We thank You, Lord, again for this tremendous privilege of being drawn by Your love to gather around Your table with the brethren here and throughout this earth, Lord, to truly remember You, to focus upon You, and to give You the honour that is due Your name.
Lord, we thank You so much for Your precious Spirit that You have sent forth, that leads us in worship. And Lord, now, as we open Your Word, we look unto that same Spirit to cause this Word to be very living and very real within all of our hearts.
As we consider again this morning the matter of history and the heritage that we have, and all the brothers and sisters who have gone before us, Lord, may we touch You. May we not just learn facts and figures and dates, but may we see You above all things.
May we see You as the One who has the seven stars in His hand, holding all of the keys, the bright and glorious One. We would behold the precious Lamb of God this day, standing in the midst of all things.
Lord, we just worship You, and we look all unto You, Lord, in a dependent spirit. So, in speaking and hearing, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Can we turn this morning to Revelation 3?
And to the angel of the church in Sardis write:
He who has the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars, saith this:
I know thy deeds, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead.
Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which are ready to die:
for I have found no works of thine perfected before My God.
Remember therefore how thou hast received and didst hear, and keep it, and repent.
If therefore thou shalt not wake up, I will come as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.
But thou hast a few names in Sardis that did not defile their garments:
and they shall walk with Me in white; for they are worthy.
He that overcometh shall thus be arrayed in white garments;
and I will in no wise blot his name out of the book of life,
and I will confess his name before My Father, and before His angels.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.
Looking again at the first couple of verses:
I know thy deeds, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead.
Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which are ready to die:
for I have found no works of thine perfected before My God.
Remember therefore how thou hast received and didst hear, and keep it, and repent.
And two verses out of Galatians 5. I will just read them—Galatians 5:7–8:
Ye were running well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?
This persuasion came not of Him that calleth you.
You were running well, or you started well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?
As we come to this letter to the church in Sardis, as we have said before, this letter is representative, in a prophetic way, of the Protestant system that came about as a result of the Reformation.
This letter, we can say, starts with a period around the sixteenth century. It is usually identified with when Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to that door.
But now we need to keep in perspective the times that this was written and the times that this is representative of. As we saw in Thyatira, those are referred to as the Dark Ages. We see the darkness of the times, how, in an outward way, the church had reached its lowest point.
We know there were faithful ones, and we shared about the Waldensians, the Bogomils, the Brethren of the Common Life, and different ones who were very faithful to the Lord. But they were really a small speck on a big map.
If we put a map of Europe on the board and tried to identify the places that were really gathering in the simplicity of Christ, we would need a magnifying glass just to be able to identify them. They really were not a major force.
But it was not until the Reformation that the Lord raised up certain ones to recover certain truths. In this, there was a turn, and there was a change.
I remember last summer’s conference, when Stephen was sharing. He asked the question, “Why did the Lord allow this? Why did the Lord allow such declension to occur?” He said the Lord allowed it to show forth the weakness and corruption of our flesh, the frailty of man’s ways.
But then, also in God’s mercy, starting here in the Reformation, we see the demonstration of the wisdom and power of God. Even though He had allowed that, His purpose had not been set aside, and His promise, “I will build My church,” was continuing to be fulfilled.
In reality, the Lord’s purpose had never changed. And that can encourage us today.
To me, a lot of times when I look at the Reformation and the change that went on from the darkest of ages to what occurred, I see it almost as a parallel today. We look around, and we can see some pretty dark things going on in the name of Christianity. We can see world religions being formed.
But we also have a hope within us that the Lord is returning. The Lord is doing a work, and the Lord will, at one time when He comes again, establish His kingdom. His kingdom is here now, but it is a kingdom, we could say, of small things.
What He does in this day and time does not get illuminated in neon lights. It does not make the headlines. Man’s efforts and man’s works make the headlines. A lot of times His name is used, but there is a transition that will occur at another time.
I like what Alan reported of what Richard said: it is not a question of when, because it will occur; it is a question of whether we are ready.
One of the reasons we are even studying church history is that we can learn lessons to be ready for our Lord’s return. It is being ready in the present days that we are living in, that we not fall into the traps of those who have gone before us.
But it is also that we would be a people made ready for His return, a people who would even hasten His return. As we learn these lessons, may the Lord really help us to see what has gone before us.
As we look at this period in the church of Sardis, it starts in the sixteenth century and will go along until the Lord’s return. Remember, a few times ago we shared an introductory message to these last four letters, how they are running parallel: Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, running parallel in this current age.
We have a choice of which one we are in. Today, as we consider this church in Sardis, we want to see some of the lessons.
