The key question is not whether a Christian can celebrate on October 31. The important question is: What are you celebrating? (A "Reformation Day" Sermon)
The Christian Blessing of the October 31 Celebration
Romans 1:16-18
(Children's Sheet for Sermon Interaction is at Bottom. Notes are throughout)
Pastor Kerry Kinchen, Bridgeway Bible Church
RESEARCH FOOTNOTES AVAILABLE AT BOTTOM
Please turn to Romans 1:16-18. As you are turning there, I want to remind all of us that a national holiday is coming up on October 31st. It is known as "Halloween." A lot of folks don't know much about the origins of Halloween, but they celebrate it anyway. Halloween is the night that precedes the Roman Catholic "All Saint's Day" celebration on November 1st. It is a Roman Catholic tradition that goes back to the early medieval period. Historians suggest that some of Halloween's celebrative practices that we have come to be familiar with, originated with the Celtic Druids. More elements were added later from the broader Celtic culture. Later, pagan Romans added features of the harvest festival of November 1, in honor of the goddess Pomona. In our culture, most people typically think of Halloween as a big pretend time kind of celebration of fun. There are parties, food, and children running from door to door in neighborhoods, dressed in costumes and carrying bags where they ask "Trick, or treat?" in full expectation that a treat is what they will get. One prevalent aspect of Halloween is the clearly evident focus upon the macabre. It is apparent that the whole atmosphere has the promotion, look, and feel, of making light of ghosts, goblins, ghouls, witches, warlocks, and wizards. Even the devil and demons are depicted in this manner. Most people do not seem to take any of these things seriously. Many, who are not saved, do not believe that a lot of these things are real; and many who are saved will celebrate Halloween, but will avoid the monsters and evil entities, preferring to enjoy the parties, food, costumes, candy, and fun. But, then again, there are people who do take Halloween seriously. There are unsaved people who revere October 31 such as witches, and various adherents to the pagan Wiccan religion. Satanist also esteem October 31st as a day of worship. By the same token, there are many Christians who take October 31st seriously too. Halloween is recognized as something that glorifies evil, and death, rather than glorifying life in Christ and the true God of the universe; and so there are Christians who discern these things to be dishonoring to God. As a pastor, there are times when Christians will come to me to ask about celebrating October 31st. In respect to the realm of evil, ghost, goblins, ghouls, witches, warlocks, wizards, the devil, demons, and darkness, I advise Christians to avoid participating in celebrating these things, even if it is all labeled to be fun, pretend, and innocent. My advice has to do with what God likes, and what God wants to see glorified. I say all of these things because I am leading this sermon in a certain direction. Let me ask some questions that will take us further into that direction:
How many of you realize that the devil does not own the rights to any particular day?
He doesn't.
How many of you realize that you can celebrate things on any day you want to?
You can.
When it comes to days, no revolution of the earth around the sun belongs to Satan. The devil does not have a monopoly on a number on the calendar. October 31 is not the devil's day. It is not his property--never has been, and never will be. He can't steal it from God, and God is not giving his days away. With this in mind, you can have a celebration on October 31 if you want to my dear Christian. The real question concerning celebrating on October 31 is,
What are you celebrating?
In Christ the New Covenant, there is nothing wrong with having fun if you are not glorifying the realm of evil, ghost, goblins, ghouls, witches, warlocks, and wizards, the devil, demons, and darkness, or any kind of sin. There are birthdays on October 31. There are weddings on October 31. There are anniversaries on that day, but most importantly, October 31 is the day the Lord has made. God says:
"This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it." Psalm 118:24
@1 The Lord has____________the day; let us rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118:24)
Rejoicing and being glad in the day that the Lord has made is, of course, celebration; and I would add--it can be fun if you want it to be. When we celebrate the day that the Lord has made, we are doing all to the glory of God, 1 Corinthians 10:31. Doing all to the glory of God is the big principle behind Paul's instruction where he says;
"5 One person regards one day above another, another regards every day alike. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 He who observes the day, observes it for the Lord ..." Romans 14:5-6.
So we should take every day seriously, observing it for the Lord, as the day that the Lord has made. With all of this said, there are also Christians who take the day of October 31 seriously for another reason that falls in line with some good Scriptural principles. It is a glorious reason that has to do with spiritual freedom, truth, the church, and the glorification of Christ's work in deliverance. It has to do with a particular event in history that is associated with all of these wonderful things. October 31st can be celebrated to God's glory in remembrance of an event that was instrumental in breaking a curse that enslaved Christ's church for well over a thousand years. It has to do with what a lot of Christians take for granted today, like for example, God's word, and the basic doctrine of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ's finished work alone. Let me ask some more questions:
Aren't you glad that you are able to own a Bible?
