Reformation Preaching

Would you take your Bibles, please, and turn to 1 Timothy, chapter 4 tonight? So we talk about the Reformation preaching. We mentioned this morning that the Reformation was a movement of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God and it transformed the way we worship and the way we believe. It was a movement of both word and song, a Bible and hymnal, and we talked about the singing of the Church this morning. I'd like to talk about its preaching tonight. The Reformation of God, in fact, all of God's great revivals are primarily a movement of his Spirit through the Word. That is, those movements that have any lasting effect upon the Church or the greater society. And it was back in the Spirit of the Age, back in the Middle Ages, in the 16th century, the end of the 1500s, that God was moving both in the secular society, as well as in the Church Society, to go back to the Fountains, odd funtests, they would say, in the Latin, back to the Fountains. For the Renaissance, that was a return to the classical art and philosophy of Aristotle and Plato and the Greek classical age, and for the Church, the fountain was the New Testament and the Bible. It affected almost immediately this movement of the Reformation, the way that the Church preached. Because prior to the Reformation, there were three different kinds of preaching that were popular, depending upon the minister and where he had his charge or his congregation. There was the scholastic movement. Those who engage in it were known as the schoolmen. There were famous people. You've heard of some of them, Thomas Aquinas, Peter Lombard, Don Scottis, and they were called the schoolmen because primarily they were in academia, and they had decided to merge Aristotle's philosophy with the teachings of the New Testament Apostles. You've probably heard people say when they wanted to talk about something mundane and ridiculous, they'll say, well, how many angels can sit on the head of a pit? How many have heard that expression? Okay, well, you know that was an actual sermon delivered by Thomas Aquinas because it was an actual study done by the scholastics. How many angels could sit on the head of a pit? You'll find it in his great theological work called the Suma, the Summary of Theology. As he talks about materiality and spirituality, it dimmed between men and angels. These sermons were delivered primarily in Latin. They were highly speculative and full of detailed and laborious reasoning, a little wonder than that the average person who didn't speak Latin and wasn't really interested in how many angels could sit on the head of the pit didn't get much out of preaching. They're developed alongside of that. What we might call the allegorical method of preaching, which was the more popular by the unschooled clergymen, where everything in scripture was interpreted to have some spiritual or moralistic meaning. For example, in Mark chapter 6 where it says that Jesus saw that they were making headway painfully for the wind was against them about the fourth watch of the night. He came to them walking on the sea. Here's the story of the apostles crossing the sea of Galilee and a boat. Remember Jesus walks on the water and meets them and gets into boat with him. This is the preaching of John Vertima who taught about what this wind blowing meant. He said there are four spiritual winds which are contrary to us and move the sea of the world against us. When the wind blows from the east, men reflect on the sorrowful conditions in which they enter this life. When the wind blows from the west, man reflects on bitter death. When the sound of the wind comes from the south, he thinks of the joys of eternity, the north wind he thinks of the terrors of the last judgment. Now, he got that idea from the story of the simply the wind blowing and the Bible doesn't say from what direction it came. That was that allegorical preaching. Every natural thing had some spiritual symbolical meaning. But perhaps the worst kind of preaching was the mystical preaching where mythical stories were invented to explain the meaning of scripture. Gabriel Barletto was preaching on Easter Sunday and he said after the resurrection, the Lord Jesus was looking for a messenger to carry the glad news to his mother. A number offered themselves. Adam said, let me go because I was the cause of this trouble. No, you won't go, Jesus said, because you are too fond of figs and might stop on the way to eat. Then Abel said, let me go. No, you might mean cane and he might kill you and they're the message would end. Then Noah said, I will undertake the business and Jesus said, no, you drink too freely. John the Baptist couldn't go because he wore hairy clothes and the penitent robber was rejected because his legs were broken. Finally an angel was sent who raised the song, praise to the queen of heaven, hallelujah, your son is risen just as he said, hallelujah. Ridiculous mythical stories which were quite frankly condemned by the Catholic Church at the Lateran Council of 1512 and again at the Council of Trenton 1546, but were a very popular way of preaching. And so when the Holy Spirit began to move upon the church, one of the great things he changed early on was the preaching of the word of God. And through quite frankly no explanation and no reason known to us, there arose a number of men like Martin Luther and John Calvin and these other men who decided to take the scripture in its literal playing language and to organize the messages around the organization of the thought of the original author. In other words, they reinvented expository preaching. There were four great movements of God that were affecting them this way. One was there being born in the spirit of the age where they were going back to the fountains of Western civilization and for them the fountains of Western Christianity which they found in the Bible. There was also in that time a Greek New Testament translated by a man named Erasmus. Prior to that Greek New