Everybody is hungry for fellowship. We have a great meal today, when we have the opportunity to have all this fellowship together.
All right. Well, let’s have another word of prayer.
Lord, it is precious, the fellowship You have brought us into, and the fellowship You have brought us into with Your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. We are thankful that, as we have remembered the price that it cost You to bring us into that, we continue in a spirit of worship and adoration.
And Lord, as we have remembered You as that Bread of Life at the table, as we come now, we continue to look upon You as that Bread of Life, that You would feed us, Lord, through Your Word, as we consider Your great faithfulness throughout history.
Lord, as we always say, we are not here just to learn facts, but we are here to learn lessons and allow Your Holy Spirit to speak to our hearts and speak to our lives, that we could be the people of God that You are desiring that we be in this day and time. In Thy name we pray. Amen.
Well, we are thankful that we can continue sharing on this matter of the testimony of Jesus throughout history. We have two theme verses that we always start with: Matthew 16:17-18.
Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father who is in heaven.
And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
I believe the two key things in these verses are, first, that what the Lord had shown to Peter about Him being the Christ came by revelation. It was not of Peter’s doing; it came by revelation. We need to continue throughout our days praying for that spirit of wisdom and revelation, more and more, of what is upon His heart and what is upon His days.
Secondly, this is one of the precious and magnificent promises that we have: “I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” If we look outward through our natural eyes, it looks like this verse is impossible. But we are thankful we can look up through our spiritual eyes, and we can see God doing a great work. He is bringing about the culmination of all this in these last days.
So we want to be those who are cooperating with Him and with what is upon the Lord’s heart. What He entrusted to the church is the testimony of Jesus.
As we look at Revelation 1:17-18, this is our Lord speaking. He is testifying of Himself. He is saying, “This is who I am.”
And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as one dead.
And He laid His right hand upon me, saying, Fear not; I am the first and the last,
and the Living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.
In these brief verses, we have this wonderful summation of the testimony of Jesus. “I am the first and the last.” He is that all-inclusive One. He is everything to us, and He is desiring that this be expressed in our lives.
He says, “I am the Living One.” He is life. We see His character and nature, and He is desiring that that character and nature would be formed in us.
He says, “I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades.” He is that all-victorious One. He has won the great victory, and He is really summing up everything in these last days.
This testimony of Jesus speaks of who He is, His character and nature, what He has done, and what He is doing. I mentioned on a Wednesday night that, in a very simple way, the testimony of Jesus is His life expressed through His people. That is really what it comes down to.
When we are talking about being a testimony unto Him, it is His life being expressed through us. That is why they were first called Christians at Antioch: because the life of Christ was expressed through them. That is what the Lord is jealous for.
We see throughout history that this is what the Lord has been seeking through all of His people. We are thankful for faithful ones.
From a point of review, we know that the church was in God’s heart from eternity past, and the church had a wonderful and glorious birth upon the Day of Pentecost—that very healthy beginning. It was a glorious time, and entrusted to the church was the testimony of Jesus.
The church was not only to hold that testimony and shine it forth through His people, but was also to disseminate that testimony of Jesus throughout the whole earth. Tragically, through dissipation, corruption, and persecution, there became that distinction between Christendom and the testimony of Jesus.
But praise God, in His faithfulness He maintained that silver thread even through the darkest of times. There were those overcomers, even through the darkest ages, where outwardly it appeared there was nothing of God’s work going on upon this earth. There were those faithful ones, hidden away from man but precious in the sight of the Lord. Many of them had to give their lives for that testimony.
Last time we saw those leading up to the Reformation—the morning stars of the Reformation—and the ones involved in setting the scene for this. One of the things that had the greatest impact upon the Reformation was the availability of the Word of God.
It is hard to emphasize how the invention of the printing press impacted the Word of God going forth. You can see on the overhead the many languages into which it was translated. People were able to read the Word of God on their own.
As these men started giving sermons—as Luther shared something, as Zwingli or Calvin shared—their sermons were printed and made available to everyone. If you had not heard it, they were distributed. That is where the phrase “hot off the press” comes from. They were going out to all of these places, and the Word was being spread. Even for people who were illiterate, there were those who could read these sermons to them.
To put it in a modern context, the printing press had an impact upon believers similar to what messages on YouTube have upon us. As soon as something is shared, that YouTube message goes everywhere. In a similar way, because of the printing press, the message—the Word of God—was able to spread in a way that had never happened before.