Aren't you glad that you and I can read from the Bible, and study it in a language we can understand?
It is a blessing, isn't it?
The Bible is God's revealed truth and will. It is a great privilege to have it.
Are you glad that there are no elites who are the only ones allowed to own and read God's revealed truth and will?
Aren't you glad that you know for sure that you can not attain your salvation by struggling to apply good works?
Surely you are glad that you know that you can not do, nor need to do, anything to keep your salvation secure either. We quickly and readily think of common Scriptural knowledge, like for example, Ephesians 2:8-9,
"8 by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast." Ephesians 2:8-9
@2 People are ___________ by grace, through faith as a gift, and not as works. (Ephesians 2:8-9)
But the fact is that the pure word has not always been made openly available for everybody in the church who wants it. Worse, the knowledge of Ephesians 2:8-9 has been suppressed, and muddied, by an organization that claims to be the true church throughout the generations. The consequence is that the clear gospel of grace started out being clear, but has not always been a clear teaching of leaders representing the church throughout history. This brings us to our passage this morning. An essential element of the good news is presented by Paul the apostle in Scripture. Please read Romans 1:16-18 with me now,
"16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel [the good news], for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, 'but the righteous [the just] shall live by faith.' 18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness," Romans 1:16-18
Please prepare your heart to learn, along with me, from this special holiday sermon titled,
"The Christian Blessing of the October 31 Celebration"
[prayer]
You might be wondering; What in the world is the Christian blessing of the October 31 celebration? I will tell you that it is something unique; it is special, and it has to do with the roots of the church in the first generation. It has to do with clearing away much of the overgrowth of weeds that occurred in the following generations that enveloped the church to cover it and choke it. At the roots, the apostles, and early witnesses, wrote Christ's good news message down in history records and letters of instruction. The body of Christ did this in all the scattered churches across Asia and Europe. It is as someone commented yesterday at Men's Meeting concerning the importance of the body of Christ as church community in God's focused activity of that first generation; He said,
"We would not have the Bible without the body of Christ."
So true. The papyrus manuscripts were preserved, and passed around, from church to church. They were copied and passed around some more. They were read and studied with awe and reverence. The Scriptures are the preserved word of God. They were kept and used for understanding what God wants His people to understand. When the apostles died, the scriptures remained. God's word is eternal. They were preserved in hundreds of copies. They were guarded and cherished by those who possessed them. Whenever someone taught doctrine, they consulted the scriptures. Preaching occurred directly from the source, which were the scriptures. When someone had a questionable spiritual issue, they consulted the scriptures for the answer. We do this too, don't we? We, as the body, do this because this is the heritage given at the establishment of the body in the first generation. It is what establishes us now as the body. The early Christians did not trust everyone's view of Christianity. Just like cults today who twist the Scriptures, or write their own, the early church had cults too. But in spite of those people the scriptures remained as the words inspired by God's Holy Spirit. The scriptures alone were considered the source of God's revealed truth. This strong reliance upon God's written word alone would later be called the doctrine of "Scripture alone" or "Sola Scriptura."
I want us all to understand this because it relates, in a big way, to the blessing celebration on October 31. Close to 1500 years after the roots of the church were planted by God, something happened in history that gives us cause to celebrate the particular day. The important events concerning the church that led up to that day, started directly after all the Apostles died. Immediately the heresies they warned to look out for, began to infiltrate the church. Battle against these heresies had the early Christians, such as the "apologists" Justin Martyr and Ignatius, relentlessly going back to the scriptures to preserve the faith once for all delivered. Because the early church leaders knew the importance of preserving the true scriptures, the complete listing of the canon was gradually unfolding from every region that the church resided to confirm God's word that existed. The authentic inspired manuscripts were already known because the churches had always been using them; but fake writings from cultists, began creeping into some of the scattered congregations, and so they needed to be weeded out. Men, like Marcion, who was a "gnostic," but claimed to be a Christian elder (who did things like delete all references to Judaism from the Gospel of Luke, plus rejected the Old Testament as part of the canon) were some of the kinds of people who were undermining the purity of the canon. Once the fake epistles and gospels, were exposed, they were eliminated through the task of comparison. The originals were already known, and so they were categorized for protection. Even men like Marcion knew which ones were the originals. The fakes were thrown away, or simply recognized as fictional material. The official grouping of scriptures that the various regional pastors recognized, and had been preserving, was called the "canon." It was because of this preserving work, of the early generations that we enjoy the true canon of scripture in our Bibles today, with nothing added.
