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Grace, mercy and peace be to you from
God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
You will know the truth, and the truth
will set you free.
Prayer:
Lord God, our heavenly Father, enlighten our darkness with the light of your
Holy Spirit, so that I may preach well and we all may hear well, through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen.
I don’t know if you have ever taken much notice in the
church of the different colours which change from week to week—the liturgical
colours, we call them. We have the pastor’s stole, the pieces of cloth on the
pulpit and the altar, and sometimes churches have banners on the wall which
change colour depending on the season of the church year. We use the colour
white at the time of Christmas and Easter, purple in Advent and Lent, and for a
lot of the year we use the colour green, which pictures us as plants in the
Lord’s garden, growing as we are watered by the wonderful refreshing word of
God.
In most Lutheran Churches today, there are only generally
two days when we use the colour red. One is the day of Pentecost, and the other
is today, when we celebrate the Reformation. Red has to do with fire and the
Holy Spirit.
Now all this talk about colours in the church is not all
that important, but I’d like to talk in our sermon today what Pentecost and
Reformation have in common. Now there are a lot of things we could say that are
different about them: Pentecost is mentioned in the book of Acts, it is an
event which is mentioned in the bible. It is the day when Jesus poured out the
Holy Spirit upon his disciples, and when the first Christians were baptised and
believed in Jesus. The festival of the Reformation is a day which is not
mentioned in the bible at all, it commemorates a day much later in church
history, where a poor Catholic monk nailed his 95 theses on the door of the
church of Wittenberg against the teaching of indulgences.
Do you know what happened on this day? Martin Luther was a
pastor in Germany, a Catholic priest and a monk, and a teacher of theology at a
university in a town called Wittenberg. At that time, in the 1500s, the pope was
building a large church, the St Peter’s church in Rome. Part of the
money-raising activities included selling something called an indulgence. Many
Christians at that time believed that after they died they could not go to
heaven straight away, but would have to spend some time to pay off their sins in
purgatory, which was a halfway-place between heaven and hell. But you could
make your time in purgatory a bit shorter by buying an indulgence, which was a
certificate from the pope cancelled some of this time in purgatory. The church
was cheating people into giving money to the church, and they were, let’s say,
selling the forgiveness of sins for a price.
Martin Luther became convinced that this practice was wrong,
and wrote 95 brief statements about the issue, and he nailed them to the church
door in Wittenberg for public debate. Now, what does this have to do with the
day of Pentecost? What do the two things have in common?
Well, let me come forward now to today. Have you ever heard
the term, “the end times”? Have you ever heard anyone talk about the “end
times”? Have you ever thought that maybe we are living in a time close to the
end of the world? Have a think – if you look back on history and think about
the last thirty years, how do you think it might compare to the next thirty
years? Do the next thirty years make you worried? Look at what has happened in
the world in the last year or two—we have had so many things change in the
world, there is an enormous amount of suffering going on in the world that
makes us all wonder where it is all going to end. Jesus says that in the last
days there will be wars and rumours of wars, distress of nations,
people fainting with fear…
I have heard many Christians recently say to me that they
think we are living in end times. What do you think? Do you think the “end
times” are now, or do you think they are still centuries away?
Well, let me tell you something – the bible talks a very
different way about the “end times”, or we might say, “the last days”. Let’s go
back to think about the day of Pentecost: the disciples were all gathered
together and there was a great wind, and the disciples all received fire upon
their heads, they spoke in different languages and tongues, and there were
people from all over the place who were there who could hear the disciples
speaking in their own languages. And we read: All were amazed and perplexed,
saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others mocking said, “They
were filled with new wine.”
Isn’t it an amazing thing that there were all these things
going on, and yet not everyone was convinced by it? Some were amazed and
perplexed. Some thought they were drunk.
But then Peter, the apostle, stands up and he begins the
first Christian sermon. He says: Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem,
let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these people are not
drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. The
third hour is 9 o’clock in the morning. Peter refutes those who thought that
they were just drunk. But then he gives an explanation about what was actually
happening. He says: But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:
And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit
on all flesh. What Peter says is that what these people could all see
happening before them, where the Holy Spirit was being poured out, was the
exact thing the prophet Joel had said many hundreds of years before. And the
prophet Joel said: In the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will
pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Did you hear that? Joel says that God will
pour out his Spirit on all flesh. And Peter says, this is exactly what is
happening right now, today. But… did you hear when it would happen? Joel says, and
Peter quotes, that it will happen in the last days. In the last days it
shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.