As we look at the Reformation, there are really four major reformers: Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Knox. Those are the ones we will be focusing on today.
A few things need to be kept in perspective. None of them started out to begin a Protestant movement. All of them started out to bring reform within the Catholic Church. They grew up in the Catholic Church; most of them were priests within the Catholic Church. The Lord touched their hearts, and they were trying to be faithful.
They desired to bring the Catholic Church of that point in time back in line with the Word of God, but that was greatly resisted by the powers that be.
These were ordinary ones. They are famous now—we know all these names—but they were just ordinary men whom the Lord touched, and they were faithful with what was entrusted to them.
I saw a quote a couple of weeks ago that really touched my heart: “History doesn’t send out an invitation ahead of time.” You do not go and do something in order to make history. You live your life, and in hindsight, that is a historical event.
The Lord is calling us simply to be faithful. These men were not desiring to be famous men. They were simply desiring to be faithful with what the Lord had entrusted to them. We will see their humanity throughout all of this also.
If you want to sum up the Reformation, there were three basic teachings recovered:
The Word of God—Scripture alone—is the authority, not the pope and nothing else. Grace alone is how we enter in. It is not our works. We do not do things to please God in order to gain salvation. It is by grace.
And it is by faith: that gift of God, responding to that. These truths are so familiar to us, but in that day and time people had generally never heard these things before. We are thankful that these ones were faithful to recover these precious truths and were able to disseminate them and encourage many.
As we start, we will look at Martin Luther. Luther is probably the most famous reformer.
The turning point in his life initially was in 1502. He was studying law at that time, and he was on his way home when he got caught in a horrendous thunderstorm. There are various stories about what happened during the thunderstorm—whether he was under a tree or something else—but he was terrified during the storm.
He actually prayed to Saint Anne, who was his patron saint at the time. He prayed, “If you will save me from this, I will become a monk.” That was considered the greatest thing you could do if you really wanted to please God.
He said he had no desire at that time to be a monk, but for his own self-preservation he said, “I’ll become a monk.” Do we ever make vows to God? “Get me out of this situation, and I’ll do this.” Then He gets us out of it, and most of the time we forget what we said. But he remembered that.
Luther entered the Augustinian order. Within that order there was much fasting and self-denial in an attempt to obtain salvation. When Luther did something, he was one hundred percent committed to it. He was so dedicated that he put all the other monks to shame.
He was confessing every moment of his sins. He was fasting and barely eating. He was denying himself anything luxurious, even the basic things of life.
Finally, he was ordained and celebrated his mass. Living in Germany, he had the opportunity to go to Rome. Here was a man who had been denying himself so much, fasting and doing everything he could, and he wanted to go to Rome. But when he got there, he was utterly repulsed by what he saw.
He saw extravagance, indulgence among the priests, corruption, and immorality. The priests were having mistresses and concubines and all of this stuff. It utterly impacted his life and began the desire in him to be a reformer within the church.
One of the things you did in Rome to prove your dedication to the Lord was to climb the Scala Sancta, or holy steps, at the Vatican on your knees. I guess you crawled up on your knees to show how devoted you were.
Luther got on his knees and started up. He was doing everything he was supposed to do at each step—the rituals involved. Then all of a sudden, he heard these words: “The just shall live by faith.”
He heard that, and it registered within his heart. He stood up and walked back down the steps, which was considered blasphemous. He went back to Germany ready to reform the Catholic Church.
When he got back, he was transferred to Wittenberg. His mentor saw what had happened, and his mentor really loved the Lord too. To help Luther, he got him away from some of the center areas and sent him to Wittenberg.
There Luther started preaching. He did not preach the normal Catholic rituals. What he preached was from the Word of God. His eyes were open, and he was preaching expository messages from the Word of God. Of course, that could get you in trouble in those days.
One of the practices of that time was the sale of indulgences. Indulgences were used to raise money. In this particular case, the pope wanted to expand, modernize, and make the Vatican more beautiful.
They sent various emissaries around, and the one who came near the Wittenberg area was a man named Tetzel. An indulgence was something you paid for, and then your sins would be forgiven, depending on how much you paid.
Your sins could supposedly be forgiven on earth, or it could make your time in purgatory a little shorter. Remember, according to this teaching, when people died they did not go directly to heaven. They went from earth to purgatory, and based upon how good a life they had lived, they spent time there paying for their sins before eventually getting to heaven.