It covers a broad period of time. One of the frustrating things about trying to share on church history is condensing it. There is so much to share.
Today, I am just feeling pressed to share on the Reformation. Maybe the next time we can share on what they call the Radical Reformation, or radical reactions—more the Anabaptists, followed by the Moravians.
But even as we look at the Reformers, I was trying to prepare for this week, and it is almost like everyone you look at, you could give a whole message on. There is so much in the richness of their lives.
If you look at John Wycliffe, John Hus, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, and Tyndale—so many different ones—we could just focus on them. We are praying that the Lord will help us today to summarize in a concise way and capture the spirit of the time.
There are plenty of books out here on the shelves and in other places where you can get all the facts. But we are trying to capture the spirit of the time—what the Lord was doing. It really was a work of the Lord, that He raised up certain ones who really had a heart for the Lord.
It is a time of joy. As you read Sardis, it is really a time of mixed emotions, because you see such faithful ones being raised up and recovering such truths. But then, at the same time, you see them stop. They do not continue on. Another one is raised up to go a little further.
We can look back and say, “Well, why did they stop? Why did they not go on?” But we need to consider the times they were living in and their own personal backgrounds. The steps they made were tremendous steps, and we are very thankful for them today.
Martin Luther, when he recovered the truth of justification by faith, did not see every other thing. But that one truth changed the course of history, and we can be thankful for that.
Each one of these men that we look upon—there are two ways you write biographies of people. You can see what they accomplished in a positive way, or you can go back and remember that each one of these people was simply flesh and blood.
None of these men we are considering today were perfect. Each one had frailties, faults, and lacks of vision. But thank the Lord, what they saw, they were faithful to.
When the Lord touched their hearts with something, they were faithful to it. That is a lesson we can learn: when we see something, when the Lord touches our hearts with something, may we be faithful to it.
But at the same time, may we not hold to that as the end, but hold to it as a beginning through which the Lord can really work.
As we read those verses in the letter to the church in Sardis, it is interesting to consider its commendations. Of those churches that received commendation, Sardis has the shortest one: “I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest.”
Actually, some commentators say it is not even a commendation, because it is followed by, “But thou art dead.” In a gracious way, they say this is a commendation; others say there is no commendation. There is only one other letter where there was no commendation, and that was the letter to Laodicea.
We do see that they had a name—it was His name that they had—but the Lord also says, “Thou art dead.”
What happened was that they saw something, but organization started being set up. It turned out that there was a form without any inner life. It is called hypocrisy, to put it bluntly.
When you have an outward form that you are acting in, but no inner life—on an individual basis or otherwise—it is just hypocrisy. We do not like that word, and we will dress it up and try to use a nicer word at times. But when we get down to it, that is what it is. We should go ahead and call it by its first name and just let it fall.
He also says, “I have not found thy works perfected.” They had done work, but He had not found it completed. I think that is a challenge to all of our hearts in these days.
The Lord encourages them to strengthen the things that remain. They are still there; they are remaining. Strengthen the things that remain and go on.
It is interesting that, in His counsel to them, He says to remember how they received and heard, and to hold fast to that. He takes them back to their origins: “How did you receive what you received?” He draws us back to that first glimpse of Christ.
Now, as we look at this today, we are basically going to be broken down into two categories: prior to the Reformation and then the Reformation.
One thing as we look at these Reformers: none of them set out to break away from the Roman Catholic system. Most of them started out to reform the system. Because of what they shared, they were excommunicated. They did not set out to establish their own systems or to start anything new. They were trying to reform from within.
Also, when we are talking about the recovery of these truths, these truths were lost in general and were simply being rediscovered. We are not talking about the discovery or teaching of new truth or new doctrines. These truths were there in the Scriptures.
A lot of times today people are saying, “We are looking for new truths. We need new truths.” Brothers and sisters, this was not new truth they were discovering. It was there all along. They were rediscovering what the Lord had already spoken in the Scriptures, and they were returning to those Scriptures.
Now, on page two of your handout, we have identified some of the forerunners to the Reformation. We will not be able to touch on these much; these are just some of the key ones.
Thomas Bradwardine was an English theologian. Are there any math majors in here? Anybody majored in math? Does that name ring a bell? This is the father of trigonometry. All right, trivia point one.
He was also the father of trigonometry, but he was within the system trying to preach salvation by faith, not by works.
When this column over here is blank on authority, these are ones trying to reform within the system. Their teaching was that the Roman Catholic system was not wrong; it just needed to be reformed. So he was simply trying to reform the way of salvation, not questioning any of the authorities.