History continued; and with each passing day, little changes started to occur among the church. Baptism was being interpreted as a prerequisite to salvation, rather than a symbolic ritual. Church eldership was beginning to take on a broader jurisdictional emphasis among the congregations of the body of Christ. Things like the "Apostle's Creed" and the "Didache" were written in these early years. At about the same time, the theory of apostolic succession appeared on the scene. Apostolic succession claims that there are certain men that have inherited the authority of the original apostles in each following generation. This false doctrine is not found in the canon of scripture. So, as would be expected, the doctrine became detrimental to the church on many fronts. One thing it demonstrated early on is that the very foundations of "Scripture alone" were being shaken within the first few generations after the apostles died.
By the end of the second century "theologians" started emerging. There were men such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Cyprian. They all based their teachings on God's preserved scriptures. But we must remember, an insidious trend had already been established. Along with views of early apologists like Justin Martyr, and Ignatius, many of their own views of scripture were being put on the same level as the actual canon (the Bible). Tertullian (a highly respected theologian of the second century) even suggested that one did not need to use scripture when confronting heresy (1) and in the same thesis, mentioned his belief in apostolic succession plus his acceptance of the rapidly spreading belief that the church's high authority comes out of Rome (2). During this time, the desire for a cohesive universal church government, and the belief in the authority of Roman leadership, started a damaging trend that would reshape the church for more than a thousand years. The damage had already begun; the weeds were growing, but the actual symptoms did not overwhelm the body until the following centuries.
In 312, the pagan Constantine won a major military battle. Constantine said that the Christian's God was the one who made it happen; so as emperor, he decided to change Christianity from being illegal in Rome, to being a legalized religion with the "Edict of Milan" in 313. Constantine never made Christianity the official religion of Rome as some suggest. He simply made it legal to coexist alongside all the others. Constantine--an adherent of the mystery religion of "Mithraism," and a worshipper of the pagan "Unconquered Sun god"--simultaneously functioned as the High Priest of paganism in which he was officially called the "Supreme Pontiff" (2A, pp. 122-123). Constantine, was baptized years later on his death bed. After his death, the Roman Senate, and his family, declared Constantine to be a pagan god. In respect to the church, Constantine called himself "a bishop of bishops" (2A p. 121). In an imperial move to settle a theological dispute, Constantine called together the first church council of elders from all over the Roman empire in 325. It was called the Council of Nicea and the emperor presided over it. This marked the beginning of the trend of blending church and state, and laid the foundation of what would later be fondly called "Christendom" by the Romanized church. In the meantime the ball was already rolling, but it picked up momentum when Christianity was finally declared to be the official state religion under Theodosius the 9th in the year 381, and then making it completely illegal for anyone to worship pagan gods in 392. For Christianity, as it existed, Ecumenical Councils, and pontiffs (which were men declared to be the successors to the apostles) were now mandating interpretation of Scripture. Ceasing to be Scripture alone; the foundation became instead, Scripture plus whatever the council's mandated, and pontiffs, (also called popes) decreed.
On through the medieval period, doctrine became a mess of edicts, and decrees declaring what Christians are required to believe. Many of these things were completely foreign to Scripture. Some of these were rescinded, and reestablished, rescinded, and reestablished, again, and again, with each succeeding Pope. Scripture interpretation became a bizarre hybrid of Greek philosophy and evolving opinion. Sometimes it was politically motivated. Some of it was scholastically contrived through various disputations, debates, and regurgitation's of ancient philosophies and doctrinal theories. The Romanized church, as a geopolitical force, was also in the business of molding and making governments in the foundation of the concept of Christendom, such as when Charlemagne was crowned "Holy Roman Emperor" over the "Holy Roman Empire" on Christmas day of 800, by Pope Leo the third.
"Scripture alone" at this time was about to receive one of its hardest hits. The Romanized Church started the un-scriptural concept of indulgences. Indulgences were sold to people as passes to forgive their sins. The unscriptural belief that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was also conceived and born of a virgin in the same way as Jesus was, took root and spread throughout the Romanized church. Then in 1170, Pope Alexander the third declared the un-biblical concept that the pope is the one who canonizes people into "saints." The Romanized church began the unbiblical practice of fighting bloody wars, using armies of men called "crusaders." Thousands upon thousands of people were killed in the unbiblical activity of the crusades in the name of the church. There were even children's crusades. It is one of the most shocking and depressing things I've ever heard in my life. Chroniclers tell us that thousands of helpless children were naively sent off in huge child armies to their doom. It was such a dismally sick event in history that I must spare you the bizarre and morbid details. It took me a month to get over what I learned about the children's crusades when I first studied the accounts in my Christian history class in seminary. Let me just say this; most of what you can imagine could happen to thousands of little girls and boys that are sent off without their parents in a medieval time, over thousands of miles, to confront a distant foreign Islamic nation, probably did happen; and it was all done because some people claimed they had mystical charismatic visions where God supposedly said that this was His will. The point is that the average person, at the time, had no idea what was scriptural or not, because most people outside of the Religious structure's trained leadership were ignorant of the Scriptures. Even if they could afford to own some of the rare and expensive manuscripts, they were told they couldn't understand what they were reading. Most people believed that anything the Romanized church said must be the truth anyway.
