“The Reformation…Today”
Galatians 5:1-6
Reformation Sunday, October 29, 2006
Stephen Becker
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
(1) For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (2) Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. (3) I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. (4) You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. (5) For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. (6) For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.
Sermon Outline: How the truths of the Reformation continue to teach us today
I. Brief outline of Luther’s life and the events leading up to the posting of the 95 Theses in 1517.
II. Explanation of Law and Gospel and how Luther reformed the Church through his correct teaching of sola fide: grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
III. APPLICATION: How the truths of the Reformation continue to teach us and impact our lives every day as Christians.
As most of you know, I’m a final-year seminary student wrapping up work on my Master of Divinity. Now I like to tease the “other” Pastor Steve because it took him about seven years to finish his M.Div and I think I’m going to beat him…by about six months! Well the way my M.Div program works is that I travel back to the seminary about three times a year to start a group of classes, listen to the lecture, and then come back home to study, read the books, do the writing assignments, and then take the exam. So late last Spring I went back to Newburgh, Indiana, where the seminary is located to start another group of four classes. The seminary has an arrangement with a hotel really close by, and they shuttle us back and forth from the school to the hotel.
This one morning…it was a beautiful and clear Spring morning…I was heading out the door of the hotel to leave for school. The hotel’s stairway was totally enclosed in glass, kind of like a stairway inside of a greenhouse. As I was coming down the last flight of stairs, I heard a fluttering sound and a couple of thuds against the glass. (pause) Well as I got to the bottom of the stairs, I saw this young bird—probably a finch—scared to death because somehow he had walked inside the door into this stairway greenhouse and turned a corner, so he couldn’t see the door anymore and just knew there was this person—me—coming towards him. Poor little guy, he’d fly toward the window and slam into it, then turn around and fly into the other pane of glass. So being the animal lover that I am, I wanted to at least try to chase him around the corner to the open door or if anything else, trap him in a corner so I could pick him up and take him out of the door. (pause) Can you imagine me running back and forth after this scared little bird inside of this stairway...with the little guy slamming into the glass on one side, looking at me, and then slamming into the glass on the other side. He could see where he wanted to go and he knew where he wanted to go, but he just couldn’t get there; and he also could see where he didn’t want to go…anywhere near me. O.K. so long story short, he finally slammed against the glass so hard (pause) that he knocked himself out. Now I really felt bad because I wasn’t sure at first if I hadn’t just killed this little bird by trying to help him, but as I came up close, there he was, lying on his back, wings spread out and his chest going up and down while he was breathing. Phew, I knew he was alive, so I picked him up tenderly in my hand and took him outside and set him under a thick bush where I hoped a cat wouldn’t get him. I watched him for about another 30 seconds and he then flew off in safety, free from the entrapment of that stairway, and flying freely in the air where he knew he was supposed to be.
It’s a cute story; and it’s a true story. But how does the story of Steve chasing the bird relate to us here as we worship Jesus Christ together on this Reformation Sunday evening? Well about 500 years ago, there was this monk in the Catholic church; his name was Martin Luther. And Luther was troubled by a terrible problem. Like that little bird who felt trapped in the glass stairway, Luther felt trapped in a sinful world, a world where sin was all around him, a world that tempted him to sin but could offer him no escape and no solution to that sin. And what’s worse, as a Catholic priest, he had learned God’s Law very well. He knew, as the prophet Jeremiah had written (31:30) that “everyone will die for his sin.” You see Martin Luther lived in a time where the church held that regular people and maybe even regular priests just didn’t have the capability to understand Scripture; it was up to the bishops and cardinals and the Pope himself to interpret and tell the people what to believe. And that’s exactly what the church was doing then; and the problem was, in a way of controlling people, all these bishops and Popes were teaching was Law, Law, and then some more Law. That’s like me or one of the other pastors here telling you—week in and week out—week after week—“the Law of the Lord is perfect” (Psalm 7) and you have to be perfect in obeying God’s perfect Law. And if you can’t perfectly obey God’s Law, you will die and you will go to hell. Proverbs 14:12 tells us, “there is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” In other words, the message of the church of the 16th century was “you must obey God’s Law perfectly or you’re going straight…to the hot place.” Luther, just like everybody else, knew that there is just NO WAY for anyone to perfectly obey God’s Law. Just like that little bird who realized that he had done something to trap himself into a helpless situation, he tried everything to correct it. But in the end all his efforts were for nothing because he kept flying into the glass windows. Like the bird trying to save himself, Luther spent hours and hours confessing his sins to his friend Johann (von Staupitz), almost wearing this poor guy out by trying to remember every sin that he had ever committed. On at least one occasion, he confessed for six hours straight! And what’s worse, the Catholic church of that time had a “perfect” solution, these same priests and bishops and cardinals and popes who were teaching this ongoing message of Law only, offered special dispensations—special forgiveness of sins—for a price. In a mockery to the priesthood of believers, they taught that you could buy your own way out of sins by purchasing it from these church leaders. You could even do so for your deceased relatives who were certainly already suffering in purgatory for their inability to fulfill God’s Law. So like that bird who couldn’t figure out how to get himself out the mess that he had gotten himself into, Luther lived in constant fear that this God who supposedly loved him, was going to condemn him for his sins. Luther once said, “I was myself more than once driven to the very abyss of despair so that I wished I had never been created. Love God? I hated him!”