What this means is that according to the bible, according to
Jesus’ own apostles, it is already the last days, right from the day of
Pentecost. Now, we might say, the last days have been going on for a long time.
Well, we can leave the timing of things up to God. But according to the bible,
the last times is not particularly now, it is not particularly in the future,
but it has always been the last days, since Jesus himself poured out his Holy
Spirit on the church. The time of the Holy Spirit is the last days of the
world. It is the last days, because Jesus has died and risen again. Sin has
been paid for. We are not looking forward to some later days when sin will be
paid for again. All the sin of the world has been taken upon the shoulders of
Jesus your Saviour, and he has already died for it. It has been done, and it
is finished, as Jesus himself said on the cross. And now, we are simply
looking forward to Jesus’ return at the end of the world.
The whole time there has been a church, the whole time where
the Holy Spirit has been poured out on the church, is a time which the bible
calls the last days, the end times.
Now, if we go now to the first letter of John, he says
something very strange about the last days. In 1 John 2:18, John writes: Children,
it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist has come, so now
many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.
This is a very strange statement to our ears today. What is
John talking about? He says, just like Peter said on the day of Pentecost, that
it is the last hour. And he says that there is something going on in the church
that proves to us that we know that it is the last hour. What is this thing? He
says: As you have heard that the antichrist has come, so now many
antichrists have come.
What is the antichrist? Well, the antichrist is a false
Christ. It is a replacement Christ. It is a christ who is not Jesus Christ.
Let me explain. Everything good that God creates, the devil
always tried to make a fake. He always tried to make a counterfeit, like a
criminal who makes counterfeit money. So even the devil tries to copy God the
Father. We have our loving heavenly
Father, but then Jesus calls the devil a father too, he calls him the father
of lies. We have the Holy Spirit, but then the devil also has a team of
spirits too, not the Holy Spirit, but evil spirits, unclean spirits, or we
might say, demons.
But then the devil also tries to make a fake Christ. We have
Jesus Christ, who is our wonderful Saviour from sin, who made an atonement and
paid for our sin through his holy, precious blood and his perfect sacrifice on
the cross. But then the devil wants to point us to another Christ, a fake
Christ, a Christ who does not need to atone for you, but makes you do the
atoning, a Christ who does not pay for your sin, but makes you pay, a Christ
who does not shed his blood for you, and does not make a sacrifice for you, but
demands all kinds of destructive sacrifices from you.
Jesus Christ is true God and he became a true man. And the
devil also wants to use real people, true men, true human beings, as his
agents, to do his work. Jesus Christ was anointed by the Holy Spirit at his
baptism. The word “Christ” means someone who is anointed. Jesus Christ was
anointed to be our high priest, our prophet and our king. And so, the devil
wants to try and make a pretend Christ, an antichrist, who is not anointed by
the Holy Spirit, but by an evil spirit, and is not a priest who prays for us,
but is a false prophet and a false king.
But St Paul also has something to say about this antichrist,
in his second letter to the Thessalonians. He calls the antichrist “the man of
lawlessness”. He writes: The man of lawlessness…takes his seat in the temple
of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
Now, what is St Paul saying here? Today, there seem to be a
lot of people talking about who they think the antichrist is. Some people said
that Hitler or Stalin is the antichrist. Some people think Barak Obama is the
antichrist.
But St Paul says that the man of lawlessness takes his seat in
the temple of God. This means that we find the antichrist, not outside of
the church, but inside the church. Yes, the antichrist can even be a
leader in the church, even a pastor, even a bishop, or even a pope.
You might sometimes look at all the things that happen in
the church, and you might think: I thought the church was supposed to be the
place where people love each other, just as Jesus taught. Well, you’re right,
but I’ve got news for you—the church is full of sinners. There’s no one else
here. We are all sinners who need forgiveness and salvation. Sometimes, sin
takes over the church in some way—sometimes people try to get rid of a good
pastor, and throw him out. Or sometimes, there’s a terrific Christian person
who makes a wonderful contribution to their congregation, and the other people,
and even pastors, are jealous of them and want them out. People shake their
heads and despair about that lovely little thing which we call “church
politics”!
Let’s go back to Martin Luther. He lived in a time where
people didn’t know what the gospel was, because the church taught something
else. People were incredibly burdened, because the church taught them about
God, but in such a way that they were not sure that he loved them. People knew
about Jesus, but not in such a way that he knew him as their loving Saviour.