The same thing was true with Gregory of Rimini. He was an Italian philosopher. We have him on here because he tried to reform the Augustinian system. But within a year, he was made the head monk of the order.
As he tried to reform it, within a year he was dead—a mysterious death, which was fairly common back in those days through various forms of poisoning. They were very effective with that.
But he tried to reform within the system, and it cost him his life. Here again, he was trying to focus on the grace of God.
Now we come down to John Wessel. There are two men by this name in history, and you can get confused. But let me read one quotation about him that Martin Luther wrote, just to show that this one had gone before Luther.
Luther said of him, “If I had read his works before I started sharing publicly, my enemies would accuse me of stealing his thoughts. So great is our agreement in spirit.”
Here again, there were ones before Luther who had the same inklings from the Lord. The Lord was revealing truths to them, and they were being faithful.
We have another one within the system, Girolamo Savonarola. This is a famous one from Florence—where Unissi just came back from.
He went into Florence, and Florence was one of the most corrupt cities within the nation of Italy at that time. The Medici family was very prominent, and the morals of Florence, through its arts and everything, were probably at a low point.
But he went in and started preaching repentance and clean living, and actually had an impact on the city. One writer of history wrote that the people of Florence were then known by their modesty of dress and by their countenance, which gave evidence that they embraced the reform of Savonarola.
He turned this whole city around through his preaching of repentance. However, because of that, the pope declared him a heretic, and he was burned in Florence. Within a short period of time, all that he had done was turned right back around.
But if you can ever get a biography on him, it is a very encouraging life—one who, in the midst of a greatly immoral and decaying city, stood for morality and holiness.
Another brother that we have is Erasmus. Many of us have heard of him. He was from a Dutch background and was trained by the Brethren of the Common Life.
Erasmus is most famous because he compiled the New Testament from the Greek. It was one of the translations used by Luther and many of the Reformers.
But he is also noted for his satire. He was a great satirist. Some of the things he said about the pope and the priests were pretty blunt, and we are not going to repeat them up here.
I did find one statement Erasmus made about church music and singing in churches. Remember, this was written around 1500:
Modern church music is so constructed that the congregation cannot hear one distinct word. A set of creatures who ought to be lamenting their sins fancy they can please God by gurgling in their throats.
History repeats itself. But Erasmus desired peaceful reformation from within the system, as many hoped for at that time. Yet an institution that had been set up and structured as that one was is not open to internal reformation.
As we come on, there are two of the more famous ones that most of us have heard about before. We have John Wycliffe.
John Wycliffe was from England, and he was a scholar at Oxford. What he is known for is his translation of the Scriptures into English.
When somebody asked Wycliffe why he was burdened to translate the Scriptures, he basically said:
Holy Scripture is the pre-eminent authority for every Christian and the rule of faith of all human perfection. Forasmuch as the Bible contains Christ, that is all that is necessary for salvation; and it is necessary for all men, not only for priests. It alone is the supreme law, without human traditions and statutes.
Wycliffe developed five rules for studying the Bible:
Pretty good lessons for how to study the Scriptures. We can use those today.
Wycliffe became popular among the people as he preached more and more. He was a great defender of the poor and oppressed.
During this time in England there was a peasants’ revolt. Wycliffe was accused of being involved, but he really was not. It was simply because he was always trying to defend the oppressed that he was accused, and it hurt his public stature.
But he continued preaching. The thing that finally was the straw that broke his back was when he published a booklet on the denial of transubstantiation. From then on, he was forbidden to preach, and the pope issued all these bulls against him.
He went into seclusion, and actually ended up doing his greatest work. After he could not preach anymore, he obeyed what he was told, but he translated the Bible into English.
He translated it from the Latin Vulgate. Erasmus later translated from the Greek; Wycliffe had the Latin to work with.
It is interesting that, even though the pope hated Wycliffe, he was never excommunicated during his life. He ended up dying of a stroke.
Thirty years after he died, they condemned him as a heretic. About fifty years after that, they dug up his bones, burned them, and threw them in the river—just to give him the right burial for a heretic.
But out of that came a little poem that speaks of the impact Wycliffe had upon the earth at that time:
They burnt his bones to ashes, and they cast them into the Swift;
A neighbouring brook running hard by took them up,
And conveyed them into the Avon;
The Avon into the Severn;
The Severn into the narrow seas;
The narrow seas into the great ocean.
And thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine,
Which is now dispersed the world over.
What the enemy means for evil, the Lord can use for good. You cannot squash the truth of what has been recovered.
One of the things that Wycliffe saw and practiced, which many of the others during this period did not, was the priesthood of all believers. Many of these Reformers saw the priesthood of all believers, but Wycliffe actually practiced it.