Testament the medieval church used the Volgate version, a Latin version translated by Saint Jerome which was highly inaccurate and was not in the original language of the New Testament writers which was Greek. So when Erasmus came up with the New Testament Greek, the Greek New Testament of Rotterdam it was called because that's where he lived when he translated it. It became a real boon to preaching and many people. Many of the reformers purchased a copy although were very expensive and they began to study the original languages. There was also a movement to translate the Greek and the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the New Testament into the vernacular language of the people. John Wickliffe had done so. John Coverdale had done so in England. There were two English versions. Martin Luther of course did so in German for the German people and there arose among these reformers the conviction of Soluscriptura that the Bible alone was the singular infallible supreme authority over all authorities, both church tradition and reason. Our own little confession of faith written in the wake of the Reformation says the supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are be determined and all degrees of counsels opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men and private opinions are to be examined and in whose sentence we are to rest can be none other than the Holy Spirit speaking in and through the scripture. So the Holy Spirit was bringing about a revival and reformation in the word of God. That is how Martin Luther was converted. He was simply told by a man named Staubitz who was the head of his order of the Augustinian black fires that he was too sensitive and conscience that he confessed too many sins in the confessional. He said I want you to read the Bible and don't come before me unless you have some real sin to confess. And so Martin Luther went away and he began to read the New Testament and in reading the New Testament he was converted. He came under the sway of the Bible. He wasn't the only one. There were others both in the Catholic church and outside of the Catholic church who were coming under the sway of scripture. For our Catholic friends tonight I don't mean to be Catholic bashing at all because there were many in the church like Erasmus and others who believed that the church needed moral and spiritual and theological reformation. In fact at the time of the beginning of the reformation it is estimated that half of all the bishops and priests and cardinals of Europe believed in the and were sympathetic to the ideas of the reformation. These were good sons of the church some who stayed in the church to try to reform it like Erasmus, others who were thrown out of the church. One of the myths we live with is that Martin Luther got mad and left the Catholic church that is not true. To the day he died he considered himself a quote good son of the church. Luther did not leave the church he was thrown out of it. He was just communicated for his ideas. But others who held his ideas and perhaps were more patient in what they did and more moderate in how they expressed them were left in the church and attempted their reformation from within. There was therefore this great new way of looking at scripture and explaining to the people of preaching the word of God that affected the church both in the Catholic church, the medieval church, and outside of it. And I want to look tonight at a passage of scripture that tells us exactly what we are to do. For if we go back to the fountains, back to the source, the New Testament, and we listen to the original authors and architects of the Christian religion, the apostles, we find that there are three things that a person must do when they preach the word of God. First they are to be mindful of the times in which they live and to address the issues of their times, whatever those are. Secondly they are to preach doctrine that leads to godly living and thirdly they are to apply first of all the word of God to themselves before they preach it to other people. That is 1 Timothy chapter 4. Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and the teaching of demons. Through the insincereity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving for it is made holy by the word of God in prayer. If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed, have nothing to do with irreverent silly myth, rather train yourself for godliness, for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving the full acceptance. For to this end, we toil and strive because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe. Command and teach these things, let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct in love and faith and purity until I come devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation to teaching, do not neglect the gift you have, which was given to you by the prophecy when the counsel of elders laid their hands on you. Practice these things, devote yourself to them so that all may see your progress, keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching, persist in this, or by so doing, you will save both yourself and your peers. Paul tells Timothy, young clergyman, that if he's going to have an effect upon the times he lives in and the people in himself, he has to be everything under the dominion of God's Word. First he says that preaching must take into account the times in which we live. That's that first paragraph in verses one through five that I just read. There are two words in Greek for time. I've mentioned this before. There's Kronos from where we get the word chronology. It's how the Greeks measured time in moments and minutes and hours and days and years and so forth. It's a word that's used occasionally in the New Testament, that the word that is more often used is the word Kairos, which has to do with eras of time or epics or movements or seasons, like the ancient times or the modern times. We would refer to our times. That is the word