These indulgences were being abused. Tetzel came in, and Luther saw the abuse. He started speaking out against it.
Most people have seen pictures of Luther nailing his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg. In reality, most people say he did not nail them to the door. It was not a protest.
The church door functioned more like a community bulletin board—a modern-day blog, you could say. If you had something you wanted to discuss, debate, or consider publicly, you would post it there. It was the city center.
You can see from the introduction to his Ninety-Five Theses that he was not trying to start an argument. He was looking for a debate. He wanted legitimately to talk about these matters.
Out of love for the truth and from desire to elucidate it, the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology, and ordinary lecturer therein at Wittenberg, intends to defend the following statements and to dispute on them in that place.
He was asking others to debate him. He was not challenging or arguing at that point. He simply wanted to bring these things to light and measure them against Scripture.
What he intended never occurred, because it brought about such a reaction that people immediately began opposing him for even questioning these things. Much of the story surrounding Luther nailing things to the door and his supposed great reaction has been greatly exaggerated. That was not his intent.
For a couple of examples of what he wanted to discuss and debate, Thesis 27 says:
They preach folly who say that, when money in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.
In other words, you would give your money to the priest, and as soon as it went into the coffer and hit the bottom—bing—your soul would spring from purgatory.
He also wrote:
Those who suppose that, because of their letters of indulgence, they are sure of salvation will be eternally damned with their teachers.
And:
Every Christian who truly repents has full forgiveness of punishment and guilt, even without letters of indulgence.
Again, this was revolutionary for people to hear. It was like Tom shared this morning about how revolutionary it was for those ones to hear Jesus say, “I am the living Bread. I am the Bread of Life coming down from heaven.” This had the same impact upon these people.
Luther concluded in Thesis 95:
Let Christians set their trust on entering heaven through faith in Jesus Christ rather than the false sense of security of a letter.
That is the security we have: our faith in Him. As Luther brought these things to light, the printing press published them and sent them everywhere. They became great points of debate.
Later, Luther debated John Eck on matters far beyond indulgences. In those debates, he denied the authority of the pope, and this brought him more and more trouble.
Up to this point, Luther thought he was being a good Catholic and trying to fix and reform everything. But after condemning the authority of the pope and questioning so much, the pope condemned his teachings.
They gave him an opportunity at the Diet of Worms, where he refused to recant and was condemned. He was then “kidnapped”—so-called—by a friend of his, Frederick III, who protected him. Luther was hidden away, and there he translated the New Testament.
I once shared this in Brazil, and I sent my overheads down to be translated ahead of time. You can imagine what “the Diet of Worms” got translated into in Portuguese. They called me and said, “Is this right?” Fortunately, somebody knew a little bit about history and corrected it, but the first draft had it as “a diet of worms.” That is not a diet you want to try.
But there he was, standing condemned, and they told him to recant everything he had been teaching. He said:
Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures and by clear reason, I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted; my conscience is captive to the Word of God.
I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.
Here I stand. I can do no other. So help me God. Amen.
I think you see a little of Luther’s character here—his commitment. There was an absoluteness there. He felt called of God to stand for the truth, to be that vessel for His use, and whatever it cost him, he was going to continue standing.
He was standing before those who had authority over him regarding life and death. Fortunately, he had a friend afterward who put him away in a castle and protected him. But he was condemned at that point in time and excommunicated from the Catholic Church.
One of the things that impacted Luther most was that he married Katharina von Bora, and they had six children. If you ever have an opportunity to look at Luther’s family life, it is a wonderful testimony.
Every evening when he was home, the family would have their family altar. Luther loved to sing hymns. He would gather all the children around, and they would sing hymns and some of the psalms together, trying to encourage them in the Lord.
Katharina had a great impact upon him, because Luther, in his total commitment, burned himself out. He fought much sickness and depression. Often, when you get sick, you get depressed and do not see things happening. A lot of it was simply because he was so sold out for the Lord.
People like that are convicting to us. We protect ourselves so much at times. Luther was not protecting himself. He literally loved not his life unto death.
It was during a time of sickness and depression that he wrote that mighty hymn, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” a bulwark never failing. Praise God for that.
You see the condition he was in when he wrote that. It was a declaration of faith: regardless of what I am feeling or going through, a mighty fortress is my God.