He trained different ones to go out and share and shepherd. These ones ended up being called Lollards.
Nobody is quite sure what the word means. You can look at it in a positive way or a negative way. The negative way means they were just babblers—they babbled on and did not mean anything. But his followers were called the Lollards, and they went out all over England.
They had Wycliffe’s translation of the Scriptures, and they were sharing it with common believers. Many were getting saved, many congregations were being raised up, and many simple groups were raised up.
These Lollards went out two by two. Some were clergy, and some were simply laity. But the whole issue of the priesthood of believers was being practiced, because each one was encouraged to have the Scriptures, know the Scriptures, and practice the Scriptures. It was no longer restricted to a certain class of people.
These Lollards had such an impact upon England that one historian from that time said, “You cannot go throughout England without every second man being a Lollard.”
Obviously, they did not call themselves Lollards. That was what they were called by their oppressors.
Soon they had such an impact that Henry IV had many of them martyred. At that point, many fled either to Scotland or over to Europe.
One of the first martyrs was Sir John Oldcastle. Does anybody know who Sir John Oldcastle is remembered as? If you read Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s character of Falstaff is Sir John Oldcastle. That is whom Shakespeare based this character on.
You see these ones working, and you see the Word permeating out and impacting society. Even some of Chaucer’s characters, I am guessing, were based upon the Lollards, who went out and wandered through the land.
But as we said, these were just forerunners. Wycliffe, as he preached in Oxford, had a great influence on the one who follows next: John Hus.
Hus never met Wycliffe. But many from the area of Bohemia—Czechoslovakia—were studying in England at that time because there had been a marriage between Richard II of England and Anne of Bohemia. This connected the two countries.
Many from Czechoslovakia and Prague came over to study in England. They were studying at Oxford, and there was one brother named Jerome who heard Wycliffe preach and teach, was converted, went back, and started sharing the gospel. He influenced Hus.
Hus was born into a poor family, but he grew up to become rector of the University of Prague. He preached in Prague at a place called the Bethlehem Chapel.
We think of Bethlehem Chapel as a little chapel, but at that point he had three thousand there every time he preached. They were cramming in to hear what this man would say, because there was such great spiritual purity and devotion.
He shared from the simplicity of the Scriptures on repentance, and people were saved. However, because of the influence Hus had, it drew the attention of the pope.
Hus was protected at that time by the emperor, but the pope wanted to have a trial of Hus. The emperor said, “Okay, I will allow this trial, but I will personally guarantee Hus’s security.” The pope agreed to that.
When they got to the trial, Hus was arrested and taken away. The emperor said to the pope, “You gave me your word.” The pope said, “We do not have to honour the word when our word is given concerning a heretic.”
They put Hus on trial and asked him if he would recant. He said, “I will only retract that which is not taught from the Word of God.”
So, in July 1415, Hus was burned at the stake. There is an interesting statement about Hus that has carried down through history.
In the Bohemian language at that time, the word Hus means “goose.” He referred to himself as a goose. In a letter to encourage the brethren after he had been exiled, he wrote:
If the goose, which is but a timid bird and cannot fly very high, has been able to burst its bonds, there will come afterwards an eagle, which will soar high into the air and draw to it all the other birds. It is in the nature of truth that the more we obscure it, the brighter it will become.
Read that last part: “It is in the nature of truth that the more we obscure it, the brighter it will become.”
As Hus was taken to be burned, they put a chain around his neck. His last comment was, “Is it thus you silence the goose? A hundred years hence, there will arise a swan whose singing you shall not be able to silence.” It was a prophetic reference to Luther.
When Hus was dying, he sang one song: “Christ, Thou Son of the living God, have mercy on me.”
After he was burned, the pope’s men came in and said, “Well, I guess we cooked his goose.” Today that carries on with a little more humour than it was originally intended for.
But this was one who was faithful, and he influenced many different ones.
After Hus was burned, Jerome also, within a year, was burned as a heretic. Jerome’s followers advised him to flee. Jerome said, “Place the fire before me. If I had dreaded it, I would have escaped long before now. I willingly go to my death.”
He said, “Lord, Thou knowest, Lord, how I have loved Thy truth,” and he went forward.
As we see the impact Hus and Jerome had upon this area, we will visit them again in the future when we talk about the Hutterites, or United Brethren. They continued on, meeting in the simplicity and purity of Christ. The flame could not be quenched.
The forerunners we have spoken of paved the way, but there were also other conditions leading up to the Reformation.
As we see on page three of the handout, these conditions preceding the Reformation may seem like simply worldly things. But, as we look upon the world we live in, there is a phrase in Acts 13:36:
David, after he had in his own generation served the counsel of God, fell on sleep.