Kairoi in the plural. And Paul in the past oral epistles talks about the Kairoi, the times in which we live in three different places. Look if you will in 2 Timothy chapter 3 where Paul talks about the difficult times in the latter days times when culture begins to decline. But understand this that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God having the appearance of Godliness but denying its power. That's the spirit of the times in which the New Testament church would mature and grow into what it is. Look in 2 Timothy chapter 4 after he talks about preaching, he says in verses 3 and 4, for the time is coming, the word Kairos. The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching years they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. And then thirdly he says in the passage that we're looking at in chapter 4 verse 1, now the spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to false teaching. He talks here about the times of apostasy, ceases in which doctrine is ignored and what he calls the doctrines of demons and deceitful spirits and silly myths will be promulgated and people will believe all sorts of things except the doctrine that leads to Godly living. We're living in times like that. We live in times where modern evangelicalism as well as modern Catholicism, I have to say, is interested in almost anything except good doctrine. We are so caught up with experience so that psychology and sociology and the sciences seem to triumph over theology. It was interesting that in the days of Thomas Aquinas theology was called the Queen of the Sciences. Today it is something that is hardly given any kind of academic little spiritual respect. We even hear in our evangelical world today that doctrine is dangerous. Doctrine divides, it causes trouble. It's not good for the church. Christian Smith is born in evangelical. He's gone to the Roman Catholic church and the reason he has is because he says that Protestantism has forsaken its classical doctrine and now preaches a moralistic therapeutic deism. Here's the problem, folks. When people stop believing in doctrine, it's not that they don't believe anything. It's quite frankly the opposite. They begin to believe everything. Everything becomes equally valid and equally true. And today, modern America, Charismatics and Catholics, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, evangelicals and health and wealth preachers and the liberal social gospel are all considered legitimate forms of Christianity, even though their doctrines contradict one another. Logically, it is impossible for the God of Micros, the God of Barack Obama, and the God of Mitt Romney all to be correct. The God of Micros says that a person gets to heaven by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. The God of Mitt Romney says it is by membership in the church of the Latter-day Saints. And the God of Barack Obama says that it is by good works and social engineering that we change this world and evolve it into paradise. These three things can not all be equally true. One or two of them have to be a deceitful spirit, a teaching of demons and a silly myth was surrounded by these things. Once early on, when I began to preach, I could say these things and no eyebrows would be raised. But we have deceitful spirits telling us that there are many religions that lead to God. Only problem is, that's not what God says. I am the way in the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Was this ego maniac speaking? Or God's son, Jesus Christ, telling us the truth. That Christ died for sins, Christ died for sins, once for all the just for the unjust in order that he might bring us to God. And so it's impossible for there to be many roads to God unless God and his Father are mistaken. There are teachings of demons that all good people go to heaven. In fact, all people are saved because basically all people are good. Romans 3 says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And therefore that they need the righteousness of Jesus Christ to be imputed to them. In fact, Romans 3 says that there are none good, not righteous, not one who understands who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. Together, they have all become wicked. The total depravity of man teaches that mankind is not basically good, that we are all headed to hell unless God interjects into human history and changes the trajectory of our spiritual progress towards eternity. We also live with a lot of silly myths, that men and women are equally the same. Then why did God say to the man, it is not good that man should be alone, I will make him a helper a compliment to him and he made a female. Why not two men? Why not a man and a horse? Why not a man by himself? Why do men need women and women need men? Is it true that it's not a damnable sin to fornicator commit adultery or be a homosexual or lesbian? That's what you're today, even in the evangelical church. But Paul says the wrath of God is brought upon mankind for all these things. Do not be deceived. The adulterer, the fornicator, the homosexual, shall not inherit the king of of God and such were some of you but you were washed and you were saved by the blood of Jesus Christ. It is really not possible folks to believe all of these things and have everybody get together and get along. Now what I'm saying is unpopular, I know that but it's also true. And without the preaching of this truth, then none can be saved. For faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. Look at the very last verse of this chapter in chapter four. Keep close watch for yourself and on your teaching persist in this for by doing so you will say both yourself and your heroes. It would be nice if I could just say you know why don't we all just get along and we all could be mone the difficult state of mankind and kind of muddle through together and hope that everybody gets there. That would make us all a lot happier in this life. Or I could say that we needed to turn to the word