In 1173 there was a ripple in history, and a flicker of church reform. It occurred in the "Waldensian movement." Christians sought the antidote to the disease that had quenched the Spirit of God's church over the centuries. They sought the cure in the pages of Scripture alone. They began translating the scriptures into everyday language. Reliance upon Scripture alone looked like it was about to flourish again in God's church, but the Romanized religion opposed and persecuted the Waldensian Christians. Rome hunted down and murdered thousands of God's children in the process. Any attempt to worship Christ outside of the control of the Roman Catholic Church, was met with hatred and bloody opposition. Pope Innocent the third who was guilty of being the man who could have stopped the tragedy of the children's crusades, is the same "guilty" pope who institutionalized an equally gruesome tragedy called "The Inquisitions." The powers of the Roman Catholic machine combined with the state to resist and punish any Christians who were found to oppose the views of the Romanized church. This feverish persecution of actual Christians resulted in some of the most horrific tortures that men have ever devised. Hiding behind the name of Christ, the unscriptural inquisitions are responsible for murdering thousands upon thousands of loving, sincere Christians through a bloody perversion of Biblical Christianity.
Without surprise, the Romanized church consistently manifested what we all have come to associate with secular dynasties. Its legacy has been generation after generation of intrigue, corruption, violence, murders, immorality, lust for money, pride, ambition, and control. Under the unbiblical use of the sword to expose heresies, the Roman Catholic machine developed, defended, and delivered, its own heresies. It turned against good Christian thinkers in the process. Many of those Christian thinkers, who advocated elements of getting back to the authority of Scripture for the doctrines of the faith, were tortured and murdered in the consummate example of unbiblical tyranny.
In 1302 the pope decided to declare all the claims of popes as being supreme. It is called "Unam Sanctum." What this means is that virtually anything goes if the pope decides to decree it to be so. Shortly afterward, the kingdom began dividing against itself. The Romanized church went through a split where there were two popes and sometimes three popes existing at the same time. During this period, bands of people called "flagellants" roamed the country beating themselves in the unscriptural practice of "penance." These poor wretched people were ignorantly seeking forgiveness of sins. Hurting, lonely, scared; they just walked around whipping themselves. They hoped that maybe this would make God happy--maybe He will have mercy on me and forgive me through my own personal sacrifice of hurting myself.
Where was the good news?
What happened to the gospel of salvation in Christ alone, in His good work alone, by His grace alone, through faith alone?
It was still there in the canon of Scripture. I want all of us to realize something--This was the state of the church for centuries. You didn't go somewhere else, because there was nowhere else to go.
By the time the one-pope system had been regained, the Romanized church had become this huge money making machine. Popes became vainly interested in embellishing Rome with art, architecture, and shrines. Corruption, lust for money, and huge building programs started coming to a head in the 15th century.
In response to all of this perversion of Christianity, and the mass ignorance of God's will, there were several attempts to reform the system back into a church that more closely resembled what Christ meant the body to be--the one found in Scripture at the beginning when Scripture was written. John Wycliffe tried from Oxford. He looked to Scripture alone for authority and truth. He dared to translate the Scriptures into English. John Huss, had the same godly ambition. In 1398 he began lecturing on theology at Prague University, spreading Wycliffe's ideas. But the Council of Constance didn't like that, so they had our precious Christian brother, John Huss, burned, in agony while alive, until he died. By this time, John Wycliffe had died, so Rome decided to condemn him in the grave. They dug up his bones and burned them. Jerome of Prague, was influenced by Wycliffe too. He tried to assist John Huss at the council of Constance. Jerome was arrested. At first he was tortured so badly that he ended up recanting in agony, but later he reaffirmed his belief that the Romanized church needed to be reformed into biblical Christianity. Our brother in Christ, Jerome, was rewarded for his efforts by being burned alive in agony till he died. Savonarola was a preacher seeking reform. He denied the Pope's infallibility. Savonarola was burned on a cross in 1498. Multitudes of followers of these men were hunted; mercilessly tortured, burned to death, or forced to recant. Scripture alone had not only become obscured, it had become the enemy of Rome.