During this time, reformers were also rising in other areas. The reformers gathered at Marburg to have a colloquy. Zwingli and about ten others were there. They had fifteen points; they agreed on fourteen of them.
The one point on which they disagreed was the Lord’s Supper. Luther still believed something close to the Catholic view of transubstantiation. It was not full transubstantiation, but some version of it.
Zwingli and the others thought that the Lord’s Table was more a testimony of what the Lord has done for us. They did not agree on that, and this brought about a division between Luther and Zwingli. At that point, they all still agreed on infant baptism.
Luther finished the entire Bible in German and later died in 1546.
One thing you see in Luther is his humanity. Today we would call him a very vulgar person. If you read some of his writings, biographies, or the so-called unedited version of his commentary on Galatians, some of the comments he made about people were vulgar and could be classified as profane at times.
But he was on fire, and these were human beings. Great men? No—great sinners with a great God. Man wants to elevate them, but they were great sinners with a great God, just like each one of us. We are all great sinners, but we have a great God. Praise God for that.
When we hear things about their humanity, failures, and shortcomings, we need to be merciful, because that is who we are too.
In Switzerland there was also an individual named Ulrich Zwingli.
Again, he was a Catholic. The turning point in his life was in 1515, when he traveled with Swiss mercenaries as a chaplain to a battle in Italy.
One of the greatest ways Switzerland made money at that time was by selling mercenaries. They had a huge army and would sell their mercenaries to whoever was the highest bidder.
Zwingli, being a priest, went with these mercenaries as chaplain to this battle in Italy. Six thousand young men from Switzerland were killed in that battle. It opened his eyes.
He came back and began preaching against this whole system. “What you are doing,” he said, “is selling the blood of our sons for gold.” That got him in trouble with everybody, because everybody was for it.
Thank the Lord, he came to know the Lord through Erasmus’s New Testament. We do not know exactly when he was saved, but he immersed himself in that Greek New Testament. He became a pastor in Zurich and began expository teaching, preaching the Word of God and allowing it to go forth.
Then plague struck Zurich. We have talked about the plague before. Many were sick, but Zwingli was there ministering to those who were at death’s door and dying. He got sick himself, but by the mercy of God he recovered—which in itself was a miracle, because not many people recovered from the plague.
Because of the popularity and impact Zwingli was having upon Zurich, the city council supported the reforms. They had seen the corruption within the Catholic Church, and they saw the lives of these Protestant ones and the impact they were having upon individuals.
More and more reforms came in. Some people thought they were moving too slowly—that was the Anabaptists, whom we will discuss later. Others thought they were moving too fast.
Whenever you go through any kind of change, there are always those who think you are going too slow and those who think you are going too fast. Coming out of COVID, some thought things were going too fast and some thought they were going too slow. But we want to find His way in it.
Tragically, Zwingli was a man of action. He joined the Protestant army in battle as a soldier—not a chaplain anymore—to fight against the Catholics outside Zurich. He was killed in that battle.
When the Catholics found his body, they mutilated it. It was a sad, tragic thing. Nobody is quite sure why he joined the battle. There are various impressions, but perhaps he became impatient with the way things were going and wanted to step up and move things faster. It did not work out for him personally, though we are thankful the Lord was able to keep the work going.
Zwingli said:
I beseech Christ for this one thing only: that He will enable me to endure all things courageously, and that He break me as a potter’s vessel.
He summed up the Christian life this way:
The Christian life, then, is a battle so sharp and full of danger that effort can nowhere be relaxed without loss.
That is an intense personality. That is someone captured and being burned out for the Lord, in a way. I think it is actually a good quote for us in this day and time, because the intensity of the battle is growing more and more.
We love to take opportunities to relax, but this is a word we need to consider. We do not want to be those in a relaxed mode, losing anything or getting caught off guard, but being sold out for Him. Praise God for that.
Also in Switzerland, we have John Calvin. Calvin’s name is a lightning rod. Very few people are neutral about him. Some people call him the greatest saint who ever lived, and some call him a tool of the devil. Some utterly hate him for the impact that he had.
He was studying in France and fled to Switzerland, establishing his base in Geneva. Geneva was a key city because it was right on the border between Switzerland and France. He had influence in Switzerland, but it also allowed influence to begin spreading into France, which was under Catholic rule and was utterly corrupt.
Calvin had a sudden conversion, but nobody—not even his wife—knew exactly when he was converted. When he talked about conversion, he referred to John 18. He said, “That is the Scripture that warmed my heart, but I am not sure when it occurred.”