of God, call upon preachers to preach the unbarnished truth and look to Jesus Christ alone for faith knowing that a great many people were refused to do that and will be lost forever. But we can't have it both ways. We can't have an evangelicalism with no doctrine and no disagreements. Everybody happy and all headed to heaven. I've actually been told by people who no surprise are no longer here at our church that they wanted me to say nothing from this pulpit that offended a homosexual, a Buddhist, or a Muslim. Well, that's a difficult task because as soon as I mention Jesus Christ alone are repentance from sin. As soon as I say without holiness no one will see the Lord which is not my idea. You know my idea originally was why don't we all just ignore the sin thing and get along and all go to heaven. But God said no Michael not a good idea. So we're stuck with the truth and the truth is the times in which we live are either times where we're going to excuse away, explain away the realities of a lost mankind and the heroic work of Jesus Christ to save us or we're going to embrace it. And if we do, Jesus said it's going to cause strife. Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth, I have not come to bring peace but a sword. This is not an excuse for preachers to be overly opinionated, insensitive, tackless, and bludgeoned people with the Bible. I'm sure I do all those things on a regular basis, proof of my depravity. But this is a warning that in these later times not everyone wants to hear what the Bible has to say but then again they never have. I've told you this story, I was at the affiliate conference on Reformed Theology and Jim Boyce was preaching and he always put his hands in his pocket like this. He talked like this and he said well he said here we are today to talk about preaching this week and he said you know preaching is unpopular and in fact sometimes people have been put to that for preaching the truth like Martin Luther. I have a surprise on his head and Thomas Grant was burned at the stake for a Reformation and he said you know he said it would be nice if people like this for telling the truth but he said people don't they hate us and oh well what's new isn't that the glory of it all. I figured boy this is going to be an interesting conference but that's the truth. The truth is unpopular with the lost mankind that wants to hear that everybody's basically good. We're all muddling through together and there are many roads that lead to God and then this paragraph Paul tells Timothy not so. Do you if you're not willing to stand up in the pulpit and face the tide of your times head on you won't be worth your salt as a preacher of the word of God. So we have to know our times and preach into them. We also have to preach good doctrine by which people live. Look at verse 6 if you put these things before the brothers you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. Have nothing to do with irreverent silly myths rather train yourself for Godliness for while bodily training is of some value. Godliness is what a value to every age as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy deserving of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and strive because we have our hope set on the living God who is the savior of all people especially of those who believe. Would brothers and sisters that evangelical Christians were as spiritually fit as they are physically fit. I am marble. I'm marble at the physical fitness of the younger generation every week, every day at the gym. They have diets and workouts and videos at home. They are the most physically fit generation in American history but America is the most unfit doctrine that it's ever been. Paul says physical training in discipline for your body is good because it holds a blessing for this life but better yet is the discipline of solid doctrine that's holds benefit for this life and the life yet to come. Life beyond this life when going to the gym can't stay off death even another day. He mentions here that this is a trustworthy statement. There are five of them in the pastoral pistols. George Knight says they constitute four core basing beliefs of the church. You can find them in the pastoral pistols. Look at chapter one of 1 Timothy, verse 15. This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. The Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am foremost of all. Here's core value and number one salvation in Jesus Christ alone. Core value and number two is in chapter three, verse one. The saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. The plurality of godly leaders to lead us in the faith is a core value of the church. The third core value is what we're looking at now. The importance of good doctrine that leads to God the living in chapter two of 2 Timothy. There is a fourth core value in verse 13. The saying is trustworthy. If we have died with him, we shall also live with him. If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we deny him, he also will deny us where faithless he remains faithful, where he cannot deny himself. There, Paul is quoting a hymn, Stanza, Stanza of him of his time, about the necessity of perseverance and endurance. And the fifth and final core value comes at the end of Titus, chapter three, verse eight. The saying is trustworthy and I want you to insist on these things so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good work. These things are excellent and profitable for all people. So here's the third of five core values, the necessity of good doctrine. And he says basically in this paragraph, one, pastors are to preach good doctrine, verse six. If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus being trained in the words of faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. Secondly, he says, pastors are to avoid irreverent and silly myths. Have nothing to do with irreverent myths rather train yourself for Godliness. Irreverent myths like everybody is basically good. It's a