I am giving a brief panoramic view of just how much had changed since the days of the apostles and the writings that they left for our instruction. Scripture had been tainted with the dirty fingerprints of humanity. God's pure words were being kept from the average person. To speak of salvation by grace alone, through Christ alone, through faith alone, was the kind of talk that would get you killed.
The sacrificial seeds for reformation had been planted by martyrs, but so far there was no harvest coming forth. This was the backdrop of the birth of a man in 1483 by the name of Martin Luther. Luther was not perfect. He, like you, and me, was far from perfect. But also, like you and me, God uses the imperfect for His glory. Luther was used by God in the movement to reforming the two foundational aspects of Christianity that had seemingly been lost through the centuries: Justification by faith alone, and Scripture alone as the final authority.
Martin Luther's dad wanted him to study law, so when Luther got old enough, that is what he did. One day while Luther was traveling to a university through a thunder storm, a lightning bolt struck next to him. It threw him to the ground. Right then he made a vow to enter the monastery to become a monk. The only problem was that Luther did not know for sure if he was saved.
As a monk, Luther was obsessed with his sin, so he confessed his sins profusely; sometimes for six hours a day. His ambition to be forgiven was so strong that he would beat himself with a whip until he was bloody, and eventually into unconsciousness. He would stay out all night in the freezing snow trying to purify himself from his sins. He was so desperate to be righteous that he fasted and prayed for six weeks--only sleeping a few hours at a time. In his introspection, he would always discover little spots of sin that tainted him. So in anxiety, he confessed his sins to his fellow priests, day after day, with no relief from the condemnation. There were times after confession that he would start back to his room, but before he made it back, he remembered an unconfessed sin; so, he ran back to confess it. Luther wrote of how His Augustinian superior, Dr. Staupitz, urged him to rely on Christ for forgiveness and love. Staupitz exhorted Luther to rest in Christ. Luther still did not understand. He studied the writings of Augustine--the theologian of a thousand years earlier who had a good grasp on the grace gospel of Christ. He became exposed to some classically scriptural principles; but, Martin Luther was blinded by focus upon his own sin and his futile attempts to please God, which was complicated by all the weed overgrowth of the Romanized church that obscured God's gospel. Luther was like a lot of people who do not understand the gospel of the grace of God.
One day Luther was asked to go to Rome. He was excited, thinking that in Rome (which was the seat of the pope and the birth place of the Romanized church) he would finally find peace with God. As Luther approached Rome, he saw its profile off in the distance. Immediately he fell to his knees. He thanked God for bringing him to his promised land of redemption. In Rome, he quickly visited shrine after shrine. He dutifully and enthusiastically said his prayers at each shrine. He desperately attempted to earn blessing from God. But while in Rome, zealously doing all of this religious activity, a devastating revelation slapped Luther in the face. To Luther's shock, he discovered that Rome was not holy after all. In fact, Rome reflected what happens when the Bible is no longer the final authority. It was a pit that was filled with unbelief, skepticism, sin, and gross immorality. Luther was shocked to find out that it was a common practice for the priests to visit prostitutes. Even the pope was boasting about his illegitimate children. Martin Luther was shattered, but he kept on going. He wanted to be right before God.
We all want to be right before God, don't we?
But we know, according to Scripture and the Spirit, what Luther did not yet know. We are only righteous when we rest in Christ's righteousness as our righteousness in salvation. Luther wanted to be forgiven; he wanted to be clean, and righteousness. But, instead of falling into the arms of Christ for complete forgiveness and acceptance, with the conviction of his unforgiven sin haunting him, he made his way to what is called the "Scala Sancta."
How many of you have heard of the Scala Sancta?
It is the marble stairs at the Lateran building. They are touted to be the ones that Jesus walked on when He was judged by Pontius Pilate. People are told that angels brought the stairs to Rome in a big air transport. Millions, have made pilgrimages to Rome to go up the 28 steps of the Scala Sancta on their Knees. They are like Luther. They are desperate. They are lost. They do not know the Scriptures. They do not know the grace of God in Christ. They are seeking forgiveness of sins, and the release of loved ones from hell. Pope Leo the 4th, about 500 years earlier in 850, decreed that an indulgence of nine years out of "purgatory" is granted for every step ascended on knees while repeating the Lord's prayer in Latin, (It is called the "Pater Noster" prayer). Purgatory is a Roman Catholic fiction; but it doesn't matter; Roman Catholics have convinced multitudes, who are ignorant of the Scriptures, that it exists.