He was passing through Geneva and intended to stay only one night before going on to another city. There was another man there named William Farel, who had begun a work in Geneva and was allowing people to come to the Lord.
When Farel heard that Calvin was coming, he wanted to persuade Calvin to stay and work with him. Calvin liked something of an ivory-tower type of Christianity. He liked sitting back and writing things; he was not a hands-on person at that time.
Farel, however, was described as a fiery redhead. Maybe he had some Irish in him or something, but he was fiery.
Farel persuaded Calvin to stay in Geneva and work with him. To show you how fiery Farel was, this was his challenge:
I declare to you on the part of God that if you refuse to labor here along with us in the Lord’s work, His curse will be upon you, since under pretense of your studies it is yourself that you are seeking rather than Him.
That is a pretty strong rebuke. But Calvin’s testimony was, “I did not hear the voice of Farel, but of God.”
Calvin loved his studies and his writings. At times, we can become so focused on aspects of the Christian life that we like that we miss other things. We can get focused on our ministry, our studies, end-times matters, prophetic matters, or whatever. Some fools can get focused on church history and just miss out on everything else God is doing.
But I appreciate this rebuke because there is a sobering thing there: are you doing it for yourself or for Him? That is a real lesson for us in life as we press on. We can be doing good things for the Lord, but is our motive right? Are we doing it for ourselves or for Him? Are we trying to build a name for ourselves?
Praise God, Calvin was teachable. He said, “I did not hear the voice of Farel, but God.” It would be easy for someone to rebuke Farel and say, “You cannot speak like that.” But Calvin responded, and that shows something of his character.
While in Geneva, Calvin published what is called the Institutes of the Christian Religion. This was really a systematic theology of the Reformation. Luther had many teachings, but Calvin pulled much of it together in a concise way.
Another brother, Philip Melanchthon, whom we will see in a moment, also helped pull together the thoughts of what was taking place.
The Institutes are three volumes. The first two volumes, everybody loves. The third volume is where Calvin got into predestination, and people have strong reactions to it.
Let me say it this way: the Calvinism around today is not necessarily the Calvinism that he taught. His teaching was much more balanced. The impact of Calvinism today is still felt, but it is far from his original teachings. When people talk about Calvinism, you have to make sure what they are speaking about.
Because of some of his severe teaching, Calvin was banished from Geneva. He got married, and then in 1542 he returned to Geneva with a desire to make Geneva the kingdom of God.
Through his preaching and writings, he began to impact the schools, and the city council began supporting him. He wanted to improve morality, so he tried to improve morality by changing laws. But morality cannot be changed in the long term by new laws. It is a change of heart.
Geneva was governed based on Christian principles and Scripture. It was a nice city if you were a believer, but if you were not, you could be treated pretty badly. There was not much love and graciousness shown to unbelievers. They were not winning them over in kindness.
One of the blemishes upon Calvin’s record is that there was a heretic named Servetus. He had been kicked out of the Catholic Church, denied the Trinity, denied original sin, and there was no question that he was a heretic.
But he was condemned to death within the city of Geneva, and Calvin approved of his death and went along with it. Calvin tried to have him killed more mercifully. He desired that Servetus’s head be chopped off rather than that he be burned at the stake, but that request was denied.
This is held against Calvin, and it is a blemish. But that is where we see that these were human beings, and they made mistakes.
One thing that touched me about Calvin was that when he died, he wanted to be buried in a common, unmarked grave. To this day, nobody knows where Calvin’s grave is.
He had seen monuments built to people who died, and he said, “I do not want any monument to me. I want everything to go to Christ.” So he said, “Just bury me in an unmarked grave, and do not tell anybody where it is.” To me, that spoke of his character.
Calvin said:
Faith is like an empty, open hand stretched out towards God, with nothing to offer, but everything to receive.
An empty, open hand stretched out toward God—nothing to offer, everything to receive.
Like Luther, Calvin loved music. Most of the reformers were trying to reform the music. At that time there were many Gregorian chants, and the focus was often more on the music than on the words. Many people could not understand the words because they were in Latin.
Some beautiful music was composed during that time, but the focus was more upon the beauty of the music than upon the songs themselves. Calvin said:
We must beware lest our ears be more intent on the music than our minds on the spiritual meaning of the words.
