Scripture Reading | 2 Timothy 3:14-17
14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Faith of our Fathers – Martin Luther
Pastor Thanael Certa-Werner
Today we continue our sermon series looking at the faith of four church fathers, how their faith changed the world, and how their lives can inspire us to live in new ways. In our first week, we looked at Paul, who was a Pharisee who went from hunting down and ending Christians, to spreading Christianity around the world. We looked at how God worked through Paul to fundamentally change who the Church was for, opening the doors to the world.
Last week, we looked at Saint Patrick and his crazy story of hard times. Even after he was enslaved and then stuck in a desert, Saint Patrick followed a call from God back to Ireland to spread the Gospel to the people who needed to hear it there. We learned that God is calling us to be strong in the midst of failure and hardship because His call on our lives will have moments where it is not easy. But when we follow God, we also are supported and upheld by God.
This week, we look into the life of someone who you might have heard of in church circles, Martin Luther. Not Martin Luther King Jr., but the person for whom he was named and who changed the church forever during the 1500’s in Germany. But first, we have to practice our memory verse!
Memory Verse: Turn your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding. -Proverbs 2:2
Today, I’m taking you back to 1483 as we take a look at this thing in my hand (a Bible). Believe it or not, the fact that we can read this book today and don’t know Latin is due to the events which happened 500 years ago in a town called Eisleben. At this time, there is a empire called the Holy Roman Empire and it ruled all of modern day German, and parts of Austria, Italy, France, among other places. This Holy Roman Empire was created by the Pope, who selected and crowned its emperor. In other words, the Pope had a lot of power in this country, as he did in many countries during this time.
It’s important to establish the background here because it’s very easy to make the Catholic Church out to be the bad guy of this story. Imagine, after hundreds of years, the Roman Empire has fallen. Its capital moved out to the East and the emperor now rules there. After being destroyed, there’s no government left! So the natural successor was the church, who was in every city and was the only thing organized at the time. People naturally turned to the church for leadership. This eventually gave great power and worldly, governmental authority to the Pope and the church.
Into this world was born Martin Luther to parents who expected great things from this lad. He was the eldest of many brothers and sisters and so he was given the best education the family could afford to train him in the law. But over time, the law seemed to unreliable – which is a interesting statement considering at this time the Holy Roman Empire had stood for almost 700 years and would live on to stand for another 300 years. For whatever the true reason was, Luther was far more interested in philosophy and religion. He pursued this knowledge studiously and one day, as he was walking, a lightning colt struck near him and he cried out, “If you spare me, I will become a monk.”
Well, he did survive and much to the distaste of his father, he lived into a promise he never could break and became a monk. During Martin’s time as a monk, he fell into depression because he fixated on how sinful he was and how he constantly failed. It was a fellow monk which helped Martin to begin focusing on Christ’s sufficiency – in other words, the fact that we are not enough, but Christ is. This led Martin to a position at Wittenberg University and to his destiny of changing the church forever.
It was during this time which the Pope was building St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. To finance the operation, preachers were sent throughout the Holy Roman Empire to sell indulgences. The basic – and I mean BASIC – idea behind these things is that Jesus promised to Peter that what he bound on earth would be bound in heaven, and what he loosed on earth would be loosed in heaven. If the Pope was the successor of Peter, then he could pardon the dead who were paying off their sins in purgatory. This indulgence would be something the people would pay to move their loved ones out of purgatory and into heaven.
When the preachers hit Wittenberg, Martin Luther protested, believing in the sanctifying power of faith alone and of God’s grace. He wrote his 95 theses that would become famous and spark a revolution within the church. Now, to be going against the church at this time, was not a smart thing to do. Remember that the Pope had power over emperors and kings, so to take him on was not an easy task. To make a long story short, Martin spent much of his time under the protection of a local prince who hid him away while he completed one of his most important contributions to the world. Up until this point, the only people who could read the Bible were priests because it was written in Latin.
It was believed that it was the job of the priests to read and interpret the Bible for the people. But Martin Luther disagreed and translated the Bible for the first time into the local language of German. Remember that this was considered a crime at the time and in fact, one of Luther’s close friends and supporters was burned alive for bringing that German Bible to his congregation. Knowing the risks, Luther still translated the Latin into German so that all people could read what the Bible had to say.
This is something which we take for granted today. Most people have a Bible somewhere in their home and don’t even think about what a gift it is to own a copy we can read. What I’m holding in my hand is something which people have fought and died for to give me. But why is this something which is worth dying over? This is a real question today as more and more people have stopped reading and have started to take second-hand accounts of what the Bible says as truth.
Friends, this is even something I do on occasion, but it is certainly something that most people and most Christians in the United States do. Many people walk into church, listen to what the Pastor has to say and just takes him at his word. And there are many people out there who take any Joe-shmo out there at their word for what the Bible says. Here’s some great examples:
- “God Won’t Give Me More Than I Can Handle”
- “God Helps Those Who Help Themselves”
- “Money is the root of all evil”
- “This too shall pass.”
- “God works in mysterious ways.”
These are all phrases which many people think are from the Bible, but are nowhere to be found between its covers, let alone ideas like these:
- “It doesn’t matter if I’m baptized; as long as I confess my faith in Christ I’ll be saved.”
- “It doesn’t matter how I worship; as long as I’m worshipping, God will accept that.”
The problem is that we take second hand accounts as true when we have the first hand account sitting right in front of us. Timothy, in our reading for today, says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
There are challenging parts of the Bible – there are parts which even I don’t quite understand. But what Paul reminds us in his letter to Timothy, is that it’s all God given and good for us. It may be easier to allow for someone else to wrestle with the hard parts of the Bible. It might be easier to just let the pastor read through it and figure out what it means. But this gift is one given from God Himself and has been given for all people. People have died just trying to share what its pages truly say. People have been burned alive trying to get its message out to the world. This Book, which is worth losing one’s life over, has to have something worth dying for in it and it does. It contains the Good News that God is with us and that His grace is enough.
This is what we remember today and what we challenge ourselves to live into. To experience that Good News for ourselves. To not just take the word of the pastor for it, or worse yet, what the news or TV says about the Bible. Our challenge this week is to explore the Bible for ourselves and come to live in the life-giving words. Secondhand might be good for clothing, but it’s no good when it comes to needles, or medicines, or anything that is truly life saving and the same is true for the Bible. But don’t just take my word for it, take a look for yourself.