myth, it's not true. It's irreverent because it calls God's word a liar. Number three, pastors are to focus on good living and eternal life in their preaching. For while bodily training is of some value, Godliness is a value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy in deserving of full acceptance. And finally, the pastors are to keep in mind the reason why they preach this good doctrine. Verse 10, for to this end we toil and strive because we have our hope set on the living God who is the savior of all people, especially of those who believe. I know what we want in sermons, we want to laugh. And nobody enjoys a good joke more than I do, especially if he's laughing at himself. You should have been here last night when there was the pastors roast. I told Jane, I haven't laughed that hard in years. Especially the picture of me dressed up as the Pope. That was a real comical moment. I know that people want stories and illustrations because they make us cry. And it's always better to be sentimental than to be holy. We like vulnerability on the part of the preacher. Like, we like him to talk about his sins. I think sometimes because that can excuse the way our sins. We pastor, you did it. Who you say, you do it? I know what we want. But also know what we need. And we need to face one thing that our age is not willing to face. That is a final judgment. It's amazing. I would love to know. I'd love for somebody to do a study on how many times the doctrine of hell, of judgment, even of eternal life is preached in the evangelical pulpit today. But I'm telling you, listen to me, could be tomorrow, could be in a million years. The end of this world is coming. If you're alive when it comes, you will face a great judgment. If you die before it comes, you'll be resurrected to face that judgment. But as Paul said in another place, we will all stand before the judge. It will be no time for jokes, no time for sentimental stories. We will not be able to say to Jesus, well, John Vonder, but Jane, he doesn't care. He wants to talk about you. It's all he's going to talk about is you. And I want you to be ready. I don't want you to look at me all that day as you turn with people heading towards a lake of fire and say, pastor, why didn't you tell us? Ezekiel has a chapter in his great prophecy, chapter 33. We talked about a watchman on a tower. He said, this watchman's job is to sound the alarm and to unsettle the people. If he sounds the alarm and people respond, then he has saved their lives. If he sounds the alarm and they do not respond, then their blood is not on his hands. But if he does not sound the alarm, the blood of every soul is on his hands. That is why Paul, when he's done speaking with the elders at Ephesus, said, therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you. I did not cease from declaring to you the whole council of God and teaching you from house to house, repentance from dead works and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. This is a serious business with which we have to do in the pulpit. And it becomes more serious when the preacher comes under the Bible himself. That's the third and final thing that Paul tells Timothy, we must preach and live the way we preach. The preaching must change the preacher. That's what happened to Luther, to Calvin, to swing these people. They came under the word of God first. It radically changed them and they had this passionate joy to share this change through the word with other people. Look at verse 11. Command and teach these things. Let no one despise you for your youth. Timothy was a young man. But set the believers an example in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity until I come devote yourself to the public reading of scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders or literally the presbyterie laid their hands on you, practice these things, immerse yourself in them so that all may see your progress. Keep close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this for by doing so. You will say both yourself and your ears. Paul tells Timothy, let the word of God first impact you. First he says, you be an example of someone who's come under this way of the Holy Spirit in your speech, conduct, love, faith, purity. When my children were growing up, Jane would have each one of them pray one of these things every day of the week. Joanna prayed for my speech on Mondays, Abigail for my conduct on Tuesdays, Nathan for my love on Wednesdays and Aaron for my faith on Thursdays and Jane prayed for my purity before God and men and women on Fridays. They're all gone now. So Jane, on each day of the week as we pray before we go to school in church, she'll say, let's see, it's Wednesday, that's love and she'll pray for that for me. Because unless a man has a holy mind and loves the things of God, unless he has a holy life and honors the ways of God, unless he has a holy marriage and has a church in his marriage where he loves his wife as Christ loves the church, then whatever he preaches and teaches is a farce. There is no place in the ministry for a man who will not love God, love the church, love his wife and prove to be a model of someone who's under the authority of the Word of God. God's not asking us to be perfect to praise the Lord. He's asking the minister to be sincere, sincerely under the authority of the Word. He says also he says that this is a work that takes great diligence until I come devote yourself to the public reading of scripture, to exhortation, and the teaching. That's not what the Greek says. The Greek does not have the word publicly. There is a Greek word for that. It's not in this text. He's to devote himself to reading, to encouragement, to teaching. He's to read books and the Bible primarily. He's to be a student. He's to be an encourager, exhorting and encouraging and coming alongside of the people to try to follow God's word. Give it a try and see what happens and he's to preach and teach these things irrespective of his