Luther started up the stairs of the Scala Sancta in the same futile ritual that thousands of others have done in an effort to please God. As he ascended each step, huge and profound questions started hitting him: They are the same questions that all who are lost ask as they try to do something to make God accept them. He thought,
Is this really enough?
Is this really what God wants?
How do I know?
What if there is more that I must do?
How do I know that this will save me?
When he reached the top, instead of reaching the pinnacle of triumph that he had thought would come, he reached the heights of despair. Luther realized that all this religious ritual amounted to nothing. Luther left Rome as empty and lost as the nothingness he achieved. Disappointed with the impotent and overrated Romanized unholy-land, he was just as spiritually destitute as when he had arrived.
When Luther got back to Wittenberg, Staupitz encouraged him to enter a program of doctoral studies. This was an extremely important time in Luther's life because it was at this time that he began to read the scriptures and study them in great depth. The Bible became his textbook. Whenever Luther taught doctrine, he consulted the scriptures. Luther's preaching occurred directly from the source--the scriptures. Whenever Luther faced a questionable issue, he consulted the scriptures. What had happened in God's providential timing, was that God began speaking with Luther by the Spirit through His word. Luther no longer trusted Rome's views of Christianity. He had God's word which were the writings of the apostles and witnesses of Christ's life as inspired by God's Holy Spirit, and preserved by the congregations of the body of Christ.
It was during Martin Luther's intense studies of scripture alone that a miracle occurred. Luther came across the statement in Romans 1:17, which is our text this morning;
"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, ...
[more particularly]
The righteous, [the just] shall live by faith"
@3 The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who ______________. (Romans 1:16)
The Spirit lodged those words in Martin Luther's heart. He kept wondering what Paul meant by those words; "The righteous, shall live by faith." Luther later wrote about His studies, and his struggle with Paul's words. He wrote about his subsequent revelation. Listen to his words, as I read from what is called Luther's "tower experience," He said,
"Meanwhile in that same year, 1519, I had begun interpreting the Psalms once again. I felt confident that I was now more experienced, since I had dealt in university courses with Paul's Letters to the Romans, to the Galatians, and the Letter to the Hebrews. I had conceived a burning desire to understand what Paul meant in his Letter to the Romans, but thus far there had stood in my way, not the cold blood around my heart, but that one word which is in chapter one: "The justice [the righteousness] of God is revealed in it." I hated that word, "justice [righteousness] of God," which, by the use and custom of all my teachers, I had been taught to understand philosophically as referring to formal or active justice, as they call it, i.e., that justice by which God is just and by which he punishes sinners and the unjust. But I, blameless monk that I was, felt that before God I was a sinner with an extremely troubled conscience. I could not be sure that God was appeased by my satisfaction. I did not love, no, rather I hated the just God who punishes sinners. In silence, if I did not blaspheme, then certainly I grumbled vehemently and got angry at God. I said, "Isn't it enough that we miserable sinners, lost for all eternity because of original sin, are oppressed by every kind of calamity through the Ten Commandments? Why does God heap sorrow upon sorrow through the Gospel and through the Gospel threaten us with his justice and his wrath?" This was how I was raging with wild and disturbed conscience. I constantly badgered Paul about that spot in Romans 1 and anxiously wanted to know what he meant. I meditated night and day on those words until at last, by the mercy of God, I paid attention to
[take special notice of what Luther says next; he says, "I paid attention to]
their context:
[Context is the key to properly exegeting the text. You'll hear me hammer that point relentlessly because it is true. It is necessary. Luther goes on;]
The justice of God is revealed in it, as it is written: 'The just person lives by faith.' I began to understand that in this verse the justice of God is that by which the just person lives by a gift of God, that is by faith. I began to understand that this verse means that the justice of God is revealed through the Gospel, but it is a passive justice, i.e. that by which the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written: "The just person lives by faith." All at once I felt that I had been
born again
[There it is. This is the miracle that God applies to His elect. It is when the good news comes in power, and with the Holy Spirit, and in full conviction. He goes on,]
and entered into paradise itself through open gates. Immediately I saw the whole of Scripture in a different light. I ran through the Scriptures from memory and found that other terms had analogous meanings, e.g., the work of God, that is, what God works in us; the power of God, by which he makes us powerful; the wisdom of God, by which he makes us wise; the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God. I exalted this sweetest word of mine, "the justice of God," with as much love as before I had hated it with hate. This phrase of Paul was for me the very gate of paradise." (3)
What had happened was that Luther had become saved. Through the word of God, His eyes were opened to what Christ's apostles died teaching. It is the faith, from the beginning, for resurrected life. It is what all truly saved people have faith in. God's righteousness is from Him, through Christ, and it is Christ's righteousness that is imputed to us, so that we become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus by faith--not works. We know this because the word of God reveals it to us by the Spirit. Like all of us who are saved, Martin Luther was baptized into the truth of the good news. He said,
"All at once I felt that I had been born again."