The purpose of God never changes. The generations, the workings, and the characteristics can change, and as the Lord leads, we can adapt to that.
We have email today; they did not have it back then. They had a big communication problem back then. We have email today, overhead projectors, and freedoms that they did not have. But it is learning to follow the Lord in His purpose in each of our generations.
In 1453, Constantinople was taken over by the Turks. The Ottoman Empire came, and it drove many of the Greeks to the West. They went into Germany and Italy.
Because of that, we see what was created: the Renaissance, which means new birth and new living. A lot of this focused upon arts, culture, and the classics, but it also led to investigating the Word of God.
Two men in particular were influential: Colet, who was a Greek scholar, and Reuchlin, who was a Hebrew scholar. They were teaching, and people were learning Greek and Hebrew in a way that enabled them to look into the classics and into the Scriptures for themselves, something they had never been able to do before.
Also, we have the printing press coming about. With Gutenberg, the great development was metal type rather than wooden type. The letters were cast in metal so they could be used many times.
There were also two great discoveries: America was discovered by Columbus, and the solar system was discovered by Copernicus. You say, “Well, what does that affect?”
It caused men to start inquiring more, and their minds were opened to things they maybe had not heard before. When they heard a teaching of justification by faith, there was now an openness to say, “Well, maybe we should consider that.”
Before that, minds were closed. They were not open to these things. But now, in general, there was a new seeking. Some good seeking, some bad seeking, but at least there was a seeking mind going forth.
Also, nationalism was increasing, and the whole concept of these large empires was decreasing. The Roman Catholic system, which was affiliated with these empires, found it harder and harder to adapt to nationalism.
Here again, this was good and bad, because we will find that many of the Reformers and Reformed churches ended up identifying themselves as national churches. We switched from having a universal church within the Roman Catholic system to having Reformed churches within Switzerland, Germany, and Scotland.
There was also a rise in the middle class, which brought about an increase of knowledge and an increase of seeking. So we have these factors setting the tone for when the Reformation came in.
As we look at the overview, we are only considering part of it today. The birth of the modern era is basically from Luther through 1650, which is marked by the Peace of Westphalia.
There were many wars that we will see in the future, and a peace came about. On one side were the various intellectual movements under German influence. Within Catholicism, there was both internal renewal and external reaction, as the Jesuits and the Inquisition came about.
What we are looking at today ends up being the state churches of the Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican traditions. In the future, we will look at the Radical Reformation, made up of some of the other groups.
During this time, it is generally agreed that there were four major Reformers.
The first one is Martin Luther. We have shared before about Martin Luther’s history—how he rose up to be very dedicated and committed within the Catholic system. But the Lord, in His mercy, opened his eyes to see that the just shall live by faith.
It was progressive. It did not come in just one thing. He saw it, and as he kept seeking, the Lord illuminated it in a greater way.
The real turning point in Luther’s life was when the pope’s representative, Tetzel, came selling indulgences in the area where Luther was teaching. It was at that point that Luther posted what is called his ninety-five theses.
He posted them on the door of the university chapel at Wittenberg. The purpose of posting them was to bring about a debate on these issues.
The official name for Luther’s ninety-five theses was The Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences. The focus was on indulgences.
The purpose of posting this on the door was debate. That was the method in that day when someone wanted to debate an issue. This is what Luther wrote as an introduction:
Out of love and zeal for truth, and the desire to bring it to light, the following theses will be publicly discussed at Wittenberg, under the chairmanship of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology, on these subjects at this place.
He also said, for those who could not be present to debate orally, “Will you please write us a letter?” That was the challenge.
One of the theses says:
When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent,” He willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance. This word cannot be understood as referring to the sacrament of penance—that is, confession and satisfaction as administered by the clergy. Yet it does not mean solely inner repentance. Such inner repentance is worthless unless it produces various outward manifestations in the flesh.
With indulgences, all you had to do was put your money down and you got your forgiveness. There was no inner work. So Luther wanted to debate that.
Luther went to the Diet of Worms, and that is where he was condemned. They asked him to recant, and he said, “Show me in the Scriptures where I should recant, and I will recant. But I stand here, and I just look to the Lord for my help.”
That is a condensed version of what he said, but he basically placed himself into the Lord’s hands. After that, he was kidnapped by a friend and put into hiding. There he translated the Bible into German.
Luther could be a very hard and brusque character. Later in his life, he married a sister named Katharina von Bora. There is a little book called Martin and Katie, which shows a different side of him. She greatly influenced him and was a great helpmate.