People knew about heaven, but only as a faraway place which they had to climb
up to, and as a place which they just had no certainty at all that they could ever
achieve getting there. Nobody knew God’s grace and his forgiveness, they only
knew about earning their way to heaven and doing good works. A time of great
spiritual darkness had come over the church. Another spirit was at
work in the church. Jesus was taken away from sinners, and he was replaced with
human rules, human righteousness, human efforts.
But meanwhile, the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the
day of Pentecost. And he was not finished with the church. He had raised up
little people all throughout the centuries who noticed something was wrong and
who said something. One of these people was an English man called John Wyclif.
He was one of the first people to translate the bible into English. Also, you
might have heard about a man called John Huss. He was from Bohemia, which is
now where the Czech Republic is. But he was burned at the stake.
Then later there was a man in Germany called Martin Luther.
And the Holy Spirit had pushed down very hard on him. Martin Luther knew the
great darkness that was around him. He knew his sin well, and when he measured
it against God’s righteousness and God’s commandment, and all he could see was
his failure, he thought that no matter what he would do, he could only go to
hell. He thought God was torturing him, that God was an angry monster.
But then, he read the bible. And what did he find there? He
found the simple clear teaching that a person is not saved by their works, but
by God’s grace, and this wonderful grace of God is not earned by us but it is
received through faith.
Let me read to you what St Paul says in Romans: All have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a
gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a
propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith… He also writes: Since
we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ. Let me also read what it says in Ephesians: For it is by grace
you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the
gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Now there are some amazing things that then happened in
Luther’s time. Can you imagine living without the forgiveness of sins? Can you
imagine it? Maybe you have had a time in your life where all you could see was
your sin, and nothing else, but then you realised in a new way that you had a
Saviour! Maybe you came to Jesus later in life, and you know very well what the
darkness from before feels like! Maybe you have gone through a dark period of
suffering, and you cried to God, wondering where he was, and what he was doing,
and maybe you thought that Jesus had abandoned you!
But can you imagine the whole church everywhere having to
live in nothing but that darkness! Can you imagine everyone everywhere having
to live without the gospel, without hope? And then Martin Luther was able to
bring it to light again. And at the same time, the pope rejected it. He wrote that
Luther was a wild boar let loose in God’s vineyard. Just like the day of
Pentecost, some people thought that Martin Luther was nothing but a drunken
German. And in a way that still impacts our lives today, many people, instead
of listening to their powerful human leaders, listened to the word of God, they
listened to Scriptures, they listened to God’s voice. Instead of listening to
the words of men, they listened to the words of the Holy Spirit which he
inspired. What happened at that time was that the Holy Spirit showed that he
still cared about the church, and that he would not keep silent, but still
wanted to comfort poor sinners. The Holy Spirit wanted to make sure that Jesus’
words would ring true: You will know the truth, and the truth will set you
free. What a wonderful thing it is to know the truth of the Gospel, and to
be set free from the condemnation of the law!
You remember we were talking about the antichrist in the
church. St Paul also had a wonderful prophesy about this fake Christ, that the
Lord Jesus would slay him with the breath of his mouth.
What is the breath of Jesus’ mouth? It is the wonderful
preaching of the Gospel! It the powerful breath of the Holy Spirit. And
wherever the word of God is preached in its truth and purity, wherever the
Gospel is proclaimed, wherever the free forgiveness of sins is shouted from the
rooftops, the darkness is destroyed, the devil is cast out, and all the ideas
of mere men crumble to dust. This is the wonderful event that we are
commemorating in the church today: when the Gospel after so many years of
darkness was preached in all its clarity again. No wonder many people have
thought that the Reformation was like the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit
first came down!
We don’t believe a human word, but we believe in a word that
comes from God. The gospel is God’s own voice from heaven which says: I have
sent my Son, he paid for your sin, and now I want you to hear my voice loud and
clear all throughout the church on earth: I forgive you all your sins! Amen.
Dear Jesus, we thank you for the wonderful way in which your
Holy Spirit used Martin Luther to shine the light of the Gospel in the church
again. We know that today there is still much darkness in the church—there are
many people who trust in their works instead of your work. There are many
people, even in the church, who prefer to teach and listen to other messages.
Forgive your church, dear Jesus, and we ask that you keep us fixed and firm in
your truth, in your gospel, and that you would gather your harvest in the power
of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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