The Holy Spirit had done His work. Luther had become a miracle. Immediately, as the born-again pastor of the city church, he began to preach and teach salvation by grace through faith from the scriptures alone. His sermons came with power, and the Holy Spirit, and with full conviction.
While Luther was studying and preaching the truth as a saved man, Pope Leo the 10th employed a man named Tetzel to go out and sell indulgences to raise money to further enhance the Cathedral in Rome. Since indulgences were peddled as letters of pardon to guarantee forgiveness of sins, people willingly spent a lot of money for them. When Tetzel entered a city, he would make his sales pitch. He would say;
"Indulgences, are the most precious and most noble of God’s gifts ... Come, and I will give you letters all properly sealed, by which even the sins you intend to commit may be pardoned. I would not change my privileges for those of [the apostle] Peter in heaven, for I have saved more souls by my indulgences than the apostle did by his sermons. ... But more than this ... indulgences avail not only for the living, but for the dead. Priest, noble, merchant, wife, youth, maiden, do you not hear your parents and your other friends who are dead, and who cry from the bottom of the abyss: 'We are suffering horrible torments! A trifling alms would deliver us; you can give it and you will not?' ... I shall be satisfied in the Day of Judgment; but you--you will be punished so much the more severely for having neglected so great salvation. I declare to you, though you have a single coat, you ought to strip it off and sell it, in order to obtain this grace" (Wylie, History of Protestantism, vol. 1, 57)
Instantly, saved Luther recognized this as an insidious money making scam of the worst kind. If Tetzel had come before Luther had gone to Rome, then Luther would have lined up with everyone else to buy one of those godless, evil, meaningless, Indulgences. But God has his timing, and now Luther had keen discernment. The corrupt church was profiting from a gross perversion of the Gospel of Christ. In zeal, Luther publicly opposed all of it. Tetzel was furious and so he threatened to burn Luther at the stake by authority of the Pope. In a decisive reaction, Luther wrote 95 points of contention with the pope, called the 95 thesis. Then he posted them publicly. He challenged any scholar to debate the issue of indulgences with him. According to Philipp Melanchthon, one of Luther's closest friends, Luther posted them on the door of the castle church on a day that will go down in history as the pivotal day that launched the landslide movement to reform the church.
That day was Halloween day, October 31, 1517--the day labeled on many calendars as "Reformation Day."
Providentially, the printing press had recently been invented. Luther's 95 theses was printed and distributed throughout the land. Within weeks copies were in high demand. This roused people in a revival that stimulated debate and desire for the truth all across Europe. The seeds of reformation had already been planted and fertilized with the blood of the earlier martyrs. Now the reformation movement had sprouted. More blood would be spilled in the reformation movement in the coming years, as thousands would be tortured and burned alive by the apostate Roman Catholic machine. But the protestant reformation would be unstoppable, as Zwingli, Menno Simons, John Calvin, Melanchthon, and others continued the call to sever from the Romanized religion to reclaim Scripture alone as the final authority, and justification by faith alone, in Christ's completed work alone, through God's grace alone, to His glory alone.
Today we enjoy the fruits of the reformation. All of us do. Many of us delight in, and gorge down the sweetness of the bounty of that fruit in an almost ho-hum attitude of taking what we have for granted. We have the Bible that we read in our own languages--in all its various marketing hybrids. In the trivialization of the canon of scripture, Bibles have even been printed in science fiction languages as novelty items. There is the Klingon Bible. There are Bibles in Tolkien's fairy tale languages of Middle Earth. We have forgotten that multitudes of God's people preferred to be burned alive so that you and I could have God's Word. We have our church meetings that we come together in as biblically defined local bodies, with real pastors as described and qualified in the Scriptures; fellowshipping and worshiping freely according to conscience without being hunted by the Romanized monopoly. We have the gospel of salvation; untainted by empty religion, rules, remedies and regulations. We have all of this because of God's providential reformation of a church held in bondage for generation, after generation, after generation. So, yes there is a Christian blessing of the October 31 celebration. We can glory in God in using the actions of Martin Luther to confront the pope and fan the flames of reformation for Christ's church on what is formally called "Reformation Day." We can celebrate the blessing of God's grace. We can celebrate the blessing of God's word. We can celebrate the blessing of God's sovereign hand in delivering his church from over a thousand years of bondage. We can celebrate God's call of a man that we can all relate to. We can relate to him, because though not perfect--but made righteous by faith, he, like us, was enabled by God to be used as a tool in God's hands. In his case, in the midst of Roman Catholic bondage, he was enabled to understand the importance of salvation by grace alone according to Scripture alone. We can celebrate by remembering how God used him to carry the banner of the reformation starting with his bold posting of the 95 thesis--provoking others to go forth boldly in Christ to reform the church from bondage back to the Bible. Let's do that now by giving thanks for the great blessing that we have.
