1. Golfer Payne Stewart and 5 others boarded the Learjet in Orlando for a flight to Dallas. They ended up a thousand miles north of their destination, crashing near Aberdeen, South Dakota. The eerie things is that for four hours the plane was on autopilot and those on board were not aware of what was going on. It is believed that somehow the plane lost its cabin pressure, either killing those on board or leaving them unconscious. The plane flew until it ran out of fuel. F16 fighters flew alongside but there was nothing they could do. In fact, one report said that if it looked like the plane might have landed in a populated area they may have even shot it down.
2. Why did the plane end up going so far from its destination? Probably because of winds or other factors that threw the direction of the plane off soon after it took of. A slight change of direction and the plane needed up no where near to where those aboard hoped to go.
3. Today is Reformation Sunday. A day on which we celebrate the birth of the Protestant church. A day on which we remember Reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin. How they were used by God to bring us back to the truth of Godís words. For just as with the Learjet, the church can so easily get off course and end up being far from where it was intended to be.
4. That is why, whether it is a plane or a large ship or the church, readings need to be taken to ensure it is on course, and when it is off course, even the slightest, but corrections to its course needs to be taken.
5. The church, including you and me so easily get off the course that God has set before us. We so easily lose sight of the truth of Godís word and head in the wrong direction. A slight deviation to the truth can bring us to places we never wanted to go to.
6. The word reformation really refers to a correcting or a getting back on the right course. To reform means "to amend or improve by change f form or removal of faults and abuses.í "To put an end to an evil by enforcing or introducing a better method or course of action." To reform is to free us from sin and evil.
7. I would like to think that the Reformation put us back on course to stay. That it brought about a church that was freed from the false teachings of the RC church that said that only the church could declare salvation and that people had to do what the church said to be saved. That we again were based on the truth that "The righteous will live by faith." That we are saved by Godís grace through faith rather than works.
8. But the problem is that we have a tendency to stray off course. And we continually need to check our settings and making adjustments. That is why the founders of the Reformed Church adopted the motto "Ecclessia reformata quia semper reformanda est." The church reformed because it must always be reforming.
9. In other words reformation is to be an ongoing activity. We must always be comparing what we believe and how we live to the truth of the word of God. We will stray from the truth but we must continually be going back to the truth.
10. And friends, this is as important to remember today as it has ever been. For the church today is straying from the truth in many ways. In fact it seems we cannot even agree on what truth is any more. That we like Pilate ask the question "What is truth?"
11. I found it interesting in my readings to see that this problem is largely due to the reformation itself. It is a little difficult to understand and I hope I do not lose anyone. But I believe this is important because it helps us to see how each one of us so easily gets misled as to what the truth really is.
12. David Wells, in his book, No Place For Truth" talks about this. I will try to say this in simpler terms without distorting his point. The reformers taught us that we can know God as we need to know Him to be saved. And that to know Him as such is not to know Him through created nature, human nature, or through the church. But that we can only know Him directly by the work of the Holy Spirit and by the truth of the Bible. Salvation is between you individually, and God. The only intermediary or one that stands between us is Jesus Himself. As a minister I could declare someone unsaved but my declaration would have no power.
13. God saves by changing hearts. Only He can do that. Salvation is an individual occurrence.
14. As individuals, we have a human dignity. This is the good side of us. We were created by God in His image and as Christians we were re-created in that image. This includes those things that are good within us - our love, holiness, righteousness, ability to know the truth.
15. But at the same time there is human depravity. That means that the whole of our human nature is corrupted in all its parts. The reformers knew this. This means that no one can know God apart from His sovereign work of grace. And also that anything we as humans say or believe about God is not beyond criticism. Faith is an individual matter, but our individual faith is subject to error.
16. The church cannot declare salvation but we have a role in teaching people the word of God - to help them know and understand the truth. The church is used by God as a means of faith but that faith is still an individual matter. We learn in church, but individually we read and study the word and individually we can commune with God and experience Him. He is a personal God.
17. There is a big danger in all of this. We focus so much on individual experience and our own understandings that we forget that we are prone to error. And we do not like the church or anyone else telling us that our experiences and understandings may be or are wrong, according to Godís word.