He could be rather brusque in some of his sayings. For example, speaking of children, he said:
People who do not like children are swine, dunces, and blockheads, not worthy to be called men and women, because they despise the blessing of God, the Creator and Author of marriage.
He was not always that much. But he also said:
A simple layman armed with Scripture is to be believed above a pope or cardinal without it.
And concerning humility:
God created us out of nothing. Therefore, until a man is nothing, God can make nothing out of him.
There was a lot of wit and wisdom in Luther. He was obviously very firm in his beliefs.
One of the tragedies during the Reformation was that he had a different opinion than Zwingli, whom we will see next, on the Lord’s Supper.
In 1529 they met together to fellowship about the matter of the Lord’s Supper. Luther believed that the Lord was actually present in the elements, much as the Catholic belief. Zwingli said, “No, it is more a spiritual reality by faith that He is there.”
They could not agree on this, and they broke. From that point on, you start off in the Reformation, draw a line, and that is your first branch. That is why you now hear of Lutheran and Reformed traditions.
“Reformed” basically refers to the others—Zwingli, Calvin, and Knox—whereas “Lutheran” refers to Luther.
Zwingli was in Zurich, Switzerland. It is interesting how different ones influenced him. He was basically influenced and drawn to the Lord through the writings of Erasmus.
At the age of thirty-five, he was made pastor of the main church in Zurich.
But the Black Plague came upon Zurich at that time. There were more than nine thousand people in the city, and a quarter of them fell ill and became victims of it. Zwingli stayed there and ministered to them as a faithful pastor.
He caught the plague also, and it took him three months to recover. But in those three months of recovery, it was a life-changing experience as far as his dependence upon God.
One thing the Reformers did was ally themselves with local governments. Zwingli went to the city council, and the Zurich City Council passed a resolution that, in all the churches in Zurich, nothing was to be preached except what could be proved by the Holy Gospel and the pure Holy Scriptures.
Reforms were implemented, Catholic images were removed, the Mass was replaced, and Zwingli’s theology was implemented. That can sound good, but who was the motivating force? It was the Zurich City Council. It was aligned with the state for protection, and it ended up being the doom.
Zwingli is also famous because the Anabaptist movement began in Zurich. “Anabaptist” means to baptize again.
Most of the Reformers believed in infant baptism. They did not think it was necessary to be baptized again, and they did not believe in believers’ baptism.
Certain ones continued to follow the Scriptures, and as they sought it out, they saw the issue of believers’ baptism rather than infant baptism. When they presented it to Zwingli, he rejected it and did not agree with it.
Therefore, those who believed in believers’ baptism were persecuted and drowned in Lake Zurich. That is where the phrase Anabaptist came about.
It is sad, too, that Zwingli was killed in battle. His influence spread throughout the urban areas in Zurich and Geneva, but it did not spread in the rural areas. The rural areas stayed Catholic.
The Catholics armed themselves, and there was conflict. Zwingli felt it necessary to take up arms, so he went out into battle. There is a monument outside Zurich where you can see where he was slain in battle.
It is a sad ending to one taking up arms in that sense. You see the contrasts, because if we look at some of Zwingli’s quotations, we see how much he understood.
He said:
The sum and substance of the gospel is that our Lord Christ Jesus, the true Son of God, has made known to us the will of His heavenly Father, and with His sinlessness has released us from death and reconciled us to God. Hence, Christ is the only way to salvation for all who were, are, and shall be.
He also said:
All who dwell in Christ are members and children of God, forming the church, or communion of the saints, which is the bride of Christ. Furthermore, as the members of the body cannot function without the control of the head, so no one in the body of Christ can do anything without its Head. For in faith rests our salvation, and in unbelief our damnation.
There was so much that he saw, and yet in another area he came short.
Zwingli had an influence upon Calvin. Calvin was born in France, and he studied law.
When you think about John Calvin, most people find him the most controversial of all these Reformers. People either adore Calvin or hate him. One drawing says he is either adored or abhorred.
When you think of Calvin, you think of predestination and the sovereignty of God. That is what he believed, but it was not original with him. Augustine, Martin Luther, and many others had already believed in predestination. In fact, you can see it through the Scriptures.
But remember, Calvin was a lawyer. He delineated with such force and effort what he believed. He clearly defined a kind of systematic theology. In his Institutes, all of the beliefs were quantified in such a way that he is the easiest one to take shots at.
But in his argument, he was making the strongest case for these areas of predestination and the sovereignty of God.
Actually, Calvin is probably one of the most misrepresented today. Those who take Calvin to an extreme end up being fatalistic. They think, “There is nothing I can do. I can just sit here and go along, and God is sovereign. He has predestined everything.”