The hymns have beautiful spiritual words. That is what we need to focus on. We can get caught up in the feeling of the music, but are we really focusing upon the words?
Because of this, Calvin set many of the psalms to music. He wrote a Psalter. Even today, some groups sing only from the Psalter—the psalms that were put to music by Calvin.
The last man is John Knox. John Knox was in Scotland—the greatest country on earth. I am a thoroughbred; both sides of my family are pure Scot. That may be why Knox was described as very stubborn. Most of us Scots are pretty stubborn, to say the least.
At this point in time, Scotland allied itself with France because France was Catholic. England was part of the Church of England, because Henry VIII had separated from the Roman Catholic Church for his own personal reasons—not for spiritual reasons—and set up the Church of England with himself as its head.
For strength, Scotland allied with France, and there were constant battles and bickering.
When Knox was about fourteen years old, there was a man named Patrick Hamilton, whom Knox probably did not know personally. Hamilton was the first Protestant martyr in Scotland.
Hamilton had studied the Word, come to know the Word, and started sharing it with different people. Because of that, he was killed by the Roman Catholic Church.
Everybody knew how righteous Hamilton was. They could not understand why they would put to death one who had been so righteous and so good. It caused people to begin questioning and wondering why. The more they looked into it, the more they were drawn to the Word of God.
They saw the reality of how the Word of God had impacted Hamilton’s life, in contrast to what they saw within the Roman Catholic system.
Knox was still in the Catholic Church at this point. He graduated from St. Andrews and became a priest. Shortly after that, he was converted and became the bodyguard for a preacher named George Wishart.
Because of the danger from Catholics at that time, many people had bodyguards. There is a famous painting of Wishart with Knox beside him, standing with a two-edged sword. These were different times than today.
Eventually, Wishart was martyred. He knew the Catholic troops were coming for him and that they were outnumbered. He sent away all of his bodyguards because he did not want them killed. He gave himself up and was eventually tried and martyred.
After that, Knox was captured and served on a French ship. He was a French galley slave for nineteen months. This dramatically affected his health, because he was maltreated and malnourished.
After nineteen months, he was able to get out and moved to England. But because of his preaching there, he had to flee Queen Mary. When you study Scotland and England, you can get all the Marys confused.
He settled in Geneva and was greatly influenced by Calvin. Through Calvin’s encouragement, he returned to Scotland and began a wholehearted Reformation, so much so that the Scottish Parliament adopted Protestantism and declared its support for it.
A couple of years later, a Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, returned from France. Knox continued preaching, but she was strongly against him. They actually met and discussed matters five times. She offered him all these things if he would quit preaching against her, but he never would budge.
He stood toe to toe with her. If you read some of the things Knox said, he basically thought Mary, Queen of Scots, should just be beheaded and end the whole thing. That was his opinion of how to handle her. That is not your normal gospel message, but it gives us a feel for who these men were.
Knox was buried outside St. Andrews, where he had gone to school. Today, if you go to see where he is buried, it is covered by a parking lot—actually, parking space number 24. There is a little circle there saying, “John Knox is buried under here.” Some people in Scotland like him, and some do not.
Knox’s prayer was:
Lord, give me Scotland, else I die.
That is the absoluteness there: Scotland or I die.
I appreciate this encouragement to us:
A man with God is always in the majority.
People like to say believers are the minority these days. But a man with God is in the majority. Praise God for that.
Mary, Queen of Scots, said:
I fear the prayers of John Knox more than all the assembled armies of Europe.
There was a reality in him that she feared. “I fear his prayers more than all the assembled armies in Europe.”
These were the main four reformers, but they certainly were not the only ones. There were plenty of others. Most of them were at the Marburg Colloquy also.
They are lesser known in name, but not in value. Some may even be unknown to us, but they were precious servants of the Lord who did great works for Him.
One brother said, “You do not always have to be number one.” You could say these four major ones were number one, while these were secondary ones. But no, we are all in this together. It is the Body of Christ.
Philip Melanchthon followed and worked with Luther. He helped systemize Luther’s teachings and theology and was called the theologian of the Reformation. He did a great work.
Johannes Oecolampadius—try to say that one quickly. Nobody writes about him because they cannot pronounce his name. At least that way, you do not know if I pronounced it right or wrong. But according to Google, that is the way it is pronounced.
He led the Reformation in Basel and was closely associated with Zwingli. Throughout Switzerland, all these various ones were being used.
