other dominos yet to follow.\u00a0 And so I just share that with you to tell you the direction we\u2019re taking in this study.\u00a0 We\u2019re not going to be putting the Reformers on some sort of pedestal; I\u2019m going to give you the whole story, the good, the bad and the ugly.\n\nOkay, that\u2019s where we\u2019re going and I\u2019m finished talking.\u00a0 Any questions.","series_sermon_number":""},"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t