18. What the church needs to be reformed from today is a the misuse of individualism. An individualism that determines that truth is based on our experience of God and our view of Him. I am very thankful for the times I have experienced Godís presence and power in my life. These experiences have deepened my faith. But they must not become the basis of what I believe. For we all have had different experiences and then we would all believe somewhat differently. We must view and understand our experiences by grounding them in the word of God.
19. Before I went into ministry I felt that God was calling me through some experiences. But I needed to read through the word carefully to see if there was anything in the word by which God might be telling me anything different. Even as a minister, I need to go back to the word and to keep reforming my understanding of the truth. In this past year my understanding of the end-times changed as I preached through the book of Revelation.
20. In our passages we see two ways in which we need to learn to be objective with truth. That means that the truth is not based subjectively on our own experiences or views but objectively on the word of God.
21. In both of our passages Jesus is telling the truth of who He is. In fact, 26 times in the gospel of John, Jesus says "I tell you the truth." In John 14 He says "I am the truth." In John 8 He tells us that the truth will set us free.
22. But the Jews did not believe the truth. They believed that they were saved because they were children of Abraham. They believed that membership to Godís people, or today we could say the church, secured their salvation. If they had only known the word better, they would have read in the old testament that belong to Israel did not save a person. That God repeatedly told them they were lost because of their sin. And that it was through faith that Abraham was saved. And that they would be saved if they had the same faith as Abraham.
23. It is so easy for us to grow up in the church and think we are saved because we are part of the church. To forget that we individually need to repent and trust in Christ alone rather than in our goodness or church attendance. Even if we acknowledge or need for Christ initially, we still can be so easily are affected by tradition. That we become so filled with tradition that there is little room left for the word of our Lord. Individually and as a church we must examine our faith and how we live out our faith to make sure that we do not make more of it than we should.
24. In fact we so often seem to worry more about church attendance than we do salvation. We want so much for people to come to church when we should be praying for God to change their hearts. Then, the result will be that they will worship God. But sometimes we make worship the end whereas salvation should be.
25. In the passage from John we focus not so much on tradition but on how our view of truth is affected by others. The Romans thought that truth was subjective. They were skeptical and cynics. Truth was different things for different people. Jesus told Pilate who He was. Pilateís response was "What is truth?" You say this but they say something different. Are you really the king of the Jews?
26. The one truth that Pilate knew was that Jesus was innocent and did not deserve to be killed. But even that truth was not enough to persuade him to protect Jesus from the angry mob.
27. There are two things we learn from this that we consider. First that truth is not relevant. That truth is not different for the Jews than it was for the Romans. That truth does not depend on what you believe. That the only truth is the claim of Jesus that He is God and that salvation is in Him alone. That is the truth whether you believe it or not.
28. Jesus says elsewhere that we cannot come to Him or believe in Him unless the Father draws us to Him. That we are not in charge. I believe many believers today prefer churches that believe in man choosing God rather than God choosing us. In adult baptism rather than in child baptism. For in these churches we seem to be in charge rather than God. We make the decision to accept Christ rather than God leading us to that decision.
29. The church today needs a reformation back from the individualism of subjective truth back to the word. To acknowledge that God predestines us but that we still need to decide to follow Him. To believe this is hard to reason out. But truth is not based on our reason but on the word of God.
30. My prayer is that the church will be more unified in the future. That rather than new denominations appearing almost daily, that we will study the word of God together and be united in His word. I believe that church splits are due to the individuality of faith today. "You believe what you want and Iíll believe what I want." I believe we no longer listen to each other. We enter a discussion with our own agenda and we leave it with the same. We do not want to be confused with facts. We do not want to admit that our understanding of the truth may be somewhat wrong.
31. May we together grow in the knowledge of the truth. May we embrace the truth together. May we know the great truth of the reformation that we are saved by grace. That God is sovereign and that He has sent the truth in the person of Jesus Christ and that His word is truth.
32. We need to humbly confess that we have been affected by the perverted truth of the world and our own depravity so that we are off course. One person on televison said that if the pressure in that Learjet fell just a little, those onboard would have gotten a false sense of joy. A euphoria that would make them think that all was alright when it was not. I wonder if this same false sense of security may be present in much of the church today.
33. Only if God is our pilot and we fly according to His instructions, will we arrive at the right destination.