William Farel was the one we spoke about earlier, who really challenged Calvin. He was saved through Lefèvre in Paris and then expelled from France.
We will see both Farel and Beza more when we get to the Huguenots, because they were the ones who greatly influenced the Huguenot movement in France.
Bullinger succeeded Zwingli in Zurich and helped stabilize things. Beza succeeded Calvin in Geneva.
These are not names we normally know, but think about all the unnamed ones throughout Scripture and throughout history. We are not in it for a name; we are in it to be faithful unto Him.
There is a map here of what Europe looked like after the Reformation. The green is the Anglican church, mainly in England and some parts of Ireland.
The dark blue and light blue represent Calvinism, which today is generally called the Reformed church. You can see it throughout Switzerland, parts of France, and over in the Netherlands. Calvinism is still very strong there.
Eastern Orthodoxy, which had originally broken away from the Catholic Church, remained in the east. Lutheranism spread mainly through Germany and into northern Europe.
Then you can see Roman Catholicism in yellow, still widely spread and influential. That is, in a very broad way, the impact of the Reformation upon the map of Europe.
If we think about the impact of the Reformation, these dear ones started a great work. But in hindsight, they did not go far enough. They started, but they stopped short.
To me, it is a lesson that we can enter into something good, but there is still much more in Him. Many of us used to meet in denominational churches, but is it the end for us just to meet here like this? There is much more of His life that He wants to express.
We can become comfortable. We can say, “Look at what we have. We do not have this, and we do not have that. We have this, and we have that.” But is that the whole thing? It is His life being expressed through us. This is what we are jealous for.
We need to keep pressing on and not settle down.
Through this time, they recovered the authority of the Word of God, justification by faith, and the precious truth of believers having direct access to God through Jesus Christ. We do not have to go through an intermediary.
But there were shortcomings. They saw the truth of the priesthood of all believers, but they did not practice it. They did not think people were ready for it or could handle it.
They doubted the headship of Christ. The headship of Christ never fully came in to impact these initial reformers. They continued to believe in and practice infant baptism.
They formalized and structured worship on Sunday. Where there had once been a Catholic plan, now Calvin had his plan, Zwingli had his plan, and each had a prescribed way that a Sunday service was to go. There was not much fluidity or being led by the Spirit. It was a structured, formalized plan.
They allied with Protestant kings and princes, and therefore they became state and national churches. At the end of Luther’s life, Luther actually repented. He said, “I looked to the princes to protect me, and now we have become national.” He saw the error of that.
Any time the church—the people of God—looks too much to government for protection, they are in trouble. I believe in the days we are living in, we can be challenged with that.
Who are we looking to protect us? Are we looking to the Supreme Court? Are we looking to Congress or the President? It is not that we do not pray for them or care about them, but who are we looking to for protection?
It is the Lord. It is allowing His headship to hold us and keep us in the midst of these things.
Eventually, because of these things, the persecuted became the persecutors. We will see more of that next time, when we consider some of the ones who wanted to continue pressing on.
From now on in church history, as we see things recovered, there is an ebb and flow. A little more is recovered, then a little more, and there are those who keep pressing on.
At a certain point, people feel like they have it all. “Wow, we have justification by faith, we are settled in, we are happy in the Lord, and we are free from this.” But there were still matters such as sanctification and the priesthood of believers—things for which the Lord was jealous.
As I get a little older in life, I do not want to settle down. Each of these men burned themselves out. We see in Scripture those who were burned out for Christ. I want to be one of those who is burned out.
I know I have not lived that type of life so far, but I am thankful for the grace and the blood of the Lamb that cleanses me. I have a desire that in the future I can be burned out for Him. May that be all of our desire.
Let’s pray.
Lord, we are thankful for how You found so many different ones, just ordinary vessels, through whom You could express Your great life.
Lord, we are sitting here today as ordinary vessels. We are ordinary vessels, but each one of us has a treasure within us. Lord, we are desiring that that treasure would come forth in a fuller and greater measure.
May we be those not distracted by the things of this world, not distracted even by our service to You, but really maintaining and keeping that one thing that is necessary before us, allowing You to hold our hearts.
May we continue pressing on to be the people of God You are desiring.
Lord, we are thankful that You have shown us this matter of the testimony of Jesus. What we desire is that that testimony would be lived out in our lives individually and together, for Your glory and honor. In Thy name we pray. Amen.