Fatalism, brothers and sisters, is not Christianity. Those who go the other way can go so far toward man’s responsibility that they deny the grace of God. Calvin is greatly misrepresented today, because much of what is presented as Calvinism is really not what our brother was sharing back at that time.
One of the works Calvin did was to set up Geneva. Many have said that Geneva was set up as the kingdom of God on earth. He established the government there, and the laws and rules of Geneva were governed according to Calvin’s standards.
John Knox wrote of Calvin that Geneva was “the most perfect school of Christ since the days of the apostles.” It was governed according to the laws and rules Calvin had.
Another item to point out about Calvin is the influence of a brother named Farel. When Calvin was fleeing from Paris, he stopped to spend one night in Geneva.
Farel told him that it was God’s will for him to stay there and minister. Different historians write with different degrees of force about how Farel persuaded, coached, or encouraged him to stay. But Calvin listened. It put the fear of God in him, and he said, “I am going to stay here.”
Farel and Calvin went on to Zurich to meet with Zwingli’s successor, Bullinger. Bullinger succeeded Zwingli in Zurich after Zwingli was killed.
Those from Geneva and Zurich were able to get together and come to oneness on the issue of the Lord’s Supper. Before, they had some different points, but they were able to fellowship about it and come to oneness on what the Lord’s Supper represented.
Calvin, more than any other one, clearly stated the Reformers’ beliefs. Calvin’s Institutes are classics that people still read today. He has commentaries on many books of the Bible—at least twenty-nine, so I should not exaggerate and say half.
But he defined, more than any of the others, what the Reformation movement was.
Calvin influenced John Knox. Knox was from Scotland.
As we said earlier, many of the Lollards from England fled to Scotland during the oppression there, and many were martyred there.
After Knox was converted in the 1540s, he served a preacher named George Wishart, a great Scottish preacher.
Wishart preached such forceful sermons on the falsehood of popery that one time the whole congregation went up in arms and destroyed three monasteries in the town—the Franciscan and Dominican monasteries. That is a fiery sermon.
But Wishart had a reward on his head, so he had bodyguards with him. Knox was one of those bodyguards to start with. He carried a large five-foot, two-edged sword to protect Wishart.
There was one incident in Wishart’s life when he was coming down from the platform. A monk standing alongside reached for his knife and was going to kill him.
But Wishart was a strong man himself. He reached down and wrestled the knife out of the man’s hands. The people around him wanted to kill the monk.
Wishart said, “No, spare the man’s life, and let his sentence be to spend the rest of his life with me.” As the man travelled with him, within a week he was saved and went on to serve him. So he did spend the rest of his life with him.
But Wishart was captured by trickery and martyred. The people loved him so much that, after the Catholic Church martyred him, they found the cardinal in town who had ordered the martyrdom. The mob killed the cardinal and hung him from the castle.
Some of the responses of our brothers and sisters were not always turning the other cheek in some of these instances.
Knox continued to preach. The first time he preached, he got arrested. He spent a year and a half as a galley slave.
But then he came back and started the Reformation in Scotland. A year or two after Knox came back, the Scottish Parliament adopted what is called the Protestant Creed and abolished Catholicism.
Here again, you see a government taking control and authorising which religions are true and which ones are not.
Another Reformer not on this chart is William Tyndale. We know Tyndale from the translation of the Scriptures, the Tyndale Bible. There is nothing in your handout about Tyndale, so do not look.
He was born in England and always desired to have an English Bible. But it was illegal at that point in time to have an English Bible.
He studied at Oxford and Cambridge and became proficient in Greek, Hebrew, and seven other languages. Here again, he was greatly influenced by Erasmus.
Tyndale discovered the truth of justification by faith and also the priesthood of all believers. When he saw the priesthood of all believers, it burned within his heart that every person in England would have a Bible in their own tongue.
There is a phrase that even the ploughboy would be able to understand it. It would be written in such a way.
Tyndale asked permission from the bishop of London to translate it, and they said, “No, you cannot do it.” So he had to flee the country. He went to Germany, translated it, and they smuggled his Bibles back into England.
When the king and everybody heard about it, they were furious. Their plan was to buy up all the Bibles that came back in, so there would not be any for the people.
That worked great. As the shipments came in, they bought them all up. But they forgot that all that money went back to Tyndale, so he had more money to print more Bibles.
While they were trying to get rid of Bibles, they were actually funding them. The first shipment was lost, but it enabled more Bibles to come over.
Tyndale was finally arrested. A friend of his betrayed him. He was arrested, hanged, and burned in Europe.