Thank goodness though for this guy who Johann von Staupitz because you see, Johann knew the truth about Jesus Christ: Where Luther saw Christ as a tough judge who would ultimately condemn him to Hell for his sins, Johann saw Jesus as a loving Savior who came full of Grace and truth and life. So this friend Johann sent Luther off to study the New Testament and to gain an understanding forgiveness of sins, the grace and peace we find through our faith in Jesus Christ. There in Wittenberg, Germany, Luther studied the New Testament and in Paul’s Letters to the Romans and the Galatians Luther finally came to understand the Good News of Jesus Christ! Luther came to understand that yes, we are condemned by the Law. Because of the Law and because of our sin, we are lost and totally condemned to an eternity in Hell. The church of Luther’s time was right in their teaching about this. But they held back teaching the Good News of Jesus Christ. My friends, because of God’s great love for us, because of God loving the world so much that He sent His One and Only Son to die for us, we can be saved from the Law’s sentence of death. Martin Luther came to understand that through our faith alone in Jesus alone, we receive God’s Grace. This is the Good News of Jesus Christ! This is what changed Martin Luther’s entire life! And this amazing change in Martin Luther’s life ended up changing the world forever…and for the better! The true story of Martin Luther—a normal person just like you and me—tells the Good News of Jesus Christ. Friends, Luther was no prophet. He was no saint. We Christians don’t worship Martin Luther. He was but a man. But this man Martin Luther came to understand the glorious Good News of Jesus Christ through his own years of tormenting himself and suffering in the knowledge of what sin earns us. And he didn’t need a pope to tell him that this faith in Jesus saves. He just read his Bible and listened to God the Holy Spirit telling him that yes, trust in Jesus because Jesus has paved the way to life.
APPLICATION
This revelation for Martin Luther is as true and real to him 500 years ago as it is to each one of us today. See friends, what Luther knew earlier about God’s Law is completely true and correct. It was true at the moment that Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden; it was true during Luther’s time. And it’s true today. Like Paul writes in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death…” but that’s not the end of the story. Just like that guy on the radio, Paul Harvey, says, now for the rest of the story: Paul continues in Romans 6:23 by telling us, “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This guy Johann von Staupitz told Luther that he should, “surrender to the love of God!” And that’s all we need to do. We trust Jesus; we put our faith in Him that His life and mission on earth is the perfect example for us and that His death on the cross and His resurrection three days later is the perfect solution for us and for our sins. Yup, we sin. We break God’s Law. We deserve death and hell. But Jesus paid the price and wants everyone to believe—to have faith—in what He has done.
So how do we relate this history of what happened some six-thousand miles and five hundreds years ago in Wittenberg, Germany? I mean, especially since most of you would laugh at the clothes styles I wore in high-school only twenty years ago…how do we take something that happened five hundred years and make it real and applicable to each one of us today? Well, back to my friend, the little bird in the stairway! I wanted to help that little guy. I wanted to direct him or even carry him to freedom. I wanted to take on his burdens. But all he saw was this big person coming at him trying to tell him something or maybe even trying to make him do something. All I wanted was for him to trust me and all he wanted to do was get away from me. He couldn’t see the good news of freedom that I was bringing him; he couldn’t see that I wanted to set him free. O.k., I realize this is a bird we’re talking about, but really, how many of us have done the same thing, only in our case, running from the Good News of Jesus Christ? There was a point in my life where I did that…to the point where I left the church. And outside of Christ, all I had were walls and fear, entrapment, enslavement, and no peace. But Jesus Christ came to me and offered me salvation. Just like I wanted to do with that little bird, Jesus wanted to set me free.
Today in our reading, Paul explains a similar concept of Jesus Christ to the Galatians when he says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” What Paul is explaining is now that you and I are free of our sins through Jesus Christ, we have that grace and peace in our hearts. (pause) Don’t worry about how you will get through school, but turn your fears over to Jesus. Don’t worry about that job interview; just trust that Christ will be with you. Does that guarantee you get the job? No, of course not. But it does guarantee that whatever happens, God will be with you. Don’t worry about where the money will come from to pay the tithe; just trust that it will. Paul continues on in our reading by saying, “Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.” In other words friends, when we worry about things, when we try to fix things on our own, instead of trusting completely in Jesus, we are on the road to trying to “earn” our way into heaven again. All that gets you is what the Catholic Church told Luther: sin and death. But if we trust Jesus—if we put our faith in Him—we have grace and peace. “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love!” So like Luther said, (Paul) “shows that the law brings sin and a curse rather than righteousness. Righteousness is promised by God, fulfilled by Christ without the law, given to us—out of grace alone!...he teaches the work of love that ought to follow faith.”
So what are those works of love that we do in our faith, in the grace and peace of Jesus Christ? Internally, we praise God and thank Him in prayer. We learn about Him through the Scriptures. We follow Jesus’ example of how to live our lives. Externally, we do what we are doing now, praising Him together in fellowship with other saved believers. We go out into the world and show God’s love in a real way—in a practical way. We teach the Good News of Jesus Christ to those who haven’t heard it. We help the poor and the homeless with material things. We help the rich and the famous who don’t know Christ to accept Him. Like Paul wrote to the faithful in Philippi, (4:8), “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.” So can those things that happened to Martin Luther so many years ago still impact us today? You bet! After Luther came to saving faith in Jesus Christ, he lived a life that gave him grace and peace while glorifying God. And that’s what we all want, isn’t it?
Now may the true faith…