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Bibliography:
(1) Tertullian's actual quote: "Our appeal, therefore, must not be made to the Scriptures; nor must controversy be admitted on points in which victory will either be impossible, or uncertain, or not certain enough."(ch. 18 Liber de praescriptione haereticorum)
(2) Tertullian's actual quote: "Since, moreover, you are close upon Italy, you have Rome, from which there comes even into our own hands the very authority (of apostles themselves). How happy is its church, on which apostles poured forth all their doctrine along with their blood; where Peter endures a passion like his Lord's; where Paul wins his crown in a death like John's [the Baptist]; where the Apostle John was first plunged, unhurt, into boiling oil, and thence remitted to his island-exile. (chapter 36, Liber de praescriptione haereticorum)
(2A)--Gusto Gonzalez, "The Story of Christianity" {The book where a majority of the historic facts for this sermon were collected}
--J. F. Weishampel, Sr. The Testimony of a Hundred Witnesses; DR. Martin Luther's Conversion. (1858)
--The Works of Martin Luther. Ed. and trans. Adolph Spaeth, L.D. Reed, Henry Eyster Jacobs, et al. Philadelphia: A. J. Holman Company, 1915, Vol. 1, pp. 25-28.
--Disputation of Doctor Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences, by Dr. Martin Luther (1517) Works of Martin Luther: Adolph Spaeth, L.D. Reed, Henry Eyster Jacobs, et Al., Trans. & Eds. (Philadelphia: A. J. Holman Company, 1915), Vol.1, pp. 29-38.
(3) Luther's Tower Experience: Martin Luther Discovers the True Meaning of Righteousness. An Excerpt From: Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther's Latin Works (1545) by Dr. Martin Luther, 1483-1546 Translated by Andrew Thornton, OSB from the "Vorrede zu Band I der Opera Latina der Wittenberger Ausgabe. 1545" in vol. 4 of (Luthers Werke in Auswahl), ed. Otto Clemen, 6th ed., (Berlin: de Gruyter. 1967). pp. 421-428.
--Some may be familiar with another story that the historian, Merle D'Aubigne, records concerning the "Scala Sancta" experience, yet most historians view D'Aubigne's account as a redactive embellishment of the historic facts--not aligning with the Tower experience or other records of Luther's experience:
"He at first gave himself up to all the observances which the Church enjoined for the expiation of sin. One day wishing to obtain an indulgence promised by the pope to all who should ascend on their knees what is called Pilate's Staircase, the Saxon monk was humbly creeping up those steps, which he was told had been miraculously transported from Jerusalem to Rome. While he was performing this meritorious act, he thought he heard a voice of thunder crying from the bottom of his heart, as at Wittenberg and Bologna, "The just shall live by faith." These words twice before struck him like the voice of an angel from God. They now resounded unceasingly and powerfully within him. He rose in amazement from the steps up which he was dragging his body: he shuddered at himself; he was ashamed of seeing to what a depth superstition had plunged him, therefore he fled far from the scene of his folly. This powerful text had a mysterious influence on the life of Luther. It was a creative sentence both for the reformer and for the Reformation. It was in these words God then said, "Let there be light! and there was light."("The Life and Times of Martin Luther, History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, by J.H. Merle D'Aubigne, Translated from the French by H. White and revised by the author, Andrew Gupta electronic edition)
[On the other hand, Clearly Luther's own words in the "Tower Experience" show that he discovered Paul's justification by faith after leaving Rome, while teaching in Wittenberg. Additionally, Historian Edwin Booth (*see book ref. below) points out that the sole source for D'Aubigne's version of the story was Luther's son, Paul, who claimed he heard it from his father when he was an eleven-year-old boy, and yet, oddly enough, never told anyone for 38 years.--Pastor Kerry Kinchen] *Martin Luther: The Great Reformer (Heroes of the Faith, Barbour & Co, Edwin Prince Booth, Dan Harmon, Daniel E. Harmon)
Questions for children through sermon:
@1 The Lord has____________the day; let us rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118:24)
@2 People are ___________ by grace, through faith as a gift, and not as works. (Ephesians 2:8-9)
@3 The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who ______________. (Romans 1:16)