youthfulness. He cannot neglect the spiritual gift that was given in by the Presbytery, his ordination. He's accountable to other men in Presbytery for how he lives and how he preaches and teachings. And finally he has to pay attention to both his life and his teaching that filters through that teaching because Paul says literally you will ensure for yourself both salvation and the same for those who hear you. We're not just talking about sentimental ideas of religiosity here. We're reminding people that there's one way to heaven through Jesus Christ that it is essential that they repent of their sins and put their faith in Christ and that they lead a life becoming to a follower of Christ because without holiness no one will see the Lord. I shudder to think loved ones how many people are now in hell because of unfaithful ministers in the time of Martin Luther and in the time of Michael Ross. It will be an awesome day when the judgment comes and those who will be judged most severely James says in chapter 3 are the teachers of God's word. It will not be a pleasant thing when Jesus Christ summons the clergyman before him. I believe that Mitt Romney and Barack Obama would be different men if they had a different preacher and a different church who taught them differently about Jesus Christ and God. The great Protestant Reformation was a movement of the spirit through the word and through men in the pulpit. It was a Holy Spirit who came upon the church, calling them to faith and truth and holiness. It was the Holy Spirit who came upon these men like Martin Luther and early weeks wingly and as he came upon them and as they came under the word of God the way they led their congregations, the way they taught them and led them in worship and developed them spiritually and socially, changed radically. Martin Luther explains in a sermon he delivered on March 10th of 1522 just how the Reformation began. He said, and I'm quoting in part, I simply taught and preached and wrote God's word otherwise I really did nothing. And while I slept or drank Whittenburg beer with my friends Philip and Valamstorf, the word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it, I did nothing. The word of God did it all. If you go to Zurich Switzerland as I have on a number of occasions and you go to a place called the Grossminster the Great Church, you'll find over the doors this inscription. The Reformation of Ulrich Zwingli began here January 1st in 1519. That was two months after Reformation began in Whittenburg, Germany. Timothy George explains why these words are over that great church in Zurich. Over the portals of this church today, one reads the following inscription, the Reformation of Ulrich Zwingli began here in January 1st in 1519. On this date, the new pastor shocked his congregation by announcing his intention to dispense with the traditional lectionary instead of canned sermons Zwingli would preach straight through the gospel of Matthew beginning with the genealogy in chapter 1. Matthew was followed by Acts, then the epistles to Timothy, then Galatians, 1st and 2nd Peter and so on until 1525. He had worked his way completely through the New Testament and then turned in Genesis 1, 1 to go to the Old. This was certainly an important move which we prayer the citizens of Zurich for the complete acceptance of the Reformation several years later. Zwingli simply took the Bible verse by verse and paragraph by paragraph and chapter by chapter and worked his way through it and the rest they say this history, our history. We sang this morning that great him a mighty fortress. I'm always moved to tears by the last two stanzas where he talks about the Bible. And though this world with devil filled should threaten to undo us, we will not fear for God has willed his truth to triumph through us. The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him. His rage we can endure for low his doom is sure, one little word shall fail him. That word above all earthly power, no thanks to them abideeth. The spirit and the gifts are ours through him who with us cited that goods in kindred go. This mortal life also the body they will kill God's truth abideeth still. His kingdom is forever, forever. The truth of this book will abide. There are only three things that go on forever, God the Bible and the souls of men. And that is why we preach the Bible before God and men as a witness to the truth. The truth that will cause Satan to fall and the kingdom of God to prevail. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we are so thankful today for the Bible. We look at it so many times in each week that we take for granted this wonderful word of life as the hymn writer said, this book of life and death and immortality, the story of God and man in salvation and Jesus Christ in this church. We pray for a new reformation in our age. An age where men come under the sway of the scripture themselves are concerned more about their spiritual health, their spiritual condition than their bodies. Men who love their wives as Christ loved the church whose minds and heart are caught up with eternal and spiritual and holy things who think more about the kingdom of God than their own pastimes and who are greatly burdened with the condition of the souls over whom you've given them as a preacher and under whose great weight they will be judged on the day of the second coming. We pray for all of us here to respond to the truth of God's word even this evening, repenting from sins and putting our faith in Jesus Christ alone and experiencing this new work of the Holy Spirit that brings us into the kingdom of God and makes us triumphant even though the body they kill. A truth in us may provide an eternal security and cause us to live forever. This is what our prayer is on this reformation Sunday as we thank you for the living word Jesus Christ and the spirit of the word, the spirit who comes upon the church and into us, the spirit of the Bible, for we ask this in Jesus' name and for his purposes. Amen.