His prayer at his execution was, “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.”
And it did. Within two years after his execution, Henry VIII ordered a copy of the Scriptures in English to be placed in every parish church. The Lord answered that prayer.
Henry VIII did it for political reasons. Do not put Henry VIII in the Reformation at all. He did it purely politically.
Before the Reformation, the Ottoman Empire had stopped at a certain point. But in 1453, when they came over and took Constantinople, the Greek scholars fled into the West.
Even after the Reformation, the Roman Catholics remained prominent in many places. We see the different areas of influence.
It is called the Church of England here, but 1534 is usually considered the birth of the Church of England. Henry VIII wanted a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and the pope would not grant him a divorce.
So the Parliament of England declared Henry VIII the head of the Church of England, and they split.
I do not think that qualifies as the Lord moving to raise up a mighty work. But that is where the Church of England started.
We said the other week that the Lord’s church has a marriage in view, and the Church of England started with a divorce—a different foundation.
We will see a true reformation amongst brethren in England later on. We could say Tyndale was a forerunner to the Reformation in England, and the Separatists and Puritans whom Carl spoke of last week were more those who really brought reformation into the church in England.
We see how this spread and how the Lord used different vessels to bring about what He desired to accomplish.
As we said, I left out about half the quotations I was going to read because you can see the enormity of what went on during this time. The Reformation was a work of God that God raised up.
It can encourage us that there were brethren there willing to follow the Lord. They were imperfect, brothers and sisters, but they tried to be faithful to what the Lord had them doing.
The counsel to the church in Sardis was, “Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain.” Is that a call to us today?
What remains within our lives—that deposit of Christ—strengthen that. Strengthening that means more of Christ, more of seeing more of Him.
“Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent.” We receive by the grace of God. We hear and go forward in obedience by the grace of God.
We do not want to be those who just end up being another revival movement in the history of reformation—just a little tide that goes out and a tide that comes in, another little ebb-and-flow movement.
But we desire to be those who are faithful to Him. Brothers and sisters, as He looks upon us, He really has it upon His heart that we would, in a very fresh way, know Him.
It is so easy—I think we can all relate to how easy it is—to settle down and get comfortable.
Particularly after we have maybe been a believer for twenty years, we say, “Well, you know, I have been a believer for twenty years. I have tried to be faithful. Look at all I have done. Look at all I believe in. Look at all my beliefs. I feel like maybe I have done enough.”
“It is time for Social Security to come in and just be able to carry me through to the end.”
The Lord’s retirement programme is not in our day and time. It is on the other side.
Now He is calling us to live each day in the freshness of His life. May we be those who do that.
We can see how the Lord used men to recover truth that changed the course of history, and yet they ended up settling down. They are the same flesh and blood as we are.
We want to be those who continue to press on in the Lord.
Certain ones may have focused on a certain truth more than another. An imbalance set in, and they held to certain things. May we, in a right way, lead a balanced Christian life, being open to all the Spirit has to lead us into fullness.
We can see others who did not go on because they did not fellowship and share one with another. They felt they had the right light and the right thought, and they were not compromising.
There is a way that we stand in the Lord and do not compromise. But there is also a way, in the priesthood of all believers, that we share His life one with another.
It is the sharing of His life, not the sharing of our thoughts—the sharing of His life—that enables us to go on. We can be adjusted in the days that we are walking in.
One of the saddest statements within any of our lives is for a believer to stand up and say, “I believe all the things I do today that I believed twenty years ago.”
I do not think any of us are at that point. We believe the fundamental things, the foundational truths; they do not change.
But as far as our experiences in the Lord, our growing in the Lord, and the times we are living in, we need His life to lead us and guide us into that fuller measure.
May we strengthen the things that remain, and then go all the way to the end. May the Lord really help us.
Can we pray?
Lord, we do worship You and thank You for the encouragement of those who have gone before. We thank You, Lord, for those who have laid down their lives that we could freely enter in.
Lord, even as we see those who battled and laid down their lives over the Lord’s table, how freely we were able to take of it today. Lord, those have just made a way for us. We thank You.
Lord, we do want to be those who continue to follow the Lamb wherever He goes, that we not just be content to sit down and rest upon what we have seen.
But Lord, we know the greatness that there is in You, the unfathomable riches, Lord, that barely measure up to what we have seen. We just want to reach out in a greater way, Lord, to know more of Christ.
May we see a greater measure of Christ formed within us, a greater measure of Christ coming forth within us individually and collectively, that we can be those who really go through, Lord, in this day and time.
Encourage our hearts, Lord. Draw us back to Yourself in the